Sunak tries to avoid Tory splits by letting MPs miss vote on whether to ban Johnson from Parliament

Rishi Sunak will allow Conservative MPs to stay away when Parliament votes on Boris Johnson’s future in a bid to avoid further damaging splits in the Tory party.

The House of Commons will vote on Monday whether to endorse the damning verdict of the privileges committee, which found Mr Johnson had repeatedly and deliberately misled Parliament. Its report recommended he should be denied a pass to enter the Palace of Westminster in future and said that if he had not quit as an MP, he would have faced a 90-day suspension.

The Prime Minister is unlikely to attend the vote, with allies expecting him to find a way to be out of London when it takes place.

Conservative MPs have been told they do not need to be in Parliament at the time of the vote, and will not be whipped to vote in favour or against. “There will be no pressure whatsoever,” a Government source said. The Chief Whip and other senior ministers are not expected to indicate if or how they will vote ahead of time.

Some close allies of Mr Johnson have said they will seek to ensure Parliament rejects the privileges committee report, which they argue was fundamentally biased and failed to take account of his point of view. But with almost all Opposition MPs certain to vote in favour of censuring the former Prime Minister, any such attempt is very unlikely to succeed.

Mr Sunak will focus on campaigning in the upcoming by-elections, triggered by the resignation of Mr Johnson and two of his closest allies, and pushing ahead with policy targets such as the war in Ukraine, according to members of his inner circle. “It’s time to move on,” an insider told i.

The Prime Minister has not finalised his plans for next week but may be absent when the vote takes place and other Tories are expected to do the same. “I think very few Conservative MPs are going to be voting,” one ally of Mr Sunak said.

He has struggled to contain Tory infighting in recent weeks, prompting claims from the Opposition that he is too weak to stand up to colleagues and his predecessor. But his supporters are increasingly optimistic that the latest row will allow him to distance himself from Mr Johnson, who polls suggest remains deeply unpopular with most voters.

A minister said: “The more it goes on, the more he looks like change. He said ‘no’ to Boris and Boris has been found by a cross-party committee to be an absolute bastard. This does no harm to Rishi.”

The privileges committee, which was chaired by Labour veteran Harriet Harman but has a Conservative majority, concluded that Mr Johnson lied to the Commons when he said he was not aware of Covid rule-breaking in No 10 because he must have known about a number of illegal gatherings.

It also accused him of holding Parliament in contempt by the way he has treated the investigation into his own conduct. The committee was planning to recommend a suspension of between 20 and 40 days but increased the penalty – which cannot now take effect, given his resignation – after he public denounced the probe last week.

Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, is the most senior Tory to declare that he will vote to endorse the committee’s recommendations. He said: “Not a single MP of any party, including Boris Johnson, voted against the privileges committee being set up. I will support the work that they did and their conclusions, so I will vote for all their recommendations and conclusions.”

He rubbished suggestions Mr Johnson could stage another comeback in future, saying: “He has voluntarily stood down as an MP. There were plenty of opportunities for him to still be an MP right now, to fight this in the House of Commons and to fight the sanctions and the punishments that have been levelled against him. He’s chosen not to do that, so that tells me in as clear a way as possible Boris Johnson is not going to make a return.”