Johnson has always said he did not knowingly lie when he said no Covid rules were broken in Downing Street.
But the committee, led by veteran Labour MP Harriet Harman, will simply rule on whether the prime minister misled the House, intentionally or unintentionally.
If he is found guilty, Johnson could face a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat which might see him voted out of parliament.
Dorries, Johnson’s closest cabinet ally, tweeted on Sunday: “If this witch hunt continues, it will be the most egregious abuse of power witnessed in Westminster.
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“It will cast serious doubt not only on the reputation of individual MPs sitting on the committee, but on the processes of parliament and democracy itself.”
Labour MP Chris Bryant replied: “Let’s talk about abuse of power such as illegally suspending parliament or doling out peerages to donors or tearing up the rules to protect Owen Paterson.
“The real abuse of power would be suspending an inquiry to protect your mate.”
Bryant is the usual chair of the privileges committee, but stood aside for the partygate inquiry given his past criticisms of Johnson.
The committee intends to call the PM to give oral evidence in public in the autumn, under oath.
The committee has already said that whistle-blowers will be able to give evidence about the prime minister anonymously.
Johnson has also been ordered to hand over a cache of documents to the MPs, including diaries, photographs and deleted documents.
Ministers have called on Liz Truss to “disown” attacks on Rishi Sunak by Nadine Dorries.
The culture secretary, a supporter of Truss’s leadership bid, mounted a fresh attack as she made a half-hearted apology for previous comments about his expensive clothes.
She also shared a doctored image on Twitter showing Rishi Sunak stabbing Boris Johnson in the back.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, she described Sunak as an “assassin” for helping to bring down Boris Johnson, and a “dog in the manger” for not supporting the prime minister enough when he was chancellor.
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She said she “may have gone over the top” when she criticised Sunak for wearing £450 Prada shoes and a £3,500 bespoke suit.
“I wanted to highlight Rishi’s misguided sartorial style in order to alert Tory members not to be taken in by appearances in the way that happened to many of us who served with the chancellor in cabinet,” she said.
“The assassin’s gleaming smile, his gentle voice and even his diminutive stature had many of us well and truly fooled.”
She later retweeted an image showing Sunak as Brutus stabbing Johnson as Julius Caesar in the back.
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Business minister Greg Hands condemned Dorries’ actions as “distasteful” and “dangerous” in the wake of the killing of Southend West Tory MP Sir David Amess at a constituency surgery in Essex last October.
The MP, who is supporting Sunak’s campaign, told Sky News: “I’m sure Liz Truss would disown this kind of behaviour.
“I think this is appalling.
“Look, it’s not even a year since the stabbing of Sir David Amess at his Southend constituency surgery, so I think this is very, very bad taste, dangerous even”.
Welsh secretary Sir Robert Buckland, another Sunak supporter, also denounced Dorries’ behaviour.
“I think that sort of imagery and narrative is not just incendiary, it’s wrong,” he told BBC Radio Wales.
“I think it’s time for those who think that an argument about Prada shoes or earrings is more important, for instance, should wind their neck in and let people talk about the issues rather than the personality”.
He added: “Nadine is well known as having strong views on things. Nadine speaks for herself, she’s very much an individual on that. But that is not a position that Liz would take”.
Liz Truss’s campaign have been contacted for comment.
Channel 4 has said no evidence has been found to support Nadine Dorries’ claim the broadcaster used paid actors for a reality show she appeared in 12 years ago.
The now-culture secretary was one of four MPs to appear in Tower Block of Commons back in 2010, where they all spent a week living with a family on different housing estates.
Dorries said: “The parents of the boys in that programme actually came here to have lunch with me and contacted me to tell me, actually, they were in acting school and that they weren’t really living in a flat, and they weren’t real, they were actually actors.
“And there’s a pharmacist or somebody that I went to see who prepared food, she was also a paid actress as well.”
Following the accusations, Channel 4 said it asked the show’s production company Love Productions to carry out a thorough investigation.
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The broadcaster said it then reviewed the findings and conducted its own internal searches and review.
In a statement documenting its process and findings, Channel 4 said: “At the DCMS Committee meeting on 19 May 2022, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Nadine Dorries MP alleged that contributors to the 2010 Channel 4 series Tower Block Of Commons, in which she appeared, were paid actors, in acting school and/or not living in the homes in which they were portrayed in the series as living.
“Channel 4 takes any allegations of misrepresentation extremely seriously and always rigorously investigates any such claims.
“In keeping with standard practice, Channel 4 asked Love Productions, who produced the programme, to conduct a thorough investigation into the concerns raised.
“The investigation, overseen by their external lawyers, encompassed contributors who were ordinary members of the public and with whom the Secretary of State had significant interaction.
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“It involved speaking with many of those involved in the making of the series, including contributors and crew, and retrieving and reviewing relevant documentation and footage, including 85 hours of raw footage filmed for the series.
“Channel 4 then reviewed Love Productions’ findings and undertook its own internal document searches and review.
“Neither Love Productions’ investigation nor Channel 4’s internal inquiries revealed any evidence to support the allegations made about the programme.”
DCMS committee chairman Julian Knight said: “The committee has written to the Secretary of State on this matter and invited comments from her as a matter of urgency.
“Now that Channel 4 and Love Productions have concluded the investigation, we look forward to receiving the Secretary of State’s response, which we will then publish.”
Tech bosses will face large fines if they fail to comply with new internet laws under government plans strengthening its long-awaited online safety bill.
The proposed legislation, which has been in progress for around five years and is to be brought before parliament on Thursday, will crack down on social media platforms exposing users to harmful content.
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Ofcom, the new regulator for the sector, will have the power to fine companies or block access to sites that fail to comply with the new rules.
Among a series of updates, company executives will be criminally liable if they fail to comply with information requests just two months after the bill becomes law, rather than the two years previously drafted.
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Destroying evidence, providing false information in interviews and obstructing the regulator when it enters company offices will also be punished.
Under the updated bill, the biggest social media platforms must also tackle so-called “legal but harmful” content.
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But what is deemed “legal but harmful” will now be set out in secondary legislation approved by parliament, which the government says will prevent social media executives determining what appears.
Other updates include a new requirement to report child sexual abuse to the National Crime Agency.
The government has also said news content will be exempt from any of the regulations as part of efforts to protect free speech.
“The internet has transformed our lives for the better. It’s connected us and empowered us. But on the other side, tech firms haven’t been held to account when harm, abuse and criminal behaviour have run riot on their platforms,” culture secretary Nadine Dorries said.
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The changes come after MPs, peers and campaigners warned the initial proposals failed to offer the expected user protection.
That has since sparked a number of other recently announced changes to the draft bill, including bringing paid-for scam adverts into scope, requiring sites that host pornography to ensure their users are 18 or over and criminalising cyberflashing.
Damian Collins, chair of the joint committee on the draft online safety bill, which scrutinised the previous version of the proposed rules, said it was a “huge moment for the safety of all internet users”.
“The UK is leading the world with legislation to finally hold social media companies for the offences that take place on their platforms, like hate speech, fraud, terrorism, and child abuse,” he said.
However, some campaigners have expressed concerns about the ongoing use of the phrase “legal but harmful” and the impact it could have on free speech.
Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said using the term amounted to the creation of a “censor’s charter”.
“Unbelievably while acknowledging the sheer amount of power (Facebook executive) Nick Clegg and other Silicon Valley bigwigs already have over what we can say online, Nadine Dorries has created a bill that will grant them even more,” he said.
Nadine Dorries has spelled out how far her loyalty to Boris Johnson goes as she defended the prime minister over leaked photos of a Christmas party during lockdown.
The culture secretary has developed a reputation for robustly supporting the under-fire PM against any critics since she became a cabinet minister in September.
Last week, a still from PMQs of Dorries staring at Johnson – smiling – quickly became a meme.
Now, in an interview with US broadcaster CNN, Dorries made clear there would be little Johnson could do to shake her off.
When asked if there was any situation which would cause her to withdraw her support of him, Dorries replied: “Well, of course there are. If he went up and, you know, kicked a dog, I’d probably withdraw my support for him, but no, based on his professional delivery for the UK, no, absolutely not.”
Of the leaked photos of him taking part in a quiz with champagne and tinsel during lockdown, she added: “What I would say on the food, it was an open packet of crisps, it was Christmas, it was a Zoom quiz with the wider staff. So, I mean, basically that’s all I’ve got to say on it. I’m not sure who didn’t do a Zoom quiz during lockdown with an open pocket of crisps.”
It’s the latest bizarre contortion from a Tory MP in an effort to defend their leader.
Junior minister Conor Burns claimed Johnson was effectively “ambushed by cake”, and therefore his alleged rule-breaking birthday party was not his fault.
And backbencher Adam Rosindell compared partygate to robbing a bank in an odd exchange on Sky News.
Rosindell described so-called “cakegate” as a “frenzy”, and said: “He’s made a mistake, no question about that, we all do.”
He continued: “I think we’ve all done it, let’s not be so judgemental that the prime minister of the United Kingdom has not committed some horrendous, terrible crime the deserves the entire government to be derailed.”
Sky News’ Kay Burley replied: “And you’re confident that it’s OK for the prime minister who makes the rules to break the rules and thus break the law – that’s OK?”
“No it’s not – you know I’m sure there are ministers who get parking tickets and speeding fines too,” Rosindell said.
“Anyway, lots of people break the law in small ways, sometimes unintentionally.
“He’s not robbed a bank.”
The Metropolitan Police is currently investigating 12 alleged parties, and may launch a formal probe into another after the new image emerged of Johnson taking part in a Christmas quiz on December 15, 2020.
Nadine Dorries has suggested new laws would hold to account streaming sites from airing jokes such as those made by Jimmy Carr about the Traveller community and the Holocaust.
During an interview on Saturday’s BBC Breakfast, the Culture Secretary condemned the comic’s joke made during his one-hour Netflix special, His Dark Material, as “shocking, abhorrent and unacceptable.”
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Carr issued a “trigger warning” to the audience at the beginning of the Netflix show, admitting his performance contained “terrible things”.
In a widely-shared clip from the show, the comedian joked about the horror of the Holocaust and “six million Jewish lives being lost” before making a disparaging remark about the deaths of thousands of Travellers at the hands of the Nazis as a punchline.
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Nadine Dorries and Jimmy Carr
Dorries suggested that in the future, new laws would “hold Netflix to account” for such content.
“We are looking at legislation via the Media Bill which would bring into scope those comments from other video on-demand streaming outlets like Netflix,” she said.
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“So it’s interesting that we’re already looking at future legislation to bring into scope those sort of comments.”
The MP said Carr’s comments were “abhorrent and they just shouldn’t be on television”, but it was then put to her that in a tweet in 2017 she had claimed that “left-wing snowflakes are killing comedy”.
She said: “Well, that’s not comedy.
“What Jimmy Carr did last night is not comedy. And you know, I’m no angel on Twitter, nobody is, but I just would like to say that nothing I’ve ever put on Twitter has been harmful or abusive.
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“But that last night… Jimmy Carr’s comments, no one can call that, you know, snowflake or wokeishness, that’s just… it was just appalling.”
She said the comments were “shocking and abhorrent and unacceptable, not just because he was making fun on the basis of people who died in the most appalling circumstances, but on the pain and suffering of many thousands of families”.
In a separate interview with Times Radio, she said: “We don’t have the ability now, legally, to hold Netflix to account for streaming that but very shortly we will.”
Asked on Sky News if there was any way this new law would put restrictions on free speech, she said: “No, absolutely not. We’ve been very, very… well because I’m a Conservative, I’ve been very, very careful about that.”
In a tweet, Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, has also urged Netflix to remove Carr’s “vile anti-GRT and antisemitic material”.
I have written urging Netflix to remove Jimmy Carr’s vile anti-GRT and antisemitic material.
I have also requested an update from @DCMS on progress to bring streaming platforms under Ofcom regulation.
The Traveller Movement, a charity supporting the traveller community in the UK, said: “This is truly disturbing and goes way beyond humour.”
In a tweet, the charity said: “We need all your support in calling this out #StopTravellerHate @StopFundingHate.”
The charity has launched a petition to Netflix calling for the “removal of the segments of His Dark Material which celebrates the Romani genocide”.
The not-for-profit organisation the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust shared a statement on Twitter from their CEO Olivia Marks-Woldman who was “horrified” to hear “gales of laughter” following Carr’s remarks.
Hope Not Hate, the anti-fascism and anti-racism campaigning group, also condemned the comedian’s joke on Friday.
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In a tweet, they said: “Comedy is an amazing tool for progressive change and it’s such a shame that @jimmycarr decided to use his platform to celebrate the murder of one of the most marginalised groups in society.”
The Auschwitz Memorial called for Carr to “learn about the fate of some 23 thousand Roma & Sinti deported to Auschwitz” in a tweet to their 1.2 million followers.
They added: “It’s sad to hear words that can fuel prejudice, hurt people & defile memory of their tragedy.”
HuffPost UK has contacted Carr’s reps for comment.
The UK has recorded 534 daily Covid-19 deaths, the highest figure since February last year.
It comes as statisticians suggested Covid-19 infections have stopped falling, and a week after Plan B restrictions were abandoned and ministers said the Omicron-fuelled surge was “in retreat”.
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The government said on Wednesday a further 534 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19, bringing the total to 157,409.
These figures now include deaths in England following possible reinfections of Covid-19, which is why there has been a jump in the cumulative total of deaths and why the daily total is higher than recently.
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But the daily figure is the highest since February 23, 2021, when the daily count was 548. The new data will raise questions over the rolling back of measures to curb the spread of Covid-19.
On Monday, culture secretary Nadine Dorries, when doing a media round defending Boris Johnson, said: “We have won the war on Covid in this country. That’s what people see and that’s what people know.”
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There were 88,085 cases of Covid-19 reported in the UK on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Covid-19 infections have plateaued or showed an increase.
In England around one in 20 people in private households are estimated to have had the virus in the week to January 29, or 2.6 million people – unchanged from the week to January 22.
In Wales around one in 20 people had Covid-19 last week, up from one in 30.
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Northern Ireland has also seen a week-on-week increase, from one in 20 people to one in 15.
In Scotland, the ONS describes the trend as “uncertain” with around one in 30 people estimated to have had Covid-19 last week, unchanged from the previous week.
Culture secretary Nadine Dorries has issued a warning about buying tickets from touts – by tweeting a viral photo of former prime minister David Cameron.
The photo quickly became the basis of a meme on social media, with many joking the outfit made Cameron look like the kind of shady character you might find at a pub or car boot sale.
And Cabinet minister Dorries, who once described her one-time party leader as an “arrogant posh boy”, joined in the fun.
She wrote: “Whether it’s a major music festival, sporting event or concert, it’s important that people pay a fair price to see the events they love. Please remain vigilant when considering to buy from ticket touts. Guidance is available if you are unsure.”
Last week, Dorries accused a Tory MP who claims to have faced “intimidation” from their party of “attention-seeking behaviour”.
Many pointed out this was a comment made by the same politician who once appeared on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here and ate ostrich anus on TV.
In any case, Dorries appeared to be going with the consensus in her ribbing.
Last year, Cameron was embroiled in controversy over his intense lobbying for collapsed finance firm Greensill Capital – which was laid bare in 45 emails, texts and WhatsApp messages to ministers and officials.
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