Kemi Badenoch calls Partygate furore 'overblown' in first TV interview as Tory leaderSunday with Laura Kuenssberg, BBC
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Some of those things I think were perception issues. A lot of the stuff that happened around Partygate was not why I resigned.
00:06I thought that it was overblown. We should not have created fixed penalty notices, for example.
00:11That was us not going with our principles.
00:14And then when we had the issue with the Chris Pincher scandal, when ministers were sent out to say things that were not true,
00:20that was when I decided that these things had gone too far.
00:23So it was partly for you about the truth. Were the public wrong to be upset about Partygate? You say it was overblown.
00:28No, they were not wrong to be upset about Partygate.
00:32The problem was that we should not have criminalised everyday activities the way that we did.
00:38People going out for walks, all of them having fixed penalty notices.
00:42That was what ended up creating a trap for Boris Johnson.
00:45But wasn't the problem that people in government didn't obey the rules?
00:49Yes, that's right. People in government didn't obey the rules, but they were not MPs.
00:54They were often staffers, and I think that the way that we had created those regulations ended up entrapping...
01:00The Prime Minister and the Chancellor both got fines. It wasn't just people who worked for them.
01:03Indeed. But, as we saw with those events, when people see the full story of what actually happened,
01:10they understand that problems were created because of the way that we had created the regulations.