A cross-party group of MPs has pushed for formal action against Boris Johnson for allegedly misleading the Commons over the transparency of Covid contracts, saying the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, incorrectly cleared the prime minister of wrongdoing.

In a letter to Case the three MPs, who are working with the Good Law Project, said it was “abundantly clear” Johnson had breached the ministerial code by telling parliament on 22 February that details of multibillion-pound Covid-19 government contracts were “on the record for everybody to see”.

Three days earlier a high court judge had ruled that the Department of Health and Social Care acted unlawfully by failing to publish the government contracts within the necessary 30-day period, after a challenge led by the Good Law Project.

In March the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, Layla Moran of the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens’ Caroline Lucas first wrote to Case, the most senior UK civil servant, to ask him why Johnson had said contracts had been published when at that time they had not.

The final judgment in the contracts high court case, on 5 March, noted that of 708 relevant contracts, only 608 had been published.

In a new letter to Case, sent on Tuesday, Abrahams, Moran and Lucas expressed “serious concern regarding the inaccuracies in your response”.

They wrote: “What the prime minister told parliament was not true. A large number of contracts – and details of those contracts – were neither ‘there for everybody to see’ or ‘on the record’. Unlawfully, their publication had been delayed.”

Jo Maugham, the director of Good Law Project, said Case “has no answer because the simple truth is that the prime minister misled parliament. What is surprising is that a senior civil servant should participate in an attempt to disguise that simple truth from the people.”

Claims made by the usual suspects reported in a left-wing rag. A bit of a coincidence that an election is in the offing. Anyone would think they're trying to influence the vote.

If they are trying to influence votes it's having the opposite effect to that which I think they intend.
Hartlepool, oh Hartlepool.

Claims made by the usual suspects reported in a left-wing rag. A bit of a coincidence that an election is in the offing. Anyone would think they're trying to influence the vote.

Hardly - this "case" has been in progress since the beginning of March .....