Met sparks fury with bid to cut details from Gray report

Scotland Yard provoked fury and confusion yesterday by revealing it was seeking to remove details from the official report into Downing Street parties, raising fears the full version could be delayed “indefinitely”.

- Aubrey Allegretti, Vikram Dodd, Hannah Devlin

One MP branded the Metropolitan police a “broken organisation” after i admitted it had asked the senior civil servant Sue Gray to make “minimal reference” in her inquiry to matters the force is now investigating.

Gray’s team are now wrangling over whether to publish a pared-back report as early as Monday or wait for the Met’s investigation to conclude , which could take weeks or months.

Another option could be to publish a shorter version with redactions next week, and then release the full findings once Scotland Yard’s inquiry is over. One government source said the publication could be delayed indefinitely.

However, Labour insisted any further delay in publishing the entire report was intolerable.

It said the government was in a state of extended paralysis, while some Tory backbenchers described Boris Johnson as a “lame duck” without the authority to tackle the looming cost of living crisis and possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.

With Whitehall alive with speculation about why Gray had yet to send her report to Downing Street, Scotland Yard issued a brief statement yesterday , saying it was in “ongoing contact” with her team about “the content of the report” to “avoid any prejudice to our investigation” .

Police stressed they had not asked for the document to be delayed, but their request has left Gray unable to publish the report as she had intended.