OUTGOING BBC chairman Richard Sharp has been named amongst the guests who allegedly visited Boris Johnson at Chequers despite lockdown rules prohibiting mixing between households.
Johnson was referred to the police by the Cabinet Office earlier this week after further potential lockdown breaches were discovered in his ministerial diary.
According to The Times, the diary includes a visit to Chequers – the prime minister’s country residence – from Richard Sharp, the BBC chairman who was forced to step down after he failed to disclose his role in introducing Boris Johnson to Sam Blyth.
Blyth would later act as a guarantor on an up to £800,000 loan for Johnson.
The meeting is thought to have occurred on May 2, 2021, when indoor mixing between households was banned and social distancing rules were in effect.
Blyth – a distant cousin of Johnson – was also in attendance.
A spokesperson for Richard Sharp said the dinner had occurred outdoors and was “Covid compliant” as the rule of six was in place at the time.
They added that Sharp also considered the visit to be a business meeting.
It comes as the UK Health Secretary Steve Barclay insists that Boris Johnson still has a “huge role to play” in politics and should remain an MP after the next general election.
Appearing on Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday show, he was asked whether the former prime minister was “toast”.
He replied: “No, I think Boris has a huge role to play. We saw his leadership in the country’s response to Ukraine where he took the lead on that.
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“Of course I want to see Boris back as a member of Parliament and I want to see all my colleagues back but the point is Boris achieved many things”.
Johnson was previously fined for attending a gathering in Downing Street to mark his birthday in June 2020.
However, he staunchly refutes that the unearthed diary appointments reveal that he flouted the rules once again.
“This whole thing is a load of nonsense from beginning to end,” he said.
“I think it’s ridiculous that elements in my diary should be cherry-picked and handed over to the police, to the Privileges Committee without even anybody having the basic common sense to ask me what these entries referred to.”
The new information came to light during a review by taxpayer-funded lawyers ahead of the Covid public inquiry.
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