Tory Lord says Boris Johnson couldn't have been expected to read his own Covid laws

A Conservative peer has claimed Boris Johnson couldn't have been expected to read the Covid laws he signed off on as prime minister.

Chewing over the aftermath of Partygate and the Sue Gray report on LBC, Lord Moylan said the rules had "great detail" and implied expecting the PM to have read them thoroughly wasn't completely reasonable.

"You had these laws that came out and they changed every few months, weeks sometimes, and they were as thick as your arm and they had great detail in them about what was allowed and what wasn't allowed and you know nobody ever read them," he said.

When presenter Iain Dale questioned whether Johnson should have been among those clued up on them, he added:

"You wouldn't think the prime minister had sat down and actually read them because the lockdown worked not because people were asked to sit down and read laws, the lockdown worked because accepted information in the form of slogans like 'rule of six'".

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Lord Moylan's views came under fire on Twitter with people thinking that actually it was pretty reasonable to expect the PM to read the rules.

But he seemed to think it had gone well and wrote: "Huge majority of respondents on my timeline agree with me about this. Thank you."

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