'Partygate' has shattered trust in politics, says Kim Leadbeater MP

Speaking on BBC2's Politics Live ahead of the publication of the Sue Gray report into alleged parties at Downing Street during lockdown, Ms Leadbeater said: “People are just sick of the hypocrisy and the arrogance that has clearly been taking place during the pandemic and the lockdown by the Prime Minister and his Government.

"It’s a distraction from the serious issues that are going on in the world.

"We have got the Ukraine crisis, we’re still getting through the pandemic, we’ve got a cost of living crisis.

"But also it gets to the heart of our politics and I worry that this disengages people from politics even more than they’re already disengaged.

"It shatters people’s trust in politics when it’s already at a very low ebb and it worries me that very good people who put themselves forward for public life are tarred with the same brush.

"Ultimately I stand with the people who lost loved ones in 2020, who couldn’t go to funerals, who couldn’t have their own birthday parties.

"Those people are angry and really upset.”