A Conservative peer, Lord David Wolfson has stepped down as justice minister in response to alleged breaches of Covid rules in Downing Street.This follows Boris Johnson’s fine for attending a lockdown party on Tuesday. Wolfson in a letter said the “repeated rule-breaking, and breaches of the criminal law” at No 10 prompted his resignation as justice minister. In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Conservative peer said: “Justice may often be a matter of courts and procedure, but the rule of law is something else – a constitutional principle which, at its root, means that everyone in a state, and indeed the state itself, is subject to the law. “I regret that recent disclosures lead to the inevitable conclusion that there was repeated rule-breaking, and breaches of the criminal law, in Downing Street. I have – again, with considerable regret – come to the conclusion that the scale, context and nature of those breaches mean that it would be inconsistent with the rule of law for that conduct to pass with constitutional impunity, especially when many in society complied with the rules at great personal cost, and others were fined or prosecuted for similar, and sometimes apparently more trivial, offences.
