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- Cabinet Office investigation team. I appreciate the events in question took place some time ago and in very different circumstances. I also accept that memories may have faded and that recollections will differ. I am very grateful to those who sought to provide as much information as possible in what I realise may have been a daunting experience given the public profile of this investigation. It was also unfortunately the case that details of some events only became known to me and my team through reporting in the media. This is disappointing. Given the piecemeal manner in which events were brought to my attention, it is possible that events took place which were not the subject of investigation. However, my general findings and conclusions would equally apply.
Nature of investigation and findings
- As I explained in my 31 January update, I did not seek to alter the terms of reference or the approach to the investigation when I took over from the Cabinet Secretary. My task was to establish a general understanding of the nature of the gatherings in scope. This was not intended to be an exhaustive process; nor was its purpose to determine individual wrongdoing or to produce a definitive, line by line narrative of each event. Rather the objective was to establish the broad facts of what took place at these gatherings, taking into account that some took place nearly two years ago.
- Given the terms of reference, as well as the significant extension to the scope of the investigation, it was not possible to interview all of those who may have attended each of these events, nor was it necessary. As such the investigation focused on speaking with those individuals who were key to understanding whether the alleged events had taken place, and where they had, their nature, purpose and how they came to be organised.
- In line with that approach what follows is a narrative account of how these events came about and what happened when they took place, as far as I have been able to establish. To support these accounts I have included, wherever appropriate, relevant factual documentary evidence including email invitations; photographs; and communications between staff that help in understanding the nature and purpose of the event, including any preparations which may have taken place.
- There are of course differences in the level of detail in each of the narratives; the amount of evidence my team and I gathered varied by event. In some cases, we were able to obtain accounts from multiple attendees, as well as documentary material, including email communications, entry and exit logs and photographs. For other events there was less documentary evidence and we were only able to speak with a limited number of individuals. This was most notably the case for those events that we started investigating later in the
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