Pressure is growing for Boris Johnson as the Labour party has written to the foreign secretary demanding him to account for his role in the abandoned London garden bridge project
Andrew Gwynne, the shadow communities secretary, wrote to Johnson and challenged his claims that the journalist who criticized the £46 million project had a personal dislike of the bridge’s designer.
Gwynne asked Johnson to provide evidence for the claims he made by journalist Will Hurst, the managing editor of the Architects’ Journal.
The foreign secretary has come under fire over his role of the garden bridge. £46.4 million of public money was spent on the project, but construction never took started.
Johnson has blamed London’s current mayor, Sadiq Khan, for the losses after he cancelled the project.
While he was the London mayor, Johnson championed the designs for London’s newest bridge and said: “I think what I might have done in retrospect, the obvious thing is I would have tried to get it going faster, earlier.”
Speaking earlier this month before the London assembly’s oversight committee, Johnson criticised Hurst, a journalist who has written several stories uncovering problems with the project.
Johnson said the stories were “motivated to the best of my knowledge by a dislike that the Architects’ Journal journalist concerned had for Thomas Heatherwick, who is not conceived of as being a proper architect, and is therefore somehow worthy of abuse”.
In the letter, Gwynne wrote that the foreign secretary should answer questions on “the role played by your office in the reckless decision to release public funds for the construction contract”
“Do you have any evidence to support your public claim that articles published by Mr Hurst are motivated by a dislike of Thomas Heatherwick, if not, do you want to withdraw this comment and apologise?” he added.