Boris Johnson returns to appear before the British Parliament for the holidays during the COVID-19 lockdown

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will apologize to the British Parliament on Tuesday, when he faces members of the House for the first time since being fined by police for violating COVID-19 restrictions imposed by his own government, a government representative said.

Johnson, who will address the British Parliament around 1430 GMT, was fined last week by the police to celebrate his birthday party in June 2020, when people from different households were not allowed to gather.

Opposition parties have called for Johnson's resignation, accusing him of deceiving Parliament, after last year he told lawmakers that Downing Street - the British Prime Minister's official residence and workplace - all regulations were met during the pandemic.

“When he addressed Parliament, he was telling the truth in relation to his thoughts,” British Minister for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis told Sky News.

“I didn't think at the time that anything he had done was contrary to the rules, but he absolutely accepts that the police examined him, that he had taken a different point of view.”

After last week's fine, Johnson said it hadn't occurred to him that he was breaking the rules, but that he now “humbly” accepted that he did.

A survey conducted by J L Partners for The Times newspaper, in which nearly 2,000 people were asked to give their opinion on the British Prime Minister in a nutshell, revealed that the comments of 72% of respondents were negative, compared to 16% that were positive. The most used word was “liar,” he reported.

Opposition parties are debating how best to censor Johnson, either by pushing for a vote if he disobeys Parliament, or to refer him to a parliamentary committee to investigate whether he deliberately misled legislators.

“It's just incredible that the prime minister says he didn't know,” opposition Labour Party legislator Emily Thornberry told Sky News. “You should tell us that you have lied, that you have deceived Parliament and that you should resign.”

Pressures from Johnson's own conservative legislators to resign have lessened with the war in Ukraine, in which it has sought to play a leading role in the West's response. Although a group of them have repeated their requests for him to leave, most say that now is not the time.

Conservative lawmaker Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the party's “1922 Committee,” which represents lawmakers who have no government office, said he would reserve his trial until the police investigation was concluded and British citizens spoke in the local elections in early May.

“For the time being, my opinion would be that it is certainly not in the country's interest to think about replacing the prime minister,” he told BBC Radio.

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