Was Boris pleading poverty.....again?
"The Cabinet Office made the decision to cover Mr Johnson's legal costs for the inquiry last year, when he was still prime minister.
The government has sought to justify the decision by claiming there is a precedent for supporting former ministers with legal representation.
But the government has not been able to name a single example of a former minister receiving taxpayer-funded legal support for a parliamentary inquiry.
The BBC has spoken to two former ministers who were investigated by MPs for misleading Parliament and were not given legal support.
The former Labour MP and transport secretary, Stephen Byers, was not offered legal support when he faced a four-month inquiry in 2005.
Nor was the former Labour MP and paymaster general, Geoffrey Robinson, who was found to have "inadvertently" misled MPs in 2001.
In a response to a parliamentary question this week, Cabinet Office minister Jeremy Quin defended the decision to pay Mr Johnson's legal costs.
He said the principle "can also be applied to parliamentary inquiries, where it relates to one's conduct as minister of the Crown".
But Mr Quin provided no examples of former ministers having their legal bills covered for parliamentary inquiries."
So they made something up and it has cost us £245000.