Authorized battle looms over Boris Johnson’s Covid WhatsApp messages
M
inisters could possibly be set for a authorized battle with the Covid-19 inquiry over the requested launch of unredacted WhatsApp messages and diaries belonging to Boris Johnson.
The Cabinet Office has till 4pm on Tuesday to answer the request from Lady Hallett’s official inquiry.
There has to this point been little signal that ministers are set to shift from the place that the Government has no responsibility to reveal “unambiguously irrelevant” materials.
The row was sparked by a authorized request despatched by the inquiry on April 28 for quite a few supplies, together with unredacted WhatsApp messages and diaries belonging to the previous prime minister between January 2020 and February 2022.
In May, the Cabinet Office pushed again towards the request, which was made beneath part 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005 and which additionally applies to messages from former adviser Henry Cook.
In a ruling final week, Lady Hallett rejected the argument that the inquiry’s request was illegal and claimed that the Cabinet Office had “misunderstood the breadth of the investigation”.
Refusing to adjust to the request would result in a authorized conflict with the official inquiry, elevating the opportunity of ministers in search of a judicial evaluation of the probe’s powers.
It comes simply weeks earlier than the primary public proof classes are anticipated to be held.
The Cabinet Office has already supplied greater than 55,000 paperwork, 24 private witness statements and eight company statements to the inquiry.
But Lady Hallett, in final week’s ruling, careworn that the requested documentation was of “potential relevance” to the inquiry’s “lines of investigation”.
She mentioned: “I may also be required to investigate the personal commitments of ministers and other decision-makers during the time in question.”
“There is, for example, well-established public concern as to the degree of attention given to the emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 by the then Prime Minister.”
A Cabinet Office spokesman mentioned: “We are fully committed to our obligations to the Covid-19 inquiry.
“As such, extensive time and effort has gone into assisting the inquiry fulsomely over the last 11 months.
“We will continue to provide all relevant material to the inquiry, in line with the law, ahead of proceedings getting under way.”
According to the discover in search of the unredacted messages, the inquiry is requesting conversations between Mr Johnson and a number of presidency figures, civil servants and officers.
The record contains England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty, in addition to then-chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.
Messages with then-foreign secretary Liz Truss and then-health secretary Matt Hancock are additionally requested, in addition to with former prime aide Dominic Cummings and then-chancellor Rishi Sunak.
The inquiry had additionally requested for “copies of the 24 notebooks containing contemporaneous notes made by the former prime minister” in “clean unredacted form, save only for any redactions applied for reasons of national security sensitivity”.
Liberal Democrat well being spokesperson Daisy Cooper mentioned that “failing to hand over the evidence in full, as requested by the chair of the Covid inquiry, would make a mockery of this whole process and would be yet another insult to bereaved families still waiting for justice”.
“It looks like Rishi Sunak is too worried about upsetting Boris Johnson and his allies to do the right thing.
“The public deserve the whole truth about what went wrong. Vital evidence shouldn’t be kept secret just to spare ministers’ blushes.”