Covid inquiry threatens legal action over Boris’s unredacted WhatsApp messages

The Cabinet Office has been accused of holding back important information relating to Boris Johnson’s handling of the Covid pandemic.

It has been threatened with legal action by the Covid-19 inquiry over the release of WhatsApp messages and diaries belonging to Boris Johnson.

Baroness Heather Hallett is leading the probe and said the content should not have been redacted when it was handed over to her team.

She issued a section 21 legal notice on April 28 requesting the unredacted communications but on May 15 the Cabinet Office refused the request.

The Cabinet Office argued the materials requested by the inquiry were ‘sensitive’ and it had ‘no entitlement’ to them.

But Baroness Hallet said it was for the inquiry to decide what was relevant information.

She said in a ruling released on Wednesday,: ‘The entire contents of the specified documents are of potential relevance to the lines of investigation being pursued by the inquiry.’

The documents relate to ‘WhatsApp communications recorded on devices owned or used by the former prime minister Boris Johnson MP and also an adviser named Henry Cook, comprising exchanges between senior government ministers, senior civil servants and their advisers during the pandemic’, she continued.

Senior figures mentioned include England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty, as well as then-chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, then-foreign secretary Liz Truss, and then-health secretary Matt Hancock, as well as former top aide Dominic Cummings.

The inquiry has also asked 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’.

Baroness Hallett also references ‘Mr Johnson’s diaries for the same period, together with notebooks that I have been told contain his contemporaneous notes’.

Downing Street insisted that the government was supplying ‘all relevant material’ to the inquiry.

‘We established the inquiry to ensure the actions of the state during the pandemic are examined as rigorously and candidly as possible to ensure we learn the right lessons for the future,’ the prime minister’s official spokesman said.

‘The government remains committed to its obligations to the inquiry and in line with the law.

‘We are providing all relevant material to the inquiry.

‘We have, of course, continued to comply with requests in line with that principle so that it can undertake its vitally important work.’

A deadline of 4pm on May 30 has been set for a response to the request.

In a statement, Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice said: ‘It’s outrageous that the Cabinet Office think they can dictate to the inquiry which of Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages they can see.

‘This inquiry needs to get to the facts if it is to learn lessons to help save lives in the next pandemic, so well done to Baroness Hallett for standing up to the Cabinet Office on this occasion.’

Mr Johnson is also ditching government-appointed lawyers who are representing him in the Covid inquiry after he was referred to the police over potential further lockdown breaches.

The former PM wrote in a letter to the chair of the Covid inquiry: ‘You may be aware that I am currently instructing new solicitors to represent me in the inquiry.

‘That process is well underway but is in the hands of the Cabinet Office to agree funding and other practical arrangements. I have no control over the timing of that process.

‘As at today, I am unrepresented and my counsel team have been instructed not to provide me with any advice.’

The Cabinet Office has handed evidence over to the police over concerns Mr Johnson broke lockdown rules by visiting friends and family at Chequers between June 2020 and May 2021.

His former government-funded lawyers found evidence of the trips in his ministerial diary as part of a probe into his government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

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