Jun 2, 2023 at 10:38 am BST
Updated 35 minutes ago
picture description,
The former prime minister has not delivered any messages from before April 2021 – more than a year after the pandemic began
Boris Johnson has said he is passing undredacted WhatsApp messages from May 2021 directly to the Covid inquiry, bypassing the government which has refused to release them.
The Cabinet Office has launched a legal challenge to the inquiry’s call for texts by the former PM and his officials.
It is argued that many of the messages are irrelevant to the investigation.
However, the head of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, said it was her job to decide what is relevant and what is not.
In a letter to Baroness Hallett, Mr Johnson said he understood why the government was taking legal action but was “completely content” to publish messages he had already sent to the Cabinet Office.
Mr Johnson added that he would like to send messages dated before April 2021 but has been told he will no longer be able to access his phone “securely” from that date.
Safety concerns were raised over the phone after it was revealed the number had been freely available on the internet for 15 years.
Messages received before that date would likely relate to discussions about the coronavirus lockdowns put in place in 2020.
Mr Johnson said he wanted to “test” the security services’ advice and had asked the Cabinet Office for assistance in safely turning on his old phone.
He added that he no longer had access to his contemporary notebooks as he had turned them over to the Cabinet Office.
“I have requested that the Cabinet Office forward this to you. If the government does not do this, I will request that they be returned to my office so that I can make them available to you directly.”
Earlier this week, the inquiry asked the government to submit messages sent between Mr Johnson and 40 other ministers and officials during the pandemic by 4pm BST on Thursday.
Mr Johnson said he was “more than happy” to provide the undredacted footage to the inquiry.
The Cabinet Office – which assists the Prime Minister in running the government – also conducts communications between ministers and officials in which Mr Johnson is not involved.
On Thursday it missed the deadline and said it would start a judicial review of the claim “with regret” but pledged to “continue to fully cooperate with the investigation”.
The Cabinet Office defended its decision not to release certain messages, arguing that many of the communications were “clearly irrelevant” and that submitting them to the inquiry would jeopardize ministers’ privacy and hamper future decisions.
“It constitutes an unjustified interference with other aspects of government work. It also constitutes an interference with their legitimate expectations for privacy and the protection of their personal data,” the Cabinet Office said in a letter on the investigation.
Speaking to BBC Question Time, Science Secretary George Freeman said he believes “the courts are likely to find” that Baroness Hallett is entitled to decide “what evidence she considers relevant”.
However, he added that “people’s privacy is really important” and that the question of how private correspondence should be handled is “a point worth looking into”.
“I would like to see a situation where the inquiry says, ‘Listen, we’re going to fully respect the privacy of anything non-Covid. We’ll edit it,'” he said.
Labor Deputy Leader Angela Rayner called the government’s legal action a “desperate attempt to withhold evidence”. The Liberal Democrats called it a “slap in the teeth to grieving families”.
Lord Gavin Barwell, who worked as former Prime Minister Theresa May’s chief of staff, told the BBC’s Today program that he believed the government was making a “grave mistake”.
He added: “We are conducting the investigation to give people confidence that we are finding out the truth. And if the government controls what the investigation can and can’t see, people won’t have confidence in the outcome.”
Labor MP and Shadow Secretary Jess Phillips said on Thursday’s BBC Question Time: “In many other countries around the world they have completed their Covid investigations. We can’t even get our investigations under way.”
There are actually some countries that have gone further than the UK with their requests. Sweden started so early that it was forced to hold hearings remotely due to Covid restrictions. She published her final report in February 2022.
Reports have also been published in Norway and the Netherlands as part of their investigations. Scotland’s separate inquiry appointed a new head of government earlier in the week and New Zealand’s inquiry appears to be around the same stage as the UK’s.
But not many other countries have conducted independent investigations so far. The US, for example, has not installed a Covid Commission, despite the efforts of some congressmen. And in Canada, there’s a national citizen survey because the government didn’t commission one.