Cabinet Office in court over giving Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps and diaries to COVID inquiry

The government will be in court today as it fights an order from the COVID inquiry to handover unredacted messages from Boris Johnson.

The probe was set up by the former prime minister to look into the handling of the pandemic, and hearings have already begun.

But its chair, Baroness Hallet, became frustrated with the Cabinet Office last month after it held back some of Mr Johnson’s WhatsApps, diary entries and notebooks over fears they would compromise ministers’ right to privacy.

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She issued a legal order to the department to send all the documents over without amendments, saying it was for her to decide what was relevant to the inquiry, but officials continued to refuse and are now seeking a judicial review.

Announcing the court challenge earlier this month “with regret”, the Cabinet Office said there were “important issues of principle at stake, affecting both the rights of individuals and the proper conduct of government”.

It said it had explored “a number of possible avenues for resolving this difference of opinion”, including offering redacted versions of the materials and “a more focused or sequential approach to the direction of the information requirements”.

“We remain hopeful and willing to agree together the best way forward.”

The decision had the backing of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said he was “confident in the position it’s taking”.

The row exposed the ongoing rift between Mr Johnson and his successors in Downing Street, with him offering to handover the documents himself in contradiction with the government’s position.

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But officials claimed what he offered up was still not all the messages and entries required by the chair’s order.

For example, older messages from the ex-PM’s phone – before May 2021 – are no longer available to search because he was advised not to activate his old device following a well-publicised security breach in April that year.

The government – and Mr Sunak himself – faced accusations from opposition parties that they were obstructing the inquiry, with Labour’s Angela Rayner calling it “a desperate attempt to withhold evidence”.

She added: “Instead of digging himself further into a hole by pursuing doomed legal battles to conceal the truth, Rishi Sunak must comply with the COVID inquiry’s requests for evidence in full. There can be no more excuses.”