BORIS ‘COVER-UP’:
OFFICIALS have been accused of trying to cover up the cost of Boris Johnson’s trip to Afghanistan on the day of a controversial vote on Heathrow expansion.
The ex-Foreign Secretary blew more than £20,000 on a visit to Kabul, which allowed him to miss the vote last June. The last-minute visit came on the day he would have been forced to vote in favour of expansion to keep his job. He had once claimed he would lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop the £14billion third runway.
Details of the trip were disclosed to a member of the public in response to a Freedom of Information request. But they were not revealed to the Mirror and at least one other publication until a complaint was lodged days later.
Officials blamed an “IT issue”, but the Foreign Office was later forced to admit it had internally identified requests from “known journalists”, in breach of FOI rules.
Details of the IT issue were not given due to “national security”.
FOI expert Matt Burgess said: “This seems like a cover-up.”
In emails, one official told colleagues: “I’m happy to clear these but can you provide a list of who they are from?” Another email confirmed an official had “provided details of any known journalists”. The Foreign Office last night denied it had deliberately held back the information from the media, or treated the press differently to members of the public.