...and anger as inquiry demands his WhatsApps

THE official Covid Inquiry has threatened the Cabinet Office with legal action after it refused to provide Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages and diaries.

Baroness Hallett, the inquiry’s chairman, demanded to see messages from the former prime minister and ex-No 10 adviser Henry Cook which were sent during the pandemic.

The inquiry requested the messages in April, as well as diaries and notebooks, but the Cabinet Office sought to resist the request.

The Cabinet Office believes many of Mr Johnson’s messages are ‘unambiguously irrelevant’ and sharing them would be a ‘serious intrusion of privacy’.

But in an eight-page ruling, Lady Hallett rejected the argument that the inquiry’s request was unlawful and claimed that the Cabinet Office had ‘misunderstood the breadth of the investigation’.

She said the requested documentation was of ‘potential relevance’ to the inquiry’s lines of investigation.

Her ruling argues that ‘in order to evaluate the response of the Government and/or of any individual minister to the pandemic, it may be necessary for reasons of context for me to understand the other (superficially unrelated) political matters with which they were concerned at the time’.

Downing Street said the Government was supplying ‘all relevant material’ to the inquiry.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said: ‘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 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.’

The Cabinet Office has provided more than 55,000 documents to the inquiry.

But the Government believes it has no duty to disclose ‘unambiguously irrelevant’ material, Downing Street said. A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: ‘We continue to fully cooperate with the inquiry and will do so with our new legal team.’