Government to launch legal battle over Johnson messages
THE Government will fight a legal battle over the Covid inquiry’s demand to release Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages, diaries and personal notebooks.
The Cabinet Office said it was seeking a judicial review of inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett’s order to release the documents, arguing that it should not have to hand over material which is “unambiguously irrelevant”.
In a letter to the inquiry, released after a 4pm deadline to hand over the material, the Cabinet Office said it had provided “as much relevant information as possible, and as quickly as possible” in line with the order.
But the letter said: “The Cabinet Office has today sought leave to bring a judicial review. We do so with regret and with an assurance that we will continue to co-operate fully with the inquiry before, during and after the jurisdictional issue in question is determined by the courts, specifically whether the inquiry has the power to compel production of documents and messages which are unambiguously irrelevant to the inquiry’s work, including personal communications and matters unconnected to the Government’s handling of Covid.”
It is highly unusual for a Government to take legal action against its own inquiry, with the move prompting swift criticism after days of public wrangling between the Cabinet Office and Lady Hallett’s probe.
Labour accused the Prime Minister of being “hopelessly distracted with legal ploys to obstruct the Covid inquiry in a desperate attempt to withhold evidence”, while the Liberal Democrats condemned it as a “kick in the teeth for bereaved families”.
But in arguments contained in a tranche of legal documents and letters published yesterday evening, the Government insisted that there were “important issues of principle at stake” affecting the rights of individuals and “the proper conduct of government”.
In making the judicial review application, the Cabinet Office argues that concerns are “sharpened by the fact that irrelevant material contains ‘references to personal and family information, including illness and disciplinary matters’ and ‘comments of a personal nature about identified or identifiable individuals which are unrelated to Covid-19 or that individuals’ role in connection with the response to it”.’
Elsewhere, it is argued that the inquiry’s concept of what is or is not relevant could have “absurd” implications and would leave the body “utterly swamped”.
The row with the inquiry centres around Mr Johnson’s WhatsApp messages, diaries and personal notebooks, which the former prime minister handed over Wednesday to the Cabinet Office in unredacted form.
But the documents reveal that the WhatsApp messages passed to officials are only from May 2021 onwards.
In a statement to the inquiry, senior civil servant Ellie Nicholson said Mr Johnson’s lawyers have not provided a “substantive response” to a request from the Cabinet Office for his old mobile phone.