Government Slammed by Covid Probe Lawyers Over Johnson WhatsApps

Upmanyu Trivedi
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- The UK government was accused of “significantly” undermining the investigation into its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic by refusing to reveal all of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages with his staff.

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The government’s stance “effectively leaves the holder of the documents, and not the chair” of the inquiry “patrolling the boundary of what is relevant,” lawyers said in documents given to the High Court in London before a hearing on Friday.

The warning came in response to the government’s challenge to an order from its own Covid Inquiry to disclose two years of WhatsApp messages between Johnson and his then colleagues and advisers and his diary and notebook entries.

The case challenging the request was “brought by the cabinet office with some reluctance,” the government’s lawyer James Eadie said in court on Friday. The government has already provided a mass of documents to the inquiry and is committed to effectiveness of the inquiry, he said.

The rare legal showdown between the government and an inquiry it set up is a distraction for new prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government as it battles the worst cost of living crisis in decades and the opposition Labour Party’s double-digit lead in the polls over his Conservatives.

Sunak was one of the most senior members of Johnson’s government through the pandemic, and organized an “Eat Out to Help Out” plan which, according to research, worsened the pandemic.

The government has asked the court to set out the limits of the inquiry’s powers to seek disclosures of ministerial conversations. It argues that the court should also rule the inquiry’s notice that sought the disclosures as unlawful.

The government said the request for the information including irrelevant material was “irrational” and beyond the powers of the inquiry.

“Irrelevant material would be likely to cover material which might be personal or sensitive for a raft of different reasons,” the government’s lawyers said in the documents given to the court.

Johnson, also a party to the case, has supported the inquiry but wants some of the information to remain confidential.

The former premier wants the government’s steps “under the microscope,” his lawyers said. “That is what the public expects and that is what should be done.”

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