The official public inquiry into the government’s handling of Covid threatened the Cabinet Office with legal action over its refusal to share Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and diaries from during the pandemic without heavy redactions.
The inquiry issued a legal notice on 28 April 2023 requesting unredacted WhatsApp communications on devices owned or used by Johnson and his former senior adviser Henry Cook, a close friend of Carrie Johnson’s who has now left government.
These included exchanges and group chats between senior government ministers, senior civil servants and their advisers during the pandemic, including the chief medical officer, Sir Chris Whitty, the then chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and the former NHS chief Simon Stevens.
They also include their messages with the former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings and cabinet ministers including the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak; Liz Truss, his immediate predecessor; and the then deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, and the cabinet secretary, Simon Case.
The inquiry also asked for Johnson’s diaries from between January 2020 and February 2022, together with 24 notebooks, revealing for the first time the scale of notes taken by the former prime minister while in office.
However, on 15 May this year the Cabinet Office refused the request, which had been made under section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005, contending it was unlawful, according to inquiry documents.
Lady Hallett, the chair of the Covid inquiry, has now dismissed the Cabinet Office’s application, saying she believed the initial order was within the law. Failure to comply without reasonable excuse would be a criminal offence, punishable with a fine of up to £1,000 or imprisonment for a maximum of 51 weeks.
The former court of appeal judge said she wanted to see messages even if it was not immediately obvious they were relevant to the investigation, as they could show whether ministers had dealt with pandemic issues inadequately because their attention had been elsewhere. She cited public concern over Johnson’s lack of focus on Covid in early 2020.
She also highlighted “important” areas which the Cabinet Office had initially decided were “unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry, but on which she had recently received unredacted material. These included discussions between the former prime ministers and aides about the Metropolitan police’s enforcement of Covid regulations following the murder of Sarah Everard.
In documents to be published on Wednesday on the inquiry’s website, Hallett said: “The entire contents of the documents that are required to be produced are of potential relevance to the lines of investigation that I am pursuing.”
Some information, which could inform the way in which WhatsApp messages should be used in policy formation and relations between the UK and Scottish governments, remains redacted.
Hallett said the inquiry had requested potentially relevant WhatsApp materials from a large number of witnesses, including key decision-makers, senior civil servants and government advisers.
Cook was singled out because he was the first witness to supply the materials requested, with the material redacted by the Cabinet Office’s legal team, she said.
She suggested that if the Cabinet Office regarded the request as unlawful, it should apply for judicial review. She suggested that the government had misunderstood the scope of the inquiry, adding: “I reject the contention that the notice was issued unlawfully. The application will therefore be dismissed.”
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Hallett, a cross-bench peer, said the terms of the inquiry were of “great breadth” and she would “undertake a large number of extremely diverse lines” including “superficially unrelated” political matters that concerned ministers and officials at the time.
“Such matters may acquire greater significance where it appears to me, or it is otherwise suggested, that a minister dealt with Covid-related issues inadequately because he or she was focusing (perhaps inappropriately) on other issues,” she wrote.
“For similar reasons, I may also be required to investigate the personal commitments of ministers and other decision-makers during the time in question. There is, for example, well-established public concern as to the degree of attention given to the emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 by the then prime minister.”
Rivka Gottlieb, a spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said: “This inquiry needs to get to the facts if it is to learn lessons to help save lives in the next pandemic, so well done to Baroness Hallet for standing up to the Cabinet Office on this occasion.
“It’s outrageous that they think they can dictate to an independent inquiry which of Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages they can see. With the revelations that have come out yesterday about him breaking lockdown rules, you really do fear the worst about what they’re hiding.”
The Cabinet Office has been approached for comment.
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