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Cabinet Office could take legal action to refuse material from Boris Johnson’s Covid inquiry | party portal

Cabinet Office could take legal action to refuse material from Boris Johnson’s Covid inquiry |  party portal

 


The Cabinet Office could take unprecedented action to prevent Boris Johnson’s unredacted diaries and WhatsApp messages being handed over to the official Covid inquiry, the Guardian had been told.

Officials are preparing to issue a response to inquiry chair Heather Hallett by 4 p.m. Tuesday. Sources said they were likely to resist his demand for a cache of documents relating to the time of former prime ministers at No 10.

The news comes ahead of a scheduled meeting later this week between Johnson and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, which sources say will give the couple a chance to clear things up about handing over new Partygate evidence to police.

Lady Hallett demanded that the full cache of messages and logs be turned over to her inquest two weeks before the first public evidence sessions, but the government refuses to comply.

Cabinet Office lawyers are said to have indicated that the Covid Inquiry does not have the power to seek access to all documents, raising the prospect of judicial arbitration and possible judicial review.

Launching a legal challenge against the head of a public inquiry’s decision would be unprecedented, sources said.

Government insiders denied they would delay the next stage of the Covid investigation. Hearings are due to begin in two weeks on pre-pandemic preparedness, with former senior Tories including David Cameron and George Osborne giving evidence.

Instead, insiders said the timings are up to the president and she can proceed whether or not she has all the evidence requested.

They also said handing over Johnson’s unredacted diaries and WhatsApp messages from the former prime minister and his aide Henry Cook would be an affront to their privacy and the right to private political discussion.

The line rests on the Cabinet Offices insistence that he will only hand over what he deems relevant, meaning many messages and log entries have been redacted. He objected to Hallett’s request and said he would not hand over unambiguously irrelevant material.

In a decision issued last week, however, Hallett said: The entire contents of the documents to be produced are potentially relevant to the investigative leads I am pursuing.

Given that the mandate of her investigation is so broad and that it was established by the government, she believes that it is entitled to request such a wealth of documents.

The Cabinet Office will respond to Hallett’s request by 4 p.m. Tuesday, but may not immediately outline its next steps to challenge his decision, sources said.

Lib Dem health spokeswoman Daisy Cooper said failure to deliver everything requested would be a travesty of this whole process and would be a further insult to the millions of bereaved people still awaiting justice.

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