Boris Johnson to bypass Cabinet Office and hand over unredacted messages directly to COVID inquiry | Politics News

Boris Johnson is giving all the WhatsApp messages and diaries available to him directly to the COVID inquiry.

The former prime minister had originally given the information to the Cabinet Office, but it has refused to comply with the inquiry’s order to hand over all the material in unredacted form.

Friday’s move by Mr Johnson means he is bypassing the government, which has launched a legal challenge against the request for all of the documents in full.

The Cabinet Office said there are “important principles at stake” – such as the issue of privacy.

But in a letter to Dame Hallett, who is chairing the COVID inquiry, Mr Johnson said: “While I understand the government’s position, I am not willing to let my material become a test case for others when I am perfectly content for the inquiry to see it.”

Mr Johnson said he was handing over “all unredacted WhatsApps I provided to the Cabinet Office” and said he has asked the department to hand over his notebooks.

He said he would “like to do the same with any material that may be on an old phone which I have previously been told I can no longer access safely”.

He said that advice should be “test[ed]”, and he has asked the Cabinet Office for their help to turn on the device safely to hand over the material.

The government has been facing accusations of a cover-up over its refusal to hand over all of Mr Johnson’s unredacted material to the COVID inquiry, which is examining the UK’s response to the pandemic.

Bereaved families and opposition parties criticised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after the Cabinet Office revealed it was taking the unusual step of bringing a judicial review of Baroness Hallett’s legal order to release the documents.

Mr Johnson, the prime minister during the pandemic, had already made clear he was happy to adhere to the inquiry chairwoman’s request and earlier this week gave the material to the Cabinet Office.

But ahead of a deadline to hand it over at 4pm yesterday, they stood by their argument that the documents and messages being sought by the inquiry are “unambiguously irrelevant” and cover matters “unconnected to the government’s handling of COVID”.