Rishi Sunak’s administration has come under condemnations for allegedly covering up the information by informing the Covid-19 inquiry that, it does not have the requested documents, though government attorneys were granted access to Boris Johnson’s pandemic journal and WhatsApp chats.
The Cabinet Office has been telling the committee that, it doesn’t have the ex-Prime Minister’s WhatsApp messages or 24 journals in its custody. This comes after the office previously refused to provide the unredacted version of his conversations and supporting documents.
Allies of Boris Johnson, however, claimed that, he had allowed government-appointed attorneys, who were paid for by the Cabinet Office access to the documents.
According to a Johnson spokesman, the Cabinet Office did not make direct request, and Mr. Johnson has no objections to providing information to the committee. He has done so and will keep doing so. The Cabinet Office must decide whether to disagree with the inquiry’s stance on redactions.
The unredacted information is thought to have been seen by the government-appointed attorneys before, they determined it was “unambiguously irrelevant” to the probe.
The Cabinet Office is still considering legal action as the stalemate drags on to block the disclosure of unredacted information to the official inquiry, led by Heather Hallett, a retired judge and crossbench peer.
The government’s “dog ate my homework-type excuse” doesn’t hold up to inspection, according to the Lib Dems and Labour, who both claimed there have been a “whiff of a cover-up” in the case.
Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaigner, Susie Flintham challenged why the Cabinet Office has been making such an effort to prevent the material from being shared. The efforts taken by the Cabinet Office to prevent the Covid-19 committee from seeing Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp chats and journals “should alarm everyone,” Flintham said.
“This inquiry needs to get to the facts if it is to learn lessons to help save lives in the next pandemic. So why are the Cabinet Office standing in their way? Our members are wondering what they are hiding,” she querried.
Former civil Service Chief Bob Kerslake explained that the Cabinet Office is mistakenly “fighting for a principle of confidentiality” and that “some cover-up is going on here to save the ministers embarrassment.”
The Former Prime Minister was reported to police last week by Cabinet Office staff amid friction between Sunak and Johnson after the government-appointed attorneys discovered possible proof of other lockdown-breaking gatherings in his diary. Johnson refuted this.
This week’s scheduled phone meeting between the Rishi Sunak and his predecessor to discuss topics like the Covid-19 investigation and Johnson’s eagerly anticipated peerages list, has been postponed.
Sunak has disclosed that, there have been no cover-ups, and that the government has been cooperating with the Covid-19 inquiry. The material must now be turned over by the government by Thursday at 4 p.m., per a fresh deadline set by Lady Hallett’s inquiry, but the government is reluctant to comply.
The inquiry has also asked a senior official to testify as evidence that, the government doesn’t have any WhatsApp chats or journals belonging to Boris Johnson. It demanded the submission of correspondence with Johnson and documents of the searches that were carried out.
However, Johnson and 40 other top officials had previously been ordered to produce journals, diaries, and messages to the committee. Along with the same list of numbers, it also asked for copies of communications on gadgets owned by his then-adviser Henry Cook.
The Cabinet Office, however, has been debating whether to challenge the motion in court. Two weeks prior to the first open testimony sessions, Hallett’s committee ordered that the whole collection of texts and notebooks be given to the investigation.
There is a chance of legal arbitration and a future judicial review, but attorneys for the Cabinet Office are alleged to have indicated that the committee does not have the authority to demand access to all records.
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