Authorized battle looms over Boris Johnson’s COVID pandemic WhatsApp messages

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are making ready to launch a authorized battle over COVID secrets and techniques, simply hours earlier than a deadline for handing over delicate materials to the official pandemic inquiry.

Mr Johnson, prime minister through the pandemic, is battling to stop the Cabinet Office releasing all his unedited WhatsApp messages and diaries to the inquiry’s chairwoman, Baroness Hallett.

With the clock ticking in direction of the 4pm deadline, Baroness Hallett is demanding to see all authorities messages, which she claims are important for the inquiry’s deliberations on COVID choices.

She is claimed to have warned the federal government that failure to launch materials would quantity to a legal offence, a declare the federal government disputes and is subsequently poised to launch a authorized problem.

The authorities argues that handing over all ministers’ messages to the inquiry – together with these of Mr Johnson – would cease them speaking freely in future and that a lot of the fabric is irrelevant.

In a ruling final week, Baroness Hallett mentioned: “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.”

But the federal government’s opposition to handing over WhatsApp messages and diaries in full and the menace to launch a authorized problem was strongly backed by the previous Tory chief Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he accused Lady Hallett of “trying to be Agatha Christie” by turning the COVID inquiry right into a “whodunnit” quite than “whatdunnit”.

Sir Iain mentioned: “It’s completely unnecessary chasing individuals. They are on a fishing expedition and they should stop fishing. There is enough evidence out there to know what went wrong.”

Mr Johnson has claimed publishing his diaries in full could be a breach of nationwide safety.

And the standoff now seems to be heading for the extraordinary spectacle of a authorized battle between the federal government and the inquiry.

Mr Sunak and the previous PM are anticipated to talk this week, for the primary time since final yr, about their method to the COVID inquiry and likewise to debate the previous PM’s controversial resignation honours checklist.

Mr Johnson is already livid with the Cabinet Office for referring a dozen diary entries to the police and the Privileges Committee of MPs, which is investigating claims that he lied to the House of Commons.

As a outcome, officers from the Metropolitan Police and the Thames Valley power at the moment are contemplating whether or not conferences that came about with allies in Downing Street and at Chequers in May 2021 broke COVID guidelines.

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The diary entries embrace Chequers visits by outgoing BBC chairman Richard Sharp, Mr Johnson’s cousin Sam Blyth, who loaned him £800,000, and Tory peer Lord Brownlow, who funded decorations to the Downing Street flat.

Another diary entry refers to a go to to Chequers by two associates of Carrie Johnson, although Mr Johnson’s spokesman has insisted that this occasion was “entirely lawful”.

In an unique Sky News interview at Dulles Airport within the United States final Friday, a defiant Mr Johnson declared: “None of them constitute a breach of the rules during COVID. They weren’t during lockdown.

“They have been throughout different durations of the restrictions. None of them represent a breach of the foundations. None of them contain socialising. It is complete nonsense.”

Mr Johnson’s allies are also accusing Oliver Dowden, Cabinet Office minister, deputy prime minister and Mr Sunak’s closest ally, of sanctioning “a political stitch-up” to smear Mr Johnson and delay the Privileges Committee inquiry.

It has been reported that Mr Johnson believes Mr Dowden “has form”, after serving to to set off his downfall final yr with a daybreak resignation as occasion chairman inside hours of two disastrous by-election defeats for the Conservatives.

The former PM informed Sky News: “I think it’s ridiculous that elements of my diary should be cherry-picked and handed over to the police, to the Privileges Committee, without even anybody having the basic common sense to ask me what these entries referred to.”

Johnson allies have additionally demanded a leak inquiry to catch the “ratty rat” who disclosed that his diary entries had been handed to police, a reference to the so-called “chatty rat” who leaked a lockdown announcement in November 2020.

Despite the specter of a looming authorized battle, a spokesperson for the Cabinet Office mentioned: “We are fully committed to our obligations to the COVID-19 inquiry.

“As such, in depth effort and time has gone into aiding the inquiry fulsomely over the past 11 months.

“We will continue to provide all relevant material to the inquiry, in line with the law, ahead of proceedings getting under way.”