Boris Johnson hands over lockdown phone messages

Boris Johnson has sent his unredacted messages directly to Britain’s Covid inquiry.

Boris Johnson has sent his unredacted messages directly to Britain’s Covid inquiry after the government began a judicial ­review in an attempt to prevent their release.

The government wants the courts to settle “important issues of principle” about “the proper conduct of government”. It has questioned whether the inquiry’s demand for all messages sent by dozens of officials on every topic during the pandemic infringes on their “legitimate expectations of privacy”.

However, in a letter on Friday morning to inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett, Mr Johnson said he was “not willing to let my material become a test case for others when I am perfectly content for the inquiry to see it”.

The former prime minister told Baroness Hallett: “I am therefore providing the material directly to your inquiry today (Saturday) in unredacted form.”

Mr Johnson’s supporters said he had “had enough” and challenged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was chancellor in the pandemic, to also release his messages.

Lord Cruddas, the Tory donor who founded the Conservative Democratic Organisation campaigning for Mr Johnson to return to frontline politics, said the release of the messages was “dynamite”.

“In a second the government’s position on [the] Covid inquiry becomes untenable and they should now provide unredacted records of ministers to the inquiry. After all if the PM at the time can do it why not the chancellor and others. What’s to hide?” he tweeted.

The inquiry’s legal notices have been served on the Cabinet Office rather than Mr Johnson personally, leaving the government responsible for collecting and submitting the material.

It is unclear whether Mr Johnson’s decision may halt the judicial review proceedings. The government is determined to challenge the inquiry on principle, with messages from many more ministers and officials likely to be requested over the coming years.

The WhatsApps that Mr Johnson has submitted date from May 2021 onwards. It emerged in the court filings on Friday that he had so far refused to hand over the phone he used for most of the pandemic, even though it may contain messages about lockdowns.

Mr Johnson was forced to stop using his previous phone in April 2021 after it emerged that his number had been available online for 15 years. His contact ­details were found at the bottom of a think tank’s press release from 2006 and he was told to abandon the phone for security reasons.

In his letter to Baroness Hallett, Mr Johnson said that he would like to pass to her inquiry “any material that may be on an old phone which I have previously been told I can no longer access safely. In view of the urgency of your request I believe we need to test this advice, which came from the security services.

“I have asked the Cabinet ­Office for assistance in turning [the phone] on securely so that I can search it for all relevant ­material. I propose to pass all such ­material directly to you.”

Science Minister George Freeman denied it was a “cynical waste of time” for the Cabinet Office to seek a judicial review of the demands.

He admitted, however, that the court would probably conclude that Baroness Hallett “is perfectly entitled and empowered to decide what she wants”.

Mr Freeman told BBC1: “In the end, this is a judicial decision. It’ll be taken by the courts. I happen to think the courts will probably take the view that Baroness Hallett, who’s running the inquiry, is perfectly entitled and empowered to decide whatever she wants.

Gavin Barwell, the Downing Street chief of staff when Theresa May was prime minister, ­criticised the Cabinet Office’s decision to sue the inquiry.

“We’ve already waited too long to set this inquiry up, and I think people want answers quickly,” he told Radio 4. “So I think from a timing point of view, it is a mistake to prolong this process.”

the Times