COVID-19 Inquiry Requests Boris Johnson’s Unredacted WhatsApp Texts, Diary Entries

Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to a COVID-19 vaccination centre, in an undated file photo. Geoff Pugh/Daily Telegraph/PA

The official COVID-19 inquiry has requested the government provide former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages and diary entries exchanged with senior government ministers, civil servants, and their advisers during the pandemic.

The chair of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, Lady Hallett, wrote to the Cabinet Office (pdf), requesting the unredacted data, which she said were “of potential relevance to the lines of investigation being pursued by the Inquiry.”

The inquiry has been set up to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the pandemic. It was announced by Johnson in May 2021 and started its work a year later.

Hallett suggested that the unredacted WhatsApp messages and diary entries by the former prime minister and adviser Henry Cook were significant for their insight into core political and administrative decision-making by the UK government during the pandemic.

In response, the Cabinet Office argued that the inquiry has no power to demand material that is unambiguously irrelevant to its work (pdf).

The Cabinet Office has reviewed WhatsApp threads and groups and has identified messages which are unambiguously irrelevant to the inquiry, the response said.

The inquiry, however, dismissed the government’s application and the assertion that the requested data was “unambiguously irrelevant.”

The broad scope of messages and diary entries will help the inquiry understand whether Johnson’s government dealt with COVID-19-related issues inadequately because it focused on other issues, Hallett said.

“For similar reasons, I may also be required to investigate the personal commitments of ministers and other decision-makers during the time in question. There is, for example, well-established public concern as to the degree of attention given to the emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 by the then Prime Minister,” she wrote.

Breaches

The need for an inquiry was propelled by the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group that demanded an investigation into the government’s handling of the pandemic.

The group argued that the inquiry “needs to get to the facts if it is to learn lessons to help save lives in the next pandemic.”

“It’s outrageous that the Cabinet Office think they can dictate to the inquiry which of Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages they can see. With the revelations that have come out yesterday about him breaking lockdown rules, you really do fear the worst about what they’re hiding,” the group added in a statement on Twitter.

This week it has been revealed that Johnson was referred to police by the Cabinet Office after his ministerial diary reportedly revealed visits by friends to Chequers during the pandemic, were highlighted during the preparation for an inquiry into the pandemic being led by the Privileges Committee.

The committee that is examining whether Johnson may have misled Parliament in statements that he made in the Commons about alleged breaches of lockdown rules in Downing Street.

Johnson has been using the Cabinet Office legal team for advice in relation to the inquiry led by the Privileges Committee. However, on Wednesday he wrote to the COVID-19 Inquiry (pdf), saying that he is “currently instructing new solicitors to represent” him.

“That process is well underway but is in the hands of the Cabinet Office to agree funding and other practical arrangements. I have no control over the timing of that process. As at today, I am unrepresented and my counsel team have been instructed not to provide me with any advice,” Johnson said.

He then requested a 48-hour delay in the publication of the inquiry’s ruling “for me to obtain legal representation and receive legal advice” on it.

In its response to Johnson, the COVID-19 Inquiry ruled (pdf) that there won’t be delays and the relevant documents will be published on the inquiry’s website “shortly.”

In her communication with the Cabinet Office, Hallett concluded that the materials requested by the inquiry were to be produced by 4 p.m. on May 30.