The Cabinet Office is refusing to hand information about Boris Johnson’s latest alleged lockdown breaches to the official Covid-19 inquiry – and has removed key details from other evidence it has already shared, a damning letter from the inquiry’s chair has revealed.
Heather Hallett this week wrote to the department dismissing its legal attempt to hold onto WhatsApp messages sent between Johnson and senior government ministers, civil servants and their advisers during the pandemic, as well as messages from one of Johnson’s own advisers.
Cabinet Office officials had also refused to hand over diaries taken by Johnson during the pandemic, and notebooks that the inquiry has been told contain contemporaneous notes. openDemocracy has already spent more than a year fighting the Cabinet Office over the release of Johnson’s ministerial diaries from the peak of the pandemic, alongside those of other ministers.
