The top civil servant investigating alleged illegal lockdown parties at Downing Street is “not a person that believes in open and full disclosure”, according to a campaigner who has spent years fighting for information in a public inquiry.
Sue Gray, who has been appointed to oversee the party probe, is infamous in the world of information transparency. She once urged officers not to respond to a Freedom of Information request, citing the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war as an example of how to “releas[e] information in a managed way” in documents previously seen by openDemocracy.
Gray is now the second permanent secretary at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. MPs and media have feted her as “formidable” and “the most powerful civil servant you've never heard of”.
