Government to launch legal action in attempt to retain Johnson WhatsApps

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Ministers are to launch legal action against the official Covid public inquiry in a last-ditch attempt to avoid handing over Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApps.

The unprecedented move was confirmed in a letter from the Cabinet Office to the inquiry, headed by the retired judge Heather Hallett, who had given ministers a deadline of 4pm on Thursday to comply with her demands for evidence.

“The Cabinet Office has today sought leave to bring a judicial review,” the letter said, adding: “We do so with regret and with an assurance that we will continue to cooperate fully with the inquiry before, during and after the jurisdictional issue in question is determined by the courts.”

A spokesperson for the inquiry said: “At 4pm today the chair of the UK Covid-19 public inquiry was served a copy of a claim form by the Cabinet Office seeking to commence judicial review proceedings against the chair’s ruling of 22 May 2023.”

Hallett has demanded WhatsApp messages and notebooks from Johnson and texts from one of his No 10 aides, Henry Cook.

While Johnson has agreed to hand these over to the Cabinet Office, the department is resisting passing these to the inquiry, in part because some fear the inquiry could request the WhatsApp messages of serving ministers – not least Rishi Sunak.

The decision risks fuelling allegations of a cover-up, and is an unprecedented challenge to the remit of a public inquiry.

The issue to be determined, the Cabinet Office letter said, was “whether the inquiry has the power to compel production of documents and messages which are unambiguously irrelevant to the inquiry’s work, including personal communications and matters unconnected to the government’s handling of Covid”.

It went on: “We consider there to be important issues of principle at stake here, affecting both the rights of individuals and the proper conduct of government. The request for unambiguously irrelevant material goes beyond the powers of the inquiry.

“Individuals, junior officials, current and former ministers and departments should not be required to provide material that is irrelevant to the inquiry’s work. It represents an unwarranted intrusion into other aspects of the work of government. It also represents an intrusion into their legitimate expectations of privacy and protection of their personal information.”

The letter was accompanied by a formal legal document setting out the claim, citing the Cabinet Office as the claimant, the inquiry as the defendant, and Johnson and Cook as “interested parties”.