Covid inquiry lawyer criticises government over evidence

Problems with evidence provided to the Covid inquiry by some government departments could disrupt progress, the inquiry's lead lawyer has said.

Hugo Keith KC said many departments had responded under "demanding timescales."

But he raised concerns that some draft statements from witnesses contained "insufficient detail" and deadlines for providing information had been missed.

He also noted that some departments, particularly the Cabinet Office, had sought to redact documents.

The inquiry is currently locked in a legal battle with the Cabinet Office over whether unredacted messages and diary notes from Boris Johnson and other ministers and officials involved in the pandemic should be handed to the inquiry.

The Cabinet Office has argued that some of the messages are "unambiguously irrelevant" to the inquiry, and could include details of ministers and officials' private lives.

Baroness Hallett, who is leading the inquiry, has said it should be up to her to decide what is ands is not relevant.

The government has launched a legal challenge to the inquiry's request for unredacted messages, and Mr Keith confirmed the High Court was likely to hear the case on or shortly after 30 June.

Last week, Mr Johnson announced he would bypass the Cabinet Office and pass his unredacted WhatsApps directly to the inquiry.

Mr Keith said he was "grateful" to the former prime minister for his cooperation, and added his team were planning to begin inspection of the messages later this week.

He said the team would compare the unredacted messages with the censored ones provided by the Cabinet Office - and hoped to be able to do the same with Mr Johnson's notebooks and diaries, items the Cabinet Office currently hold.

Security concerns raised in April 2021 led to Mr Johnson getting a new phone. Consequently, the WhatsApps in question contain messages going back only to May 2021 - more than a year into the pandemic.

Mr Keith said the inquiry had asked the Cabinet Office to "obtain the phone without delay, to confirm in writing the process by which it will be examined, and to give confirmation that it, like the diaries and the notebooks and the WhatsApps, will be accessed fully".

Last week, the Cabinet Office said it had written to Mr Johnson warning him that public funding for his legal representation to the Covid inquiry could be withdrawn if he tried to "undermine" the government.

Mr Keith said he was seeking confirmation that the Cabinet Office "was only seeking to ensure that national security-protected material was not going to be disclosed by Mr Johnson".

"It is our understanding that the Cabinet Office was not seeking to prevent Mr Johnson from disclosing material which it believes, to use its phrase, is unambiguously irrelevant."

Asked about the lawyer's comments, the prime minister's spokesman said Downing Street remained "hopeful and willing to agree together the best way forward".