Covid inquiry threatened legal action over Boris Johnson WhatsApp messages – The Guardian

The official public inquiry into the government’s handling of Covid threatened the Cabinet Office with criminal sanctions over its refusal to share Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and diaries from during the crisis without heavy redactions.The inquiry issued a legal notice requesting Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp communications, his official diaries from between January 2020 and February 2022, together with 24 notebooks, revealing for the first time the scale of notes taken by the former prime minister while in office.These included exchanges and group chats between senior government ministers, senior civil servants and their advisers during the Covid crisis, including the chief medical officer for England, Sir Chris Whitty, the then chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and the former NHS chief Simon Stevens.They also include their messages with the former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings and cabinet ministers at the time including Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and the then deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, as well as the cabinet secretary, Simon Case.However, after receiving the legal order on 28 April this year, the Cabinet Office refused the request, which had been made under section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005, two weeks later, contending it was
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