The Cabinet Office has been threatened with legal action over a row with the Official Covid-19 Inquiry over the release of unredacted WhatsApp messages and diaries belonging to Boris Johnson.
The row centres on redactions to released material with chairwoman Baroness Hallett rejecting arguments made by the Cabinet Office and reminding the department of their legal duties.
Baroness Hallet, in a ruling released on Wednesday, said: “The entire contents of the specified documents are of potential relevance to the lines of investigation being pursued by the Inquiry.”
She said that the documents relate to “WhatsApp communications recorded on devices owned or used by the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson MP and also an adviser named Henry Cook, comprising exchanges between senior government ministers, senior civil servants and their advisers during the pandemic”.
She also references “Mr Johnson’s diaries for the same period, together with notebooks that I have been told contain his contemporaneous notes”.
Related: ‘We’re in the death throes of the last-ever Tory majority’ – Tice
