The Cabinet Office will have to hand over Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries by Monday afternoon after it lost a High Court challenge against the chairwoman of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.
The department brought legal action over Baroness Heather Hallett’s order to release the documents, arguing it should not have to hand over material that is “unambiguously irrelevant”.
But in a judgment on Thursday, Lord Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Garnham dismissed the department’s legal bid, finding that the fact an order for material would produce “some irrelevant documents” did not “invalidate” it or mean it “cannot be lawfully exercised”.
Following the ruling, a Government spokesperson said the department “will comply fully with this judgment and will now work with the inquiry team on the practical arrangements”.
4pm Monday
The spokesperson continued: “The court’s judgment is a sensible resolution and will mean that the inquiry chair is able to see the information she may deem relevant, but we can work together to have an arrangement that respects the privacy of individuals and ensures completely irrelevant information is returned and not retained.
The new deadline for the Cabinet Office to hand over Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries to the inquiry is 4pm on Monday, a spokesperson for the inquiry said, adding that Lady Hallett was “pleased” the court had upheld her order.
Lord Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Garnham said in their ruling that Lady Hallett had issued her order requesting documents that “relate to a matter in question at the inquiry”.
They continued: “The diaries and notebooks sought were very likely to contain information about decision making relating to the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore ‘relate to a matter in question at the inquiry’.”
“Humiliating defeat”
The two judges added: “To answer the practical issue which seems to have divided the Cabinet Office and the chair of the inquiry, the chair of the inquiry may examine the contested documents, and if the chair of the inquiry agrees that they are obviously irrelevant, will return them.”
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats branded the High Court judgment a “humiliating defeat” for the Government.
Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of “wasting time and taxpayers’ money on doomed legal battles” while Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office spokeswoman Christine Jardine claimed the Prime Minister had wasted public money to “hide the truth”.
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