Category Archives: Inquiry

Boris Johnson steps down as MP. Partygate report must be DAMNING

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Wishful thinking: Boris Johnson won’t end up in jail because of the finding of a Parliamentary committee – but he HAS lost his Parliamentary seat. Is that enough punishment for a man who partied (which was against the law at the time) while thousands died and their relatives were prevented from mourning them properly – because of his rules?

What a day for Boris Johnson!

This morning (Friday, June 9, 2023) the BBC reported:

Boris Johnson has been given the findings of an MP-led investigation into whether he misled parliament over Partygate.

The Privileges Committee is examining whether the former PM purposefully misled Parliament over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street.

In evidence given in March, Mr Johnson admitted misleading Parliament, but denied doing it on purpose.

And what’s the BBC reporting now? Let’s see…

Boris Johnson to step down as MP with immediate effect after receiving Partygate report.

In my original draft of this article, I had asked whether the report would exonerate or condemn him. I think we can deduce the answer already.

He had been given two weeks to respond to a “warning letter” sent by the Privileges Committee, giving details of the criticisms it intends to make of Mr Johnson, along with any evidence which supports them.

Clearly he didn’t need that time.

The letter will also have informed Mr Johnson of any proposed penalties that the committee will suggest for MPs to approve. The example given was that it could recommend his suspension from the House of Commons for 10 days or more, triggering a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

Well, he has pre-empted any such punishment by leaping before he is pushed.

This Writer expects that MPs will still be asked to endorse the findings, via a vote in the House of Commons.

But my big question now is about his resignation honours.

Rishi Sunak was said to have accepted Johnson’s list of people he wanted to honour – or to have been preparing to accept it – earlier this week.

Would it not now be inappropriate to honour people on the recommendation of a former prime minister who has now resigned in disgrace?

This could be awkward for Nadine Dorries who, to all appearances, resigned as an MP on the expectation of being ennobled in that honours list, earlier today.

Or did she have prior warning of the way the wind has been blowing and clear out before she was pushed?

And that leads to yet another question:

Who else is likely to go? Is this the start of a mass exodus?

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What will be mentioned in the Covid inquiry… and what won’t?

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Baroness Heather Hallett: she has made good decisions so far – but can anybody understand her apparent bias against bereaved families?

We all know that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have been making a fuss over whether they will have to give evidence to the Covid inquiry and what it will be.

But what do you make of this?

The article states:

Not a single witness offered up by the UK’s largest group for families bereaved by Covid has been called to speak at the official inquiry, openDemocracy can reveal.

Those representing the voices of the bereaved say they are being “marginalised by the process” just days before the inquiry is set to begin. It follows a scandal sparked by openDemocracy’s revelation that Tory-linked PR firms had been hired to manage the voices of the bereaved.

The inquiry rejected all 20 witnesses volunteered by Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, but has asked the group’s co-founder Matt Fowler to speak. He will now be attempting to represent thousands of members who won’t be able to give evidence to the inquiry’s first module, which focuses on the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic.

What’s the story there? Does inquiry chair Baroness Hallett think they’ll all say the same thing? Does she think there won’t be time to hear all their different stories? Or is she simply not interested in what happened to the little people like you and me?

Here’s something else that might not be mentioned:

And what about this?

So private schools that were formerly attended by government ministers received millions of pounds of Covid support loans, while state schools were left to face bankruptcy. And the ministers were responsible for supporting the state schools, not their alma maters.

Will that get a mention? It should.

Meanwhile, the government’s decision to take court action against its own inquiry is still kicking up a huge smokescreen around the whole affair.

Is that a side-issue? Or was it the point?

Whichever, what do you think of this MP’s point?

Sir Robert Buckland, who served as justice secretary and Lord Chancellor from 2019 to 2021, said that the move by the government was “unnecessary”, telling Sky News: “it would have been far better to negotiate and deal with this in a way that would have respected the discretion of the chair”.

Well,

Sir Robert suggested he has been told that the High Court could hear the government’s challenge to the Covid inquiry “as early as next week”.

so at least if it is a waste of time, it will be out of the way very soon.

But what will the decision be? Will it be better than that of the inquiry on representatives of bereaved families?

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Covid inquiry: is government bid to blackmail Boris Johnson over evidence a bust?

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Disinformation: apparently, during the Covid crisis, Boris Johnson’s government set up a unit to remove posts about vaccines and lockdown that were perceived as harmful to the government’s position. Considering that most of us perceived the government to be lying, was any accurate information allowed to circulate at all?

This Cabinet Office blackmail attempt might be a bit late:

This Writer’s understanding is that Boris Johnson has already handed all his WhatsApp messages from April 2021 to February 24, 2022 over to the Covid inquiry. He gave his diaries and notebooks to the Cabinet Office and has requested that they be given back, so he can pass them on as well.

So this blackmail attempt by government lawyers might be a bit late.

The Cabinet Office has also foisted on him a requirement to co-operate with any “reasonable” demand and to send them his witness statements and any requested documents for pre-approval and redaction before they are submitted to the inquiry, according to the Times article.

The article states that

The Cabinet Office has agreed to fund his advice but last week its lawyers wrote to Johnson, saying: “The funding offer will cease to be available to you if you knowingly seek to frustrate or undermine, either through your own actions or the actions of others, the government’s position in relation to the inquiry unless there is a clear and irreconcilable conflict of interest on a particular point at issue.”

They said that the money would “only remain available” if he complied with other conditions, including sending the Cabinet Office “any witness statement or exhibit which you intend to provide to the inquiry so that it can be security checked by appropriate officials”.

Johnson, the letter continues, must not submit evidence until “you have applied any redactions which the Cabinet Office has informed you are needed before submission”.

The lawyers add the caveat that their request “does not in any way restrict your freedom nor your duty to provide sincere witness to the inquiry independently and without reference to the views of the current government”.

That reads like a lot of nonsense to This Writer.

Firstly, it seems the government is trying to unilaterally alter its contract with Boris Johnson to provide funding for his legal advice. In law (as I understand it), this cannot be enforced unless Johnson agrees to it.

Also, the claim not to be restricting his freedom/duty to provide sincere witness evidence to the inquiry independent of the current government’s views appears to be rubbish. How can he do so, without knowing the current government’s views, and having to submit his evidence to the government for redaction so that it can withhold its views from him?

Personally, This Writer thinks his best bet is to turn his back on the government’s funding and pay lawyers at Peters and Peters (according to The Times; it’s the same firm advising him at public expense on his response to Parliament’s Partygate inquiry) from his own money.

He’s certainly banked enough of it from extracurricular activities since he ceased to be prime minister.

Meanwhile, the Times article also features a couple of pieces of information which appear to have been tacked on, as they’re about the Covid inquiry but the paper didn’t seem to have anywhere else to put them:

Tussell, a data provider, says the government has issued £113 million worth of public contracts for law firms and other suppliers carrying out the inquiry.

One of the issues the inquiry will examine is the government’s communications strategy as Britain entered lockdown. The Daily Telegraph has alleged that the Cabinet Office had a secretive team called the Counter-Disinformation Unit which worked with social media companies to tackle perceived “threats” and remove posts about vaccines and lockdown that were deemed to be harmful.

Will we learn what those posts were, why they were deemed harmful, and what measures were taken against them, I wonder?

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Covid inquiry spotlight turns to Rishi Sunak – and he’s trying to squirm out of it

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Rishi Sunak: this little howler pushed up Covid infections massively. If Rishi Sunak didn’t consult scientists before making it happen, he could be in serious trouble with the Covid inquiry. Is that why he’s trying to hide information from that investigation?

Allegations that the government ignored scientific advice during the Covid-19 pandemic have shifted the focus of the inquiry into its actions at that time onto Rishi Sunak and his ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ fiasco.

Here’s the gist:

The article says the inquiry will focus partly on Sunak – particularly over the way the Treasury failed to involve scientists in decisions and the formulation of policy.

Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett has sent questions to then-prime minister Boris Johnson, asking if scientific evidence and opinion was sought before ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ was launched…

which appears not to have been the case.

The Observer article states:

Prof John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was a member of the Sage committee of advisers to ministers and who has submitted written evidence to the inquiry, said the controversial Eat Out to Help Out scheme – which gave people discounts for eating in restaurants and pubs – was never discussed with scientists.

Eat Out to Help Out was launched in August 2020. It allowed diners to claim 50% off more than 160m meals at a cost to the Treasury of about £850m. In the process, it also drove new Covid-19 infections up by between 8 and 17%, according to a study carried out by Thiemo Fetzer, an economist at the University of Warwick, a few weeks later.

“If we had [been consulted], I would have been clear what I thought about it,” said Edmunds. “As far as I am concerned, it was a spectacularly stupid idea and an obscene way to spend public money.”

That’s interesting, because Sunak himself is on video record as having insisted that he spoke to scientists about ‘Eat Out to Help Out’:

Another critical decision set to be investigated by Hallett was made in September 2020, when the government was urged by Sage to impose a mini-lockdown to dampen rising case numbers, with both Johnson and Sunak opposing the move.

“I said then that the question was either do it now and get on top of the epidemic and keep it under control, or be forced into doing it in a few weeks’ time, by which time the epidemic will be much worse,” Edmunds said.

“There will be many more hospitalisations and deaths, and you will have to take more stringent action. Unfortunately that is exactly what happened.”

Considering the accusations against him, it may be no surprise that Rishi Sunak’s government – through the Cabinet Office, is trying to deny the Covid inquiry access to WhatsApp messages between government ministers.

The claim is that it would be an invasion of privacy to let the inquiry have (for example) all of the WhatsApp messages Boris Johnson sent via his personal phone because they would include “unambiguously irrelevant” material.

But Sunak and the government want to be the arbiters of which material is relevant and which isn’t –

-and that creates a serious credibility problem: why should the organisation under investigation dictate what evidence is permissible or not?

The Cabinet Office – on behalf of Sunak’s government – has launched a judicial review to keep some of the WhatsApps (and other material) away from the inquiry. Apparently this is going to cost you, me and the rest of the UK public a fortune:

(Again: it won’t cost taxpayers’ money – it will cost public money. We then pay tax according to what the Treasury reckons is needed to keep inflation from going through the roof. You can probably tell that the current mob aren’t very good at making that prediction.)

(Oh – and we’re also funding the Covid inquiry, meaning we’re footing the bill for both sides in the dispute.)

But here’s a twist:

… Or is it?

It seems to me that it is actually reasonable to withhold the information on ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ from the Good Law Project – for the time being. The Cabinet Office has said it is handing “all relevant material to the Covid Inquiry – and ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ is definitely relevant to the Covid inquiry.

The claim – by the Cabinet Office – is that it has given all relevant information to the inquiry, so we would be justified in expecting the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ stuff to have gone there already.

Refusing to hand other information to the inquiry on grounds that it is not relevant does not contradict this claim.

But it makes the result of the judicial inquiry all the more important.

Because if the government wins in court, but doesn’t hand over information about ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ over to the inquiry, it will have no excuse not to hand it over to the Good Law Project.

Right?

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Emotional phone-in caller clarifies why nobody in Covid inquiry deserves privacy

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“They smirked”: Boris Johnson grinned inanely and bobbed about on his bench while MPs attacked his contempt for the rules and denials of guilt, back in January 2022.

You probably know the argument already: the Cabinet Office reckons that, even after Boris Johnson waived his own right to privacy over the contents of his WhatsApp messages, diaries and notebooks, they should be redacted to protect other members of the government before being handed over to the Covid inquiry.

A caller to the BBC’s Any Answers has a very strong opposing argument, which I provide here. Be warned: it is not easy to listen to this and may trigger a strong emotional reaction.

I think her point is very good, augmented as it by the emotion with which she made it.

Considering those circumstances – and this lady’s family were not the only people to suffer such experiences while Johnson and other members of his government partied, including civil servants and ministers – what right should any of them have to privacy?

Let them all go under the public spotlight. If any of them are exonerated by it, then the exposure will be to their credit.

As for the others… people died and their relatives suffered terribly while they raved it up. Even the late Queen had to grieve alone after the death of her husband, Prince Philip, in April 2021.

You don’t forget something like that. You don’t forget the insult and injury your government does to you by stopping you from attending relatives, or friends, who are at the brink of death while they party so hard they end up vomiting over the walls of Downing Street, as has been recounted previously.

If it happens to you, you want justice. And you know you won’t get it with a veil of “privacy” drawn around the proceedings of the Covid inquiry.

I look forward to hearing how the Cabinet Office responds to the outrage of the public.

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Covid inquiry: what good is Boris Johnson’s offer to bypass the Cabinet Office, really?

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Boris Johnson: he probably thinks this is all very funny.

The latest development in the Covid inquiry saga is that Boris Johnson has offered to bypass the Cabinet Office, which has refused to give up his diaries, notebooks and WhatsApps for use as evidence.

There are just two problems:

Firstly, he seems not to have the notebooks, having handed them over to the Cabinet Office last week in the expectation that its people would pass them on to the inquiry.

He has reportedly told the inquiry, “I have asked that the Cabinet Office pass these to you. If the government chooses not to do so, I will ask for these to be returned to my office so that I can provide them to you directly.”

But why would the Cabinet Office return these notebooks to him, knowing that if it does so, he’ll hand them to the inquiry – which is what the government is demanding a judicial review to avoid?

Secondly, he hasn’t handed over WhatsApps from before April 2021 – so most of the messages covering the period requested (January 1, 2020 to February 24, 2022) are missing.

And that’s really odd, because – as I’ve mentioned already – he could grab backup copies of this missing stuff from Google Drive or iCloud (depending on the make of his phone).

The claim is that the messages were compromised because it turned out his phone number had been in the public domain for 15 years and malcontents like foreign governments could have tapped into it, so he had been advised to turn it off and keep it that way.

Why? If foreign powers have had access to Johnson’s messages for up to 15 years before he did switch it off, then shouldn’t the UK authorities know what they’ve been reading?

According to the BBC article (link above),

cyber-security expert Prof Alan Woodward said the risk of turning on Mr Johnson’s old phone was “minimal”, adding: “It is perfectly possible to do that without exposing it to the potential threat.”

So Johnson has said he’s “perfectly content” to release information he’s already given the Cabinet Office to the Covid inquiry – but in fact he’s not in a position to hand over very much that’s of any use.

What good is that?

In fact, there is method in it – from Johnson’s point of view. You see, as former government lawyer David Allen Green points out, it is possible that Johnson’s new lawyers have advised him that there is no solid legal basis on which he can resist disclosing his documents to the inquiry.

So, by saying he wants to hand over these items, even though he doesn’t have them, Johnson has done two things:

He has made it clear that, whether or not the Cabinet Office had copies of his WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks before last week, it has them now – and had them in time to honour the Covid inquiry’s demand for them to be handed over.

This means gives the Covid inquiry an opportunity to show the Cabinet Office is in breach of the law.

And he has made it clear that he has waived his right to privacy – he is happy for the documents to be made public. That undermines the Cabinet Office’s claim that handing over the documents would breach the privacy of the people mentioned in them – partially. Others may still object, but it will be hard to maintain a privacy claim in court after what Johnson has done.

So, without actually helping the inquiry, Johnson has dumped the Cabinet Office deep in the metaphorical mire. I wonder if he feels pleased with himself.

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Covid inquiry: How did the Cabinet Office know Boris Johnson’s documents are ‘irrelevant’ – if it didn’t have them?

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Two-fingered salute: Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks have put the Cabinet Office between a rock and a hard place – and he may be delighted, after the Cabinet Office referred him to two police forces for possible social distancing breaches during Covid lockdowns on the basis of information in his diaries.

There’s an important piece of information missing from yesterday’s (June 1, 2023) stories about the Cabinet Office taking the Covid Inquiry to court.

It is this:

Unless the Cabinet Office supplied a signed ‘Statement of Truth’ that it had seen Boris Johnson’s notebooks and diaries for the relevant period of time, the judicial review it has requested is likely to find against it.

Allow me to explain (with help from the source listed below):

You will recall that the Covid inquiry had demanded access to Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages, diaries and notebooks covering the period from January 1, 2020 to February 24, 2022. This requirement was communicated to the Cabinet Office on April 28 this year.

The Cabinet Office responded with an application to object to this demand, dated May 15, on grounds that it was outside the legal powers of the Inquiry to request what the Cabinet Office dubbed “unambiguously irrelevant” material and that it was for the Cabinet Office to determine what was “unambiguously irrelevant”; and that the Cabinet Office did not understand the request for the diaries and notebooks, which was new.

The Cabinet Office stated that its point about irrelevance applied “with similar force and obviousness to Mr Johnson’s notebooks containing contemporaneous notes on all manner of subjects which he was, as Prime Minister, required to consider.”

(Notice that this applies to the notebooks and not the diaries – and implies that the Cabinet Office had, or had access to, the notebooks in order to know what was in them.)

On May 22, the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett explained that extracts from the diaries had been received in redacted form in draft witness statements that had been “exhibited” to the inquiry. It seems she was going to formally request the diaries and notebooks after receiving these extracts from the former and information about the contents of the latter and had merely used its April 28 notice to do so.

Then, after the close of business on Friday, May 26 (and remember, the deadline for handing over the information was the following Tuesday, with a Bank Holiday weekend in between), the inquiry received a letter from the Cabinet Office saying it did not have either Johnson’s WhatsApp messages or his notebooks. It seems the claim is that it had not had them since the April 28 demand was made.

So how could the Cabinet Office say these items contained material that was “unambiguously irrelevant”?

On Tuesday (May 30), Baroness Hallett granted an extension of the deadline – of just two days, until yesterday (Thursday, June 1).

But she added a new requirement:

She says she will accept that the Cabinet Office does not have under its custody or control the requested materials only [if] there is a full detailed explanation for why this is so – and that this explanation will need to be attested to by officials with a signed statement of truth.

That is, under pain of perjury.

The full list of conditions shows that Baroness Hallett, and therefore the inquiry, wants to know whether the Cabinet Office has had the WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks at all since February 3 this year – the date the inquiry sent its initial request for information to the Cabinet Office.

This will establish whether the Cabinet Office had any grounds for its claim that these materials contained information that is “unambiguously irrelevant”.

This Writer thinks the trap here is in the notebooks. The Cabinet Office has not been clear about what is in them but has been required to issue a Statement of Truth that they contain “unambiguously irrelevant” information.

That will be hard to do, if nobody at the Cabinet Office has seen them.

As my source below – a former central government lawyer – states,

The requirement for a signed statement of truth is significant – and you may recall that the Miller II case on the prorogation of parliament was lost by the government because nobody was willing to provide a statement of truth as to the actual reasons for the prorogation.

And this Statement of Truth was required by 4pm yesterday.

And we haven’t been told whether it was provided.

But I shall ask.

ADDITIONAL: Boris Johnson’s announcement on Wednesday that he had provided unredacted WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks to the Cabinet Office and is happy to send them to the Covid inquiry makes matters even worse for the government.

In a judicial review, the Cabinet Office will no longer be able to say it does not have the disputed material – but will still be required to prove that it had not been in possession of it between February 3 and May 31. Any claim that it contains “unambiguously irrelevant” material may be dismissed as irrelevant to the main issue, which is whether the Cabinet Office knew that at the time it was claiming it to the Covid inquiry.

Source: How the Covid Inquiry may have set an elegant spring-trap for the Cabinet Office – The Law and Policy Blog

Here’s why court call over Covid inquiry’s demand for Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps is so suspicious

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Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak: what’s in Johnson’s WhatsApp messages that Sunak is going to such LEGAL lengths to hide?

The plot thickens: why does the Tory government need to stop the Covid inquiry seeing Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and notebooks, after Johnson himself asked for them to be handed over?

The Cabinet Office, acting for the government, has unilaterally missed the deadline of 4pm on Thursday, June 1, 2023 to hand over the material.

Instead, it waited until the deadline passed, then said it would seek a judicial review of inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett’s order to release the documents.

This means a judge will have to decide whether the inquiry has overreached its legal powers.

The argument is that sight of Johnson’s WhatsApp messages might create a precedent for the inquiry to see WhatsApp messages of serving ministers, including the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

The Cabinet Office said handing over the material would compromise ministers’ right to privacy and could prevent them from discussing policy matters in the future.

Some might say that was a good thing. There was a debate a short while ago about whether government ministers should be carrying out government business via WhatsApp or personal email when it should all be done via government devices so it may become available if necessary – like all other governmental communications.

The government’s reasoning – and the stated fact that Rishi Sunak and deputy PM Oliver Dowden signed off the decision to launch a judicial review on Wednesday – suggests an ulterior motive: that material compromising Sunak (and/or others) is among Johnson’s communications.

Perhaps this really could bring down the government, as This Writer has already suggested.

And then there’s the question of the material Johnson has offered to provide.

It turns out that he has only provided WhatsApps from May 2021 onwards. This is because he had acquired a new phone after his old number had been listed online (now, how did that happen?) and he had received advice (from whom?) not to switch it on again.

Johnson (coincidentally?) ordered the inquiry into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that same month – May 2021.

So his part in this is looking extremely questionable.

That being said, he has offered to provide not only all his WhatsApps and notebooks to the inquiry, but also the phone – saying he has asked the Cabinet Office whether technical support can be provided so the messages it contains can be retrieved without compromising security.

And here’s a thing: WhatsApp messages are habitually backed up – on Google Drive if it’s an Android phone or on iCloud for iPhones. Unless that facility was turned off, then all the WhatsApp content of the compromised phone should be available.

And if that facility was turned off, we should ask why. If it was done by government order, why wasn’t the information backed up elsewhere (and why was the government allowing its business to be done via private phone messages)? If by Johnson, doesn’t this indicate he was trying to hide something? What could it be?

It all points to a monumental attempt to hide guilt – of the kind that Rishi Sunak himself implied would not happen under his leadership.

So we should all be able to understand why Peter Stefanovic is so angry about it in his summation of the situation:

To This Writer, it seems highly unlikely that even Tory politicians would go to this length if they didn’t have a strong self-interest in it. But it’s self-defeating, also: after this, would you ever trust them again?

Source: Government to take legal action against Covid inquiry over Johnson WhatsApps | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

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Boris Johnson says he has handed unredacted WhatsApps to Covid inquiry. Really?

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Boris Johnson: Let’s hope he hasn’t confused the ‘send’ and ‘delete’ buttons! (Again?)

Boris Johnson has handed his full and unredacted WhatsApps and documents to the Cabinet Office, his spokesperson has said.

Do we believe him?

Johnson has released a statement in which he “urges” the government to “urgently disclose [the documents] to the inquiry”.

His spokesperson claimed the Cabinet Office “had access to this material for several months”, and he “would immediately disclose it directly to the inquiry if asked”.

The spokesperson said: “While Mr Johnson understands the government’s position, and does not seek to contradict it, he is perfectly happy for the inquiry to have access to this material in whatever form it requires.

“Mr Johnson cooperated with the inquiry in full from the beginning of this process and continues to do so. Indeed, he established the inquiry.

“He looks forward to continuing to assist the Inquiry with its important work.”

You see, the reason for my doubt is his previous reticence about such material.

When his former legal team provided diaries to the Cabinet Office which suggested he had breached non-contact rules during lockdown in ways that had not previously been disclosed, wasn’t he absolutely furious?

Didn’t he sack that government-appointed legal team?

And didn’t he hire a new crew at four times the cost?

So when he says he has provided full, unredacted messages, I have a doubt.

If Baroness Hallett complains that she hasn’t got everything, don’t be surprised!

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Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps ‘could bring down the government’

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Delete… delete: if that IS what he’s doing with the material the Cabinet Office has apparently handed back to him, Boris Johnson probably has quite a lot to get through and still has quite a long way to go.

From Prime Minister to Prime Suspect – that’s Boris Johnson’s life!

After the Cabinet Office refused to provide every WhatsApp message and notebook Johnson made during the Covid-19 pandemic to the inquiry into the government’s handling of that crisis, it is being suggested that it is because they contain incriminating material that could bring down the UK’s Conservative government.

The government added fuel to this fire when the Cabinet Office said it doesn’t even have the material demanded by inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett – which suggests that it has been given back to Johnson himself so he can get busy deleting anything suspicious.

This latest scandal is another blow for current prime minister Rishi Sunak, whose protestations of “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” when he took office last October now stand in tatters.

Sunak is the one who claimed that the government has handed over “tens of thousands of documents”, as if that makes a difference:

He can say that, but we all know – dont we? – that it isn’t the number of documents being handed over that matters – it’s the information they contain.

Lord Falconer made this clear:

If all the material isn’t handed over by 4pm tomorrow (Thursday, June 1, 2023) then the government will have committed a criminal offence and may face court action. To prevent that, it may request a judicial review – but this would only be a delaying action:

Why would the government want to delay? Well, if it has given the material back to Boris Johnson, then…

If he has done it before, who’s to say he won’t do it again, given the opportunity?

The public demand for the information to be provided in full is growing. The words of former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, who nearly died of Covid-19, are particularly poignant:

And this long message from Dr Andrew Meyerson is a reminder of the wider context:

But let’s not forget Johnson’s side of it. Having seen diary material revealing further potential breaches of Covid-19 pandemic lockdown law, his government-appointed (and publicly-funded) legal team passed it on to the police – so Johnson fired the lawyers and hired a new crew costing four times as much, for whom he still wants us (and that includes you) to pay:

It seems the authorities are doing everything they can to make this inquiry as easy on Boris Johnson as it can possibly be.

Did you lose friends and/or family members to Covid-19? If so, how do you feel about all this? And who have you told?

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