Tag Archives: office

Tory government defiant after warning over sewage law breaches

Rivers of S**: unbelievably, the Tory government and regulators Ofwat and the Environment Agency reckon they have not broken the law by failing to regulate this torrent of untreated sewage properly.

Unbelievable but true: the UK’s Tory government is digging its heels in and insisting that it, together with regulators Ofwat and the Environment Agency, has not broken the law over how it regulates sewage releases into the UK’s waterways.

Here‘s the BBC:

The UK’s environment watchdog suspects the government and water regulators have broken the law over how they regulate sewage releases.

It follows continued high levels of sewage releases in England which topped 825 times a day last year.

Campaigners and opposition MPs have called the regulators “complicit” in allowing the pollution.

The government said it did not agree with the Office for Environmental Protection’s “initial interpretations”.

Following complaints to the OEP over sewage in June 2022 it announced it was investigating whether England’s regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, along with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), were correctly enforcing the law on water companies.

In response to the announcement the government said: “The volume of sewage discharged is completely unacceptable. That is why we are the first government in history to take such comprehensive action to tackle it.”

That is hardly an alibi as it is the first UK government in history that needed to!

As for the substantive complaint – that far too much untreated sewage is stinking up our waterways – the instinctive urge is to come out with a lavatorial expletive like, “No sh**, Sherlock!”

Except…

It seems clear that there is far too much sh** flying around – as much from the mouths of government spokespeople as from privatised water firms’ pipes.

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MP severance pay to double as hundreds of Tories face losing their seats. Coincidence?

Okay, it’s not a backhander… in fact it looks like a bung to Tory MPs facing ejection from Parliament – in plain view of the entire United Kingdom.

Is anybody not calling ‘foul’ on this one?

Here are the headlines:

The details, from The Guardian:

Departing MPs will get bigger payouts for winding up their offices, with the sum doubling to £17,300, the UK parliament expenses watchdog has announced.

MPs who lose their seats or choose not to stand will be paid for four months after leaving office to enable them to wind up their casework and other duties – doubling from the current period of eight weeks.

MPs who lose their seats also qualify for “loss of office payments” – at twice the rate of statutory redundancy pay – and the winding-up payments come on top of this.

They have to demonstrate that they are using their time to work on winding up their offices. MPs’ staff can also qualify for such payments. Ministers get different severance payments for loss of office, with a cabinet minister receiving £16,876.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) made the change after reviewing arrangements for payments following the next election… prompted by the boundary changes and end of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in 2022.

Some doubt the sincerity of IPSA’s behaviour:

… and This Writer is one of them.

I’d say IPSA has just delivered proof that it is not fit for purpose.

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Here’s the reason the Tory fuss over fake Rishi Sunak ‘pint’ pic is hilarious

Not quite right: this image has been photoshopped to make it seem the pint of ‘Black Dub’ was badly-poured by Tory leader Rishi Sunak. The giveaway should have been the look in the eyes of the woman behind him, which is comedy – as is the response of the Conservative Party that once re-modelled its entire press office to convey lies about a previous party leader.

When Labour MP Karl Turner tweeted (can we still use that word, now that platform has been reduced to a letter ‘X’?) an image of Rishi Sunak, apparently having poured a pint of real ale very badly, handing it across a bar – to apparent shock from a woman behind him – who could have predicted the squeal of outrage from Conservative Central HQ?

It seems the image is a fake and the Tories were scandalised that somebody had used it to lie about their leader.

Who knew that the only people now permitted to lie about their leader are the Tories themselves?

What?

That’s not how it is?

But, but, but… the Tories do lie about their leaders – all the time! If you don’t recall, perhaps these words will jog your memory: “Factcheck UK.”

I wrote about this at the time – which was during the 2019 general election campaign.

During a televised leader debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on ITV, CCHQ’s press office spontaneously re-branded itself as “Factcheck UK” in order to whitewash anything Johnson said, in the hope that the voting public would be gullible enough to believe it.

Very few people were – as I reported:

The Conservative Party seems to be getting desperate.

Its press office resorted to the dirty trick of pretending to be a ‘fact check’ organisation during the ITV leaders’ debate – presumably so it could tweet a (false) claim that Boris Johnson won the confrontation.

Well, that didn’t work!

Not only did people take extreme offence at the pretense…

… but they also decided to have their own laugh at the Tories’ expense.

Take a look at some of these examples:

 

Way to go, Tories. Not only did your man mess up his big TV appearance…

But you’ve also ensured that nobody will believe another word to come out of your publicity machine.

And now they’ve just reminded us that they lie, constantly and compulsively.

That’s probably not a good idea when they’re trying to win the public debate over global warming.

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Asylum barge is potential new Grenfell Tower-style deathtrap

Suella Braverman considers a kinder, ‘compassionate Conservative’ response to asylum-seekers.

Isn’t it good to know the Tories are taking their responsibilities seriously?

Oh, wait…

Once they have detained people they believe have come to the UK illegally, they have a legal responsibility to ensure the well-being of those people until their future can be decided.

So, do they house these people in safe and secure accommodation? No!

They say: “We’ll put them up in a floating firetrap with no means of escape if it burns; that’s good enough for ’em!”

Or at least, that’s what This Writer gets from the following:

Here’s the supporting information:

Bizarrely, if I recall correctly, the Tory government could have put the same number of people into luxury hotel rooms for less money than it has cost to hire this floating incinerator.

The Fire Brigades Union has now written to the Home Office, and you can read the letter here:

It says: “Firefighting operations on vessels such as the Bibby Stockholm provide significant challenges and require specialist training and safe systems of work.”

Then it describes safety provisions on the Bibby Stockholm as “diminished” and warns that the nature of those provisions “exacerbate our operational concerns”.

The letter also states that “The FBU believes fire safety standards are universal and apply to everyone… Fire does not discriminate and therefore neither should safety regulations.”

The implication is clear: the boat is unsafe and the FBU believes it has been deliberately made unsafe on Home Office orders.

This Writer looks forward to hearing Suella Braverman’s excuse for housing asylum-seekers in a deathtrap.

I’m willing to bet it will include a lot of bullying talk and probably a bit of racism as well.

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The news in tweets: Thursday, July 13, 2023

Martin Lewis: he’s really not happy with Oliver Dowden.

This one’s for all of you who want some real news alongside your daily revelations about “BBC presenter” – or who simply didn’t care about that ‘dead cat’ story.

Martin Lewis corrects the record after Oliver Dowden falsely claimed he supported the Tories

Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis does not take kindly to suggestions that he supports any political party over the others.

So it was only to be expected that, after Oliver Dowden claimed he supported the government on a point in the government’s Mortgage Charter, he would be… miffed.

Here’s what he had to say:

For those of you who can’t (or can’t be bothered to) click on “Show more”, he continued: ‘…benches.”

‘I am party independent. I’ve had constructive conversations with both the Chancellor and the Shadow Chancellor about mortgage support.

‘I do not appreciate being used in party-political spats. It is correct that I support those specific measures in the mortgage charter, mainly as they were my suggestions (so in a way ‘they’re’ supporting what ‘I’ said) and both major parties proposed similar – but that should not be taken as a read-across to favouring any party, even just within the mortgage agenda.’

This Writer wondered, after PMQs, how many falsehoods Dowden would be caught out on in deputy Prime Minister’s Questions this week. I named two at the time.

This is another. How many more were there?

Join the demonstration to save ticket offices

This is happening today (Thursday, July 12, 2023). Information courtesy of the Peace and Justice Project founded by Jeremy Corbyn:

The government’s plans to close 1,000 ticket offices in England – this latest attack on railway workers – puts thousands of jobs at risk and, if these proposed changes go ahead, there will be serious implications on millions of elderly, disabled and vulnerable commuters who rely on the personal touch of a ticket office to arrange and support their travel.

We must resist these closures.

Tomorrow, the RMT is hosting a national day of action, leafleting and speaking to commuters outside train stations up and down the country. And in London there will be a demo outside Kings Cross with speakers including Jeremy Corbyn. Together, we must demand that ticket offices remain open – click here to find your nearest action.

The opposition to these ticket office closures has been immense, with commuters writing in to local papers, posting on social media and making it known that they oppose these closures. The government have also opened a consultation on these closures which closes in just two weeks. If you haven’t already, please fill in the consultation – click here, select your local train station and make your views known.

Write to your MP

You can also write to your MP and ask them to raise this issue in Parliament and support the campaign to save our ticket offices. You can use this letter-writing tool, created by our comrades at the RMT, which only takes a few minutes to fill out. As the consultation period is brief, it is absolutely vital that we ensure this issue is at the very top of the parliamentary agenda in the weeks to come.  Click on the link and demand your MP stands up for railway workers and the millions of commuters who rely on them to support their journeys.

Sign the petition to make sure the Tories stick to the law – and don’t send any refugees to Rwanda

Are we seriously being asked to believe nobody in Boris Johnson’s office or the government knows how to switch on a phone?

Look at this, which I believe is from the Covid Inquiry. Simon Case is the Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service:

“I thought it was handed over” is legal-speak to avoid actually saying anything.

In fact, we all know the phone wasn’t handed over. Apparently Boris Johnson has a ‘team’, alongside people from – oh dear – the Cabinet Office, trying to switch on ‘Phone 1’, but none of them know how to do it.

They say they fear security breaches, because the phone’s number was public knowledge for 15 years before Johnson twigged that this might be a bad idea and switched it off in April 2021 (if you believe in that sort of thing).

In fact, if anyone interested in breaching the UK’s security wanted to hack that phone, they would have done it long before Johnson got near the “off” switch. Also, any compromising information in it should have been changed long ago. There really is no reason not to simply switch it back on.

Alternatively, since WhatsApp messages aren’t actually stored on the phone anyway, why don’t they all just access the cloud storage that actually does hold that information, as people (including This Writer) have been telling them to do for many months?

While the government was defending itself for painting over mural at one child refugee centre, it was painting over other murals at other centres

This is cruelty for its own sake:

Lords defeat Tory government again over Illegal Migration Bill

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The news in tweets: Monday, July 10, 2023

Number of people waiting long periods for PIP claim result has plummeted

The number waiting longer than six months has dropped from more than 20,000 to just 300 within 12 months, and the DWP says it has halved the time it takes in acting on a claim.

But how many claims are the DWP processing now, in comparison to 12 months ago? What is the figure as a proportion of all claims received? And – more to the point – how many are successful?

Ofgem asks energy suppliers to publish all their tariffs, so customers know what deals are worthwhile

Scam adverts: the government has STILL enacted no laws to protect you against them

Are doctors in Scotland well-advised to suspend strikes after pay offer of 17.5% over two years?

It may seem a lot but doctors in Scotland have only suspended their strike action for a pay deal of 8.75 per cent per year – that’s still less than the current rate of inflation and therefore a pay cut.

But it is more than junior doctors have been offered by Health Secretary Steve Barclay – whose own pay packet has not been reduced by inflation.

Meanwhile, teachers are being told their own job is a “vocation” – meaning it is especially worthy of dedication – and they should be happy with £27,000 a year, by Heather Wheeler. Take a look at this point:

There is no degree in being a member of Parliament, and most of the degrees in politics don’t seem to be worth the paper they’re written on (look at the havoc wreaked on the nation by graduates of Oxford’s Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) course). It is a career for which there is no qualification and cannot be described as a vocation – but Heather Wheeler draws down a salary of £82,000 a year, plus expenses.

And it is important to remember that teachers aren’t just striking to get better pay for themselves. Government spending on education suffered its longest-ever decline under the Tory governments between 2011 and 2019, and teachers are striking to ensure that education as a whole is properly funded:

And the Tory arguments that pay increases would raise the rate of inflation have already been proved false.

So there is no good reason for refusing to pay doctors, teachers and other striking workers what they are due – which would bring them to parity – in real terms – with their pay in 2010. And there’s no good reason for refusing to properly fund education and the NHS either; taxation is currently at its highest in something like 70 or 80 years, which should mean public money is available for such projects. What have the Tories done with it?

All of the above supports the following short clip, making an important point that should be remembered by everyone who complains about strikes:

Did Jeremy Corbyn grab Israel Advocacy member – as he claims – or was the MP the one who was assaulted?

Here’s video footage of what happened. The context note beneath it clarifies exactly what really did happen. Reggie D Hunter’s comment is pertinent too:

These aggressively Zionist, pro-Israel goons think they can do whatever they like and then lie about it when we can see what’s really happening via their own recordings.

Remember that, next time one of them makes a wild accusation.

Most train ticket offices in England to be shut within three years, no matter how many people it disadvantages

That’s the theory. Here’s the practical upshot:

Does anybody remember a piece of law called the Disability Discrimination Act? Did it not make provision for a situation like this?

If not, is it time that Act was amended?

Jeremy Hunt to appear on Martin Lewis ITV show about mortgages – and you can help grill him

Tin-eared airport bosses want to increase pollution there by 60% amid public fury over environmental harm

Minister for disabled people refuses to discuss his disability action plan with them

Perhaps Tom Pursglove doesn’t want disabled people to object to the plan to close railway ticket offices?

Perhaps there are a multitude of other omissions in his plan that he doesn’t want to allow under the spotlight until it has been rubber-stamped?

Whatever the excuse, this is unacceptable behaviour from any government. Nobody’s life should be changed by the government if they haven’t had a chance to participate in the process.

“Nothing about us without us,” remember?

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Ex-head of police watchdog charged with paedophilia | Financial Times

Michael Lockwood: accused of paedophilia.

It is hard to see how the police may ever restore their shattered reputation after this.

First we saw a string of offences committed by serving police officers including rape and murder.

Then we saw a damning report on the Metropolitan Police that said (among other criticisms) that rape might as well be legal in London.

Now we see a former head of the organisation that was supposed to guarantee that police uphold the highest standards being accused of sexual offences against an under-age girl.

We all know power corrupts. If these charges are proved, then it will once again be clear that the police have been given far too much of it.

And where is the Tory government in all this? Home Office ministers are supposed to ensure that the police bring justice to lawbreakers – not become criminals themselves.

Is this yet another example of the rot brought to the UK by the likes of Boris Johnson, who sends his lawbreaking friends to the House of Lords?

The former head of the police watchdog for England and Wales has been charged with rape and other sexual offences against a girl under the age of 16.

Michael Lockwood, 64, former director-general of the Independent Office for Police Conduct, was charged with three offences of rape and six counts of indecent assault, the Crown Prosecution Service said on Friday.

Lockwood stepped down in December after the police investigation into the historical allegations became public.

The charges will be seen as another blow to public trust in policing. They come just a week after Andy Cooke, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, warned in his annual report that police forces in England and Wales were experiencing “one of their biggest crises in living memory” and that trust was “hanging by a thread”.

Source: Ex-head of police watchdog for England and Wales charged with rape | Financial Times

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

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

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?

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