Boris Johnson fails to deliver crucial WhatsApps

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Boris Johnson has yet to deliver WhatsApp messages showing chats he had during the Covid 2020 lockdowns, the government has said.

The UK Covid Inquiry wants to see messages and notebooks kept by the former Prime Minister to get an idea of ​​how decisions were made in government.

But the former Prime Minister has only handed over an archive of messages dating from May 2021 or later, a witness statement released by the Cabinet Office on Thursday and sent to the inquest says.

Mr. Johnson is said to have the pre-May 2021 messages on another phone, which he no longer uses for security reasons.

"In this material [passed to the Cabinet Office] there is no no WhatsApp communications until May 2021," the statement from the senior government inquiry response official reads.

"I understand this is because in April 2021, in light of a high-profile security breach, Mr Johnson implemented security advice regarding the mobile phone he had until then."

The statement adds: "It is my understanding that Mr Johnson is in possession of this device and that it is a personal device.

"On 31 May the Cabinet Office spoke to Mr Johnson's legal representatives to ask them to check with Mr Johnson that he was in possession of the phone and to confirm this to the Cabinet Office.

< p>"The Cabinet Office explained that if the phone could be passed on to the government, it could be assessed by security experts. On the morning of June 1, the Cabinet Office sent an email seeking a response.

"We have not yet received a substantive response. As the Cabinet Office is not, I believe, in possession of the phone, any material stored on the phone is not in its possession or under its control."

The spokesman for Mr. Johnson said on Wednesday that the former prime minister was "perfectly pleased that the inquiry has access to this material in the required form" and had delivered his messages.

The Cabinet Office also announced on Thursday that 'he would launch a legal challenge against the request for an inquiry into the messages.

The government says it only wants to give the inquiry redacted versions of the messages and that 'unambiguously irrelevant' the messages should not be ignored.

But the retired judge leading the inquest, Baroness Hallett, says it is up to the inquest to judge what is relevant...