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Covid Inquiry court case: privacy no excuse for non-disclosure [1]
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Date: 2023-06
The unsightly spat between the government and the Hallett Inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic has escalated, with the Cabinet Office launching High Court action against its own inquiry in efforts to avoid handing over Boris Johnson’s unredacted diaries and WhatsApp messages.
With much speculation about the reasons for this extraordinary move, the consensus seems to be that once some of the documentation is released, it would be very difficult to hold back from other demands in the coming months. Other documents could include potentially embarrassing revelations about the behaviour of politicians still in post – and all this in the run-up to a general election.
Johnson has now bypassed the Cabinet Office by handing over “all unredacted WhatsApps” to the inquiry, telling Baroness Hallett in a letter: “While I understand the government’s position, I am not willing to let my material become a test case for others.” However, messages from before May 2021 – which would have referred to actions in 2020 – are not included as these are said to be on an old phone that he is unable to access due to security concerns.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office is maintaining its position that important principles are at stake that should be settled by the court, including privacy.
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At the most recent count, 226,622 have died with Covid in the UK. An estimated 1.9 million people have self-reported symptoms of ‘long Covid’, often with persistent debilitating effects that can last for months.
This gives the inquiry, led by the highly experienced and clearly determined juror Baroness Heather Hallett, a hugely important task. Even if the Cabinet Office loses the judicial review over Johnson’s messages, it is highly likely that other obstacles will emerge.
But if the inquiry is to do its job effectively it has to have all the necessary facts – and these facts will need to be examined and reported on in full, which is why openDemocracy is currently hiring reporters to attend every day of the inquiry and bring our readers in-depth knowledge of what really went on in government during the pandemic.
It is worth remembering that before Covid-19 hit the country, the UK was rated as having one of the best levels of pandemic preparedness in the world, following the publication of the expert-led 2018 National Biosecurity Strategy. Within weeks of the outbreak hitting Britain in February 2020, though, the UK had slipped behind many other states.
To understand this we only need to go back to a particular four-week period at the start of that year. If we do this, we may also learn why the government is so keen to limit the scope of the inquiry.
The main sources of information for that four weeks are already in the public domain, including evidence given over the past 30 months to parliamentary select committees. The period concerned runs from 4 January, when news of the pandemic reached Cabinet level, to 3 February, when Boris Johnson gave his Greenwich speech that summarised the government’s view of the pandemic and how to handle it.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/cabinet-office-high-court-covid-inquiry-whatsapp-messages-boris-johnson-neoliberalism/
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