On Wednesday, Boris Johnson will begin the first of two days of being questioned about his management of the pandemic as he appears in front of the UK’s Covid inquiry.
The ex-prime minister’s presence coincides with a new development in the enigma surrounding his WhatsApp messages during the Covid era. It has been revealed that almost six months worth of messages were unable to be recovered.
A long story has unfolded regarding the evidence that Johnson has presented. The government, led by Rishi Sunak, has refused to provide the unedited messages, notebooks, and diaries from the former prime minister until they were legally required to do so by the high court.
Johnson will be giving evidence to the inquiry for two days starting on Wednesday morning. He has stated that he was not able to view WhatsApp messages on his old phone that he used at the beginning of the pandemic because he could not remember the passcode. He has refuted any claims of deleting the messages.
With help, he managed to retrieve the phone. However, according to an article in the Guardian from October, no WhatsApp messages from January 31, 2020 to June 7 of that year could be recovered, which included the time frame of the virus’s arrival and the events leading up to and following the initial lockdown.
According to The Times, technical teams are still unable to retrieve the messages. During the inquiry, Johnson stated, “The cause of this issue has not been determined by the technical team.” A source close to Johnson did not confirm this specific account of what occurred.
The former prime minister’s spokesperson stated that Boris Johnson has fully participated in the inquiry’s disclosure process and has provided hundreds of pages of material without deleting any messages. The report by The Times mentions a technical problem with retrieving material, which will be handled by the technical team.
Although Johnson’s WhatsApp conversations will likely be a valuable source of information for the current phase of the investigation, which focuses on government decision-making, it is expected that the majority of his messages will be preserved by the recipients who will have included them in their own submissions.
During previous witness testimonies, the investigation has already reviewed Johnson’s messages.
Johnson ceased utilizing the specific iPhone in May of 2021 upon receiving security recommendations, following the revelation that his phone number had been available online for a minimum of 15 years.
The phone’s data, Johnson’s diary, and his notebooks were submitted to the investigation without any edits after the high court rejected the Cabinet Office’s request for a judicial review of Lady Heather Hallett’s ruling that they must be handed over.
At first, the ministers were hesitant to release the complete set of unredacted documents due to worries that they may contain personal information, such as a child’s education arrangements.
Some of the most eye-catching evidence seen so far has been from WhatsApp messages, including ones setting out the worries of people working with Johnson about his Downing Street operation.
Mark Sedwill, the former top government official in the UK during the start of the pandemic, had exchanges with Simon Case, his successor who is still in the role. During these exchanges, Case referred to the environment as “toxic” and “chaotic”.
Source: theguardian.com
