Penny Mordaunt informed the Covid inquiry that a set of WhatsApp messages between herself and Boris Johnson inexplicably vanished from her phone. She also revealed that Johnson’s former chief of staff disregarded 14 of her attempts to schedule a meeting to address the issue.
Mordaunt revealed that she was informed by Cabinet Office officials that it would cost approximately £40,000 to investigate her phone and uncover the truth behind the 5,000 missing WhatsApp messages in Johnson’s ongoing controversy.
During his testimony at the Covid inquiry earlier this month, Johnson stated that approximately 5,000 WhatsApp messages from his previous phone could not be recovered. These messages were from the critical time frame of January to June 2020 and the loss may have been due to the phone being reset to factory settings.
Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons and former paymaster general under Johnson during the Covid era, stated in her written testimony to the inquiry that media reports in early May 2021 regarding the government’s actions towards care homes during the pandemic led her to review a communication she had previously sent to Johnson.
Mordaunt stated that she had messaged the former prime minister on WhatsApp on February 29, 2020 to bring up the topic of shielding in care homes. She also mentioned that she received a response from him.
However, upon attempting to locate the exchange, she discovered that it appeared to be absent and there were no records of any correspondences with Johnson from March 2018 to March 2020.
In May 2021, Mordaunt stated that Johnson had altered his phone number due to the discovery that his original number was publicly available. Mordaunt also mentioned that they were uncertain if the disappearance of the mentioned messages was connected to this change.
She wrote that her personal assistant continuously requested a response from the No 10 security team.
The announcement went on to say that there was a possibility of a security breach resulting in the Prime Minister deleting all of his messages and turning off his phone. However, the speaker was informed that this was only speculation from the No 10 security team and did not account for the discrepancy in the availability of some messages while others were missing.
Perplexed by the situation and informed that a third party did not have the ability to remove messages, Mordaunt requested a meeting with Dan Rosenfield, Chief of Staff for Johnson.
She stated that we had requested a meeting with him 14 times, but his team did not respond despite my office following up on it.
I suggested having my phone analyzed for evidence, but was informed that I would have to pay for it since it was my personal device and not owned by the Cabinet Office.
“The projected cost for the work over a six-week period was around £1,000 per day. After consulting with government-approved cybersecurity contractors, I found that an initial examination of my phone would have cost roughly £1,000.”
In January 2023, Mordaunt received a letter from the National Cyber Security Centre stating that no official advice had been given to the prime minister to delete his messages. Mordaunt noted that this was a significant development, as it was the first confirmation he had received on the matter.
Mordaunt stated that there were two additional sets of messages that could not be found, which involved Michael Gove, who was the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the time. She concluded by saying, “I am willing for my phone to be investigated by the inquiry if it is believed that this would be helpful.”
Source: theguardian.com
