‘Cowardly, cover-up’: How a Covid inquiry and Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp chats have Rishi Sunak in a restore

By India Today World Desk: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has found himself within the midst of a blazing row owing to a public inquiry into the federal authorities’s coping with of the Covid-19 pandemic, with allegations of cover-up and obstruction flying.

Set up in 2021 and headed by a former resolve, the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry not too way back requested the Conservative authorities helpful over former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and pandemic diaries. Rishi Sunak was Chancellor of the Exchequer all through the pandemic.

Sunak’s authorities on Thursday talked about it couldn’t hand over the inside WhatsApp messages and launched licensed movement in opposition to the Covid inquiry in an attempt to guard the material.

In a letter to the inquiry, the Cabinet Office talked about it will search a judicial analysis of the demand to launch the earlier prime minister’s WhatsApp messages and notebooks, reported the Independent.

The letter stated that the request by the inquiry amounted to an “unwarranted intrusion” into totally different factors of presidency work, along with into “expectations of privacy”.

It further talked about that the inquiry was going previous its remit and that the WhatsApp messages and totally different info it was requesting have been “unambiguously irrelevant”.

In gentle of the Cabinet Office’s licensed drawback to the Covid inquiry, Sunak was accused by opposition Labour and the Liberal Democrats of a “cover-up” and a “cowardly” attempt to impede the inquiry.

“These latest smoke and mirror tactics serve only to undermine the Covid inquiry. The public deserve answers,” Angela Rayner, deputy chief of Labour Party, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Liberal Democrat deputy chief Daisy Cooper MP talked about, “This cowardly attempt to obstruct a vital public inquiry is a kick in the teeth for bereaved families who’ve already waited far too long for answers.”

Sunak asserted that the federal authorities was assured as a replacement.

“We’ve been long cooperating with the inquiry,” Sunak instructed reporters on the sidelines of a summit in Moldova, together with it was important to review the teachings of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, in an announcement to the inquiry, senior civil servant Ellie Nicholson revealed that the WhatsApp messages handed to the Cabinet Office by Boris Johnson are solely from May 2021 onwards.

A spokesperson for Johnson, nonetheless, talked about he has “absolutely no objection whatsoever to providing content on the phone to the inquiry”.

Johnson, in his private letter to the inquiry on Thursday evening after the licensed proceedings have been initiated, talked about he is “more than happy” helpful over his unredacted WhatsApp messages and notebooks on to the panel.

Johnson’s spokesperson added: “He has written to the Cabinet Office asking whether or not or not security and technical assist could also be given so that content material materials could also be retrieved with out compromising security.”

WhatsApp is a favoured method for British politicians, officers and journalists to converse. The tone is often candid or casual, and doubtlessly embarrassing. The authorities is fearful about what Johnson’s full, unredacted conversations may uncover and the way in which it might presumably impression the Conservative social gathering’s prospects going into nationwide elections subsequent yr.