On Wednesday, Johnson handed over his personal chats and diaries to the Cabinet Office as demanded by the Covid inquiry.
But the government had expressed reservation in sharing the details with the panel headed by retired judge Heather Hallett, claiming that they are irrelevant to the probe, whose main focus is to find out how the ministers handled the pandemic during Johnson’s reign.
The material includes 24 notebooks with contemporaneous notes, as well as his diaries and WhatsApp messages between Johnson and cabinet ministers, advisers, and senior civil servants.
Hallett, who has the power to summon evidence and question witnesses under oath, had set a Thursday afternoon deadline to hand over the unredacted documents, covering a two-year period from early 2020.
But soon after the deadline passed, the government said it would challenge the order in court.
“The Cabinet Office has today sought leave to bring a judicial review” of the decision, it said. “We do so with regret,” reports AP news agency.
The Guardian, quoting a spokesperson for the inquiry, reported that Hallett was formally served notice of the Cabinet Office’s plan to seek judicial review.
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The government’s letter to the inquiry said that the legal process was being launched “with regret and with an assurance that we will continue to cooperate fully with the inquiry before, during, and after the jurisdictional issue in question is determined by the courts”.
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Notably, just hours before the deadline expired, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his government would “comply, of course, with the law and cooperate with the inquiry.”
“We are confident in our position but are carefully considering next steps,” he said.
After serving notice to Hellet, a cabinet minister admitted that the government doesn’t have a strong case to fight.
“I think it is really important that the rules of this are made clear and I absolutely have very little doubt that the courts will find that Baroness Hallett will decide what evidence she deems relevant, and then we’ll get on with it,” Science minister George Freeman told BBC.
“I think personally it’s quite likely that the courts will rule that Baroness Hallett will decide what evidence, but I think it’s a point worth testing.”
(With inputs from agencies)
