Government loses court battle over Boris Johnson's Covid WhatsApps
Government loses court battle over Boris Johnson's Covid WhatsApps
The High Court says Cabinet Office must hand over unredacted documents to Baroness Hallett's Covid Inquiry.
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This was always going to happen - there's historic precedence that enquiries receive ALL information and then decide themselves what is relevant and what isn't. It's not like Johnson's "can you get some milk on your way home" messages or anything more private than that are going to get published.
Stuff like this really makes me think that the government should have its own secure messaging service. Make it look and act like WhatsApp if you want, but if you're a government minister or senior civil servant you should get a government phone and are only allowed to communicate with other officials via this service. That way it can be secure, and if content needs to be scraped for an enquiry it's easily done.
I thought the precedence was the other way, that enquiries receive ‘self-selected-relevant-material’ e.g Chilcot. I think this is more significant as it is a result of the breakdown in trust between the Establishment/Civil Service/Judiciary and the government. Normally, they would be trusted to hand over all the relevant material but not this time!