The attorney general has defended the government’s decision to take the chair of the Covid-19 inquiry to court over the disclosure of WhatsApp messages.

Last week the Cabinet Office lost a judicial review over a notice issued by Baroness Hallett DBE requiring the production of unredacted documents, including former prime minister Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages with advisers, diaries and notebooks.

Asked about the row at an Institute for Government event yesterday, attorney general Victoria Prentis said it was ‘perfectly proper for government to ask a novel question’.

Prentis said: ‘We had not previously been entirely clear on the meaning of the Inquiries Act 2005 as to what to do with material that is irrelevant. We were able to get some clarity from the court. We were not displeased with all aspects of the judgment.’

Victoria Prentis

Prentis: ‘Perfectly proper for government to ask a novel question’

Source: Parliament.co.uk

The Cabinet Office issued judicial review proceedings on the grounds that compulsory powers conferred by the Inquiries Act do not extend to the compulsion of material that is irrelevant to the work of an inquiry and that a notice issued under section 21 of the legislation must be limited by reference to relevance. The government also argued that the inquiry chair’s conclusion that the entirety of material compelled by the section 21 notice was, or might be relevant, to the inquiry’s work was irrational given the breadth of the notice and material before her.

The High Court ruled that the fact an ‘obviously irrelevant’ document would be caught in the request for ‘obviously relevant’ documents did not make it irrational to issue the section 21 notice. The inquiry chair was entitled to seek classes of documents where those classes related to a matter in question and the act contained procedures where parties are concerned about documents they believe do not relate to the inquiry’s work.

Prentis said the legal challenge ‘was an example of the government using the judicial review system to make sure the law is clear. Now we will get on and work closely with the inquiry as we should’.

 

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