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Boris Johnson has still not provided messages stored on an old mobile phone to the Covid-19 public inquiry, it emerged on Monday, with allies of the ex-premier claiming that he was still working with technical experts on the issue.
The government was given a deadline of 4pm on Monday to hand over relevant material to the inquiry, and Downing Street said ministers had passed on all the information in its possession.
But it emerged that messages stored on Johnson’s old phone, which he was forced to switch off after a serious security breach in May 2021, remain stored on the device.
Baroness Hallett, Covid inquiry chair, had given the Cabinet Office until 4pm to hand over Johnson’s WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries.
The government’s attempt to block the release of some of the material, claiming that it was “unambiguously irrelevant material”, failed last week when it lost its legal challenge on the issue.
Government insiders said Johnson had not handed over the messages from the phone in time to hit the inquiry’s deadline.
Johnson has insisted that he is willing to hand over messages on his phone if they can be downloaded securely. They are likely to provide information about key government decisions in the first phase of the pandemic.
A spokesman for the former prime minister said: “Mr Johnson is co-operating with the government-appointed technical consultants to carry out this process which is under way.
“He continues to co-operate fully with the inquiry and, as previously stated, has no objection to disclosing the material in question to the inquiry.”
The Cabinet Office said it was required to hand over material “we have in our possession and that’s what we’ve done”.
Meanwhile, some of Johnson’s allies were reprimanded on Monday night after MPs approved a report that criticised them for undermining the Commons committee which investigated whether the former prime minister lied about the Covid-19 partygate scandal.
However, the seven Tory MPs and three members of the House of Lords named in the report were not handed further punishment, and Penny Mordaunt, leader of the House of Commons, said that she hoped the move would be the end “of this sorry affair”.
Johnson’s supporters had claimed that the cross-party privileges committee, which concluded that the ex-premier repeatedly lied to MPs over partygate, was a “kangaroo court” and “a witch-hunt”.
On Monday, the House of Commons approved a supplementary report by the privileges committee that said that some of Johnson’s supporters had mounted a “sustained” and “co-ordinated” attempt to undermine its work.
After an impassioned debate, a motion that approved the second report was passed without any dissenting voices. It also banned MPs from interfering in further privileges committee investigations.
Johnson’s supporters said they had been exercising their freedom of speech to criticise the working of the committee. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, former cabinet minister, said “it was legitimate and it is legitimate” to question the impartiality of Harriet Harman, the Labour chair of the original inquiry.
Harman said there had been an “open season” on the committee, some of whose members had to be given extra security before the publication of the report into Johnson’s conduct.
Mordaunt said she hoped that her Commons colleagues criticised in the report — Rees-Mogg, Dame Priti Patel, Dame Nadine Dorries, Mark Jenkinson, Sir Michael Fabricant, Brendan Clarke-Smith and Dame Andrea Jenkyns — would “reflect” on their actions.
Peers Lord Cruddas, Lord Greenhalgh and Lord Goldsmith were also named in the report.
