Nearly a year after leaving office, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson finds himself again targeted by the authorities, as the United Kingdom government and the government-commissioned COVID-19 inquiry spar over the release of private messages.
According to CNN, the inquiry recently asked the Cabinet Office to provide access to the private messages of several government officials, Johnson among them. Under the authority of current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the Cabinet Office met the request with legal action, citing the precedent it would set for open discussions between government officials in the future.
Johnson published a letter on Friday, in which he agreed to grant the inquiry access to his WhatsApp messages and handwritten notebooks.
"The government yesterday decided to take legal action," the former prime minister wrote. "It was not my decision to do so. While I understand the government's position, I am not willing to let my material become a test case for others when I am perfectly content for the inquiry to see it."
Johnson also said that he would share the information contained on an old phone with the inquiry. He reportedly stopped using the phone after it was discovered that the number was public knowledge online. Johnson said he was advised never to turn the phone back on by security services, but he would be willing to do so to provide the inquiry with as much information as possible.
The Cabinet Office maintains that the point of contention is whether the inquiry has the legal authority to make such demands of government officials.
In a letter to the inquiry, attorneys for the government said that it wanted to examine "specifically whether the Inquiry has the power to compel production of documents and messages which are unambiguously irrelevant to the Inquiry's work, including personal communications and matters unconnected to the government's handling of COVID. We consider there to be important issues of principle at stake here, affecting both the rights of individuals and the proper conduct of government."
Government officials who spoke with CNN said the primary concern is that the quality of ministers' work could suffer if they are afraid to discuss policy matters freely for fear private messages may be read out of context. They also cited privacy as a concern.
The opposition Labour Party has accused the government of a cover-up to prevent any embarrassment to ministers.
"Rishi Sunak is hopelessly distracted with legal ploys to obstruct the COVID Inquiry in a desperate attempt to withhold evidence … [he] must comply with the COVID Inquiry's requests for evidence in full," Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner said in a statement. "There can be no more excuses."
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