Messages between senior government figures unrelated to Covid will tell their own story about the government's pandemic response, Covid Inquiry chairman believes
Inquiry chairman Baroness Hallett has insisted she needs the content in full because the inquiry will cover “great breadth” and she is likely to undertake “a large number of extremely diverse lines of investigation” that may not be immediately obvious., including personal messages that could invade the privacy of individuals involved, come under the heading of “unambiguously irrelevant”.
To put it bluntly, messages between senior government figures unrelated to Covid will tell their own story about theLady Hallett says she needs to examine if a key figure was spending more time on a policy issue not related to Covid, at a crucial point in the early stages of the pandemic, and devoting not enough time to the virus response.
“There is, for example, well-established public concern as to the degree of attention given to the emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 by the then Prime Minister.” Attempts at humour – for example, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case’s messages to Mr Hancock in which he gloated about first class air passengers going into a “Premier Inn shoebox” of a quarantine hotel – may be regarded by the Cabinet Office as “unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry.
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