Lawyers, not politicians, will decide what should held back from Covid inquiry, MPs told – as it happened

The National Covid Memorial Wall, across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

6.17pm BST

Early evening summary

• The government has acquired two more giant barges to house 1,000 asylum seekers, Rishi Sunak has confirmed, as he claimed his plan to “stop the boats” was working. But some Tories do not seem to believe his plan is working. In a development that should worry Sunak, even the Daily Express, which is normally ultra-supportive of the government, is reporting that Conservative MPs are highly sceptical.

• Rishi Sunak has taken an RAF helicopter from London to Dover, despite the trip being just over an hour by train.

• Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, has told MPs that the judicial review of the Covid inquiry’s decision to demand unredacted WhatsApp messages from the government will start on or soon after 30 June. (See 5.33pm.) He said the government was only trying to ensure that “unambiguously irrelevant” material would not have to be handed over. This was so that, in future, ministers would be able to continue to have policy discussions in private without having to worry about those messages being submitted to an inquiry on a wholly different topic. Quin also said that, if the courts agreed that “unambiguously irrelevant” material did not have to be handed over, it would be lawyers, not politicians, who would decide what counted as unambiguously irrelevant. (See 5.50pm.) The inquiry also accepts that unambiguously irrelevant material should be kept secret. But it says its lawyers, not the government’s lawyers, should have the final say as to what counts as irrelevant.

• Matt Hancock has been forced to apologise after parliament’s sleaze watchdog found he broke House of Commons rules by trying to lobby an official investigating another Conservative MP for lobbying.

Rishi Sunak onboard Border Agency cutter HMC Seeker this morning. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Updated at 6.28pm BST

5.50pm BST

Lawyers, not politicians, would decide what should be held back from Covid inquiry on grounds of irrelevance, MPs told

Back in the Commons, in response to a question from the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman, Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, said ministers were not involved at all in deciding what messages and documents would be handed over to the Covid inquiry and what might be held back by the government because it was deemed “unambiguously irrelevant”. He said:

I want to give [Blackman] an absolute assurance that there’s absolutely no political involvement in this process of going through what is and is not relevant information, and unambiguously irrelevant. That is a process undertaken by lawyers, by the counsel team, with a KC involved.

Updated at 5.57pm BST