The UK government has decided to challenge, via a judicial review, a ruling on document disclosure by Baroness Hallett, the chair of the public inquiry which is looking into the way the COVID-19 pandemic was handled.
Hallett wants the “entire contents” of specified document classes, including WhatsApp messages, diaries and notebooks of Boris Johnson, the then prime minister, and an adviser named Henry Cook, to be disclosed to the inquiry. The government is resisting this request.
Its resistance is widely seen, even by a government minister, as unlikely to convince at judicial review but this case is both more complex and more important than it seems. Resolving the question of whether these documents must be handed over to the inquiry could set an important precedent. That said, the government is still likely to lose the case, although litigation is always hard to predict.
