The head of the official Covid inquiry will “have to resign” if the government withholds ministers’ WhatsApp messages, a lawyer for bereaved families has said.
Lady Hallett, who is chairing the inquiry, is embroiled in a legal battle with the Cabinet Office over a demand for Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages with top officials and ministers from the pandemic.
The government has argued certain messages are “unambiguously irrelevant” to Lady Hallett’s inquiry and is seeking a judicial review of her order to release the materials.
And Elkan Abrahamson, a solicitor representing the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign group, said quitting would be the “only logical response” for Lady Hallett if the government succeeds.
Lady Hallett has “said quite clearly” she needs the material in order to have a proper inquiry, Mr Abrahamson said. And he described the legal challenge as “an existential struggle between politics and the inquiry”.
“This is something very important to her, and there would only be two responses. One would be to say: ‘Well, alright, I won’t do a proper job, but I will do it anyway.’
“The other would be to say: ‘Well I can’t do it under those circumstances.’
“We do not want her to go, I am just pointing out the gravity of the challenge and the implications of it.”
Mr Abrahamson told The Independent it was “difficult to understand” why the government was seeking a judicial review of Lady Hallett’s order for information. He pointed out that the inquiry was set up while Mr Johnson was prime minister and Rishi Sunak was chancellor, so they “weren’t against it at the time”.
“There must be something they are really keen for Lady Hallett and possibly the public not to know about,” he said.
His comments came as TUC general secretary Paul Nowak urged the prime minister to respect the inquiry and not “undermine it”.
The federation of trade unions has said the UK was hugely unprepared for the pandemic because of years of austerity which left health and social care “dangerously understaffed”.
On the judicial review, Mr Nowak told reporters: “Ministers cannot be judge and jury over what is disclosed to the inquiry. That has to be up to the independent chair to decide.
“And the fact that the Prime Minister is prepared to spend taxpayers’ money to try and block the handover of evidence is deeply worrying.
“The very least we deserve is transparency from our decision-makers. No-one should be allowed to hide from scrutiny.
“So today, I would issue a challenge to the Prime Minister. Treat this public inquiry with the respect it deserves and stop trying to undermine it.”
The Cabinet Office has been asked to comment.