Boris Johnson demands Cabinet Office give up pandemic texts to public inquiry

BORIS Johnson chucked a Covid grenade at Rishi Sunak last night by demanding all his pandemic texts and diaries are handed to the public inquiry in full.

The Cabinet Office have threatened going to court over demands to hand over tens of thousands of unredacted messages and documents to the ex-judge leading the probe.

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But last night Mr Johnson said he had handed everything over to the Cabinet Office and asked it be given to Baroness Halett uncensored.

That now heaps pressure on the current PM to follow suit with evidence from dozens of officials and current ministers – including his own pandemic WhatsApps.

No10 insist they would only hand over documents that were relevant – and claim that some of it would breach privacy and could reveal national security secrets.

Senior lawyers are at loggerheads with the inquiry over whether to hand over all the documents in full or redact them by a deadline of 4pm Thursday.

Earlier this week the Covid inquiry demanded the ex-PM’s raw copies of messages and 14 reported notebooks of memos he took at the time.

But the Cabinet Office claimed they didn’t have them, but BoJo revealed officials have “had access to this material for several months.”

In a fresh twist his spokesman said: “All Boris Johnson’s material – including WhatsApps and notebooks – requested by the Covid Inquiry has been handed to the Cabinet Office in full and in unredacted form.

“Mr Johnson urges the Cabinet Office to urgently disclose it to the Inquiry.”

They added: “While Mr Johnson understands the government’s position, and does not seek to contradict it, he is perfectly happy for the Inquiry to have access to this material in whatever form it requires.”

Last night the Lib Dems said: “Rishi Sunak can’t use Boris Johnson any more as an excuse to avoid handing over vital evidence.”