UK Government Challenge to COVID Inquiry to Be Heard Soon

LONDON (Reuters) -The British government’s legal challenge to the COVID-19 public inquiry will likely be heard on June 30 or shortly afterwards, the counsel to the inquiry said on Tuesday.

The government has refused to hand over internal WhatsApp messages it has described as “unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry, and has sought a judicial review at London’s High Court against the demand.

Lead Counsel to the inquiry Hugo Keith said the High Court had ordered that the challenge will be heard as a “rolled up” hearing, an expedited process where the court determines the application to grant permission for a judicial review and the full legal challenge at the same time.

“The rolled up application is likely to be heard on the 30th of June or very shortly thereafter,” Keith said at a preliminary hearing.

A judicial review is a legal challenge to the lawfulness of a decision by a public body, including a public inquiry.

Former prime minister Boris Johnson had ordered the inquiry to look into the preparedness of the country as well as the public health and economic response after Britain recorded one of the world’s highest total number of deaths from COVID.

With a national election expected next year, the detailed examination of decision-making could create political headaches for current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was finance minister during the pandemic.

Johnson has offered to hand over his WhatsApp messages to the inquiry directly, rather than through the government, which has withheld some messages and has redacted others.

Keith said that the inquiry had liaised with Johnson over the inspection of his unredacted messages.

“We expect to begin that inspection this week,” he said, adding they were seeking similar inspections of Johnson’s diaries and notebooks once the government returned them to him.

“We will shortly gain access to all the material on an unredacted basis.”

(Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Sarah Young, William Maclean)

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