Covid-19 Inquiry: Judicial Review

Debate between Lord Faulks and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My apologies. There is a well-established precedent, as we all know—I think it goes across many Administrations—that former Ministers are supported with legal representation after they leave office. The cost of that is met from government funds and for good reasons, I think, for when those of us who serve as Ministers are doing so. When the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, decided to recuse from being supported by government legal services a letter was sent to him, explaining that it was possible for him to have his legal advice—if this is what was being referred to—paid for, subject to the normal rules of value for money, as the Permanent Secretary has to sign off that money is properly spent. I think it is a non-issue and that he is now drawing on his own solicitors, Peters & Peters, for advice.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, explained that we all agree that we have empowered a very eminent judge. I think she was making the point that it is up to the judge to decide what is relevant and what is not. We agree that the framework of the inquiry is for her to decide, but there is this narrow point about unambiguously irrelevant documents and messages. Some of those are WhatsApps, as has been mentioned. Since the Act was passed, WhatsApps have become a much more common form of communication. You can imagine that in the bundles there is a combination of personal communication and matters that are completely unconnected to the Government’s handling of Covid.

I want to make it clear—the Paymaster-General made it completely clear in the other place—that documents relating to Covid and potentially relevant material will be made available to the inquiry. It is a broad-ranging inquiry. We owe it to the people who lost their lives and those whose relatives lost their lives to find out what happened. The inquiry has to be of a very wide-ranging nature. However, in some of those documents and notebooks, there is material which is completely unconnected to the Covid inquiry.

We have therefore asked a judge to use the process of judicial review—those noble Lords who have been involved in the courts will know this is quite a common process—to rule on this technical point. We hope to have a hearing on this by the end of June so that things will be clear. In the meantime, we are continuing to submit material every day to the inquiry and to work with it.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I apologise for missing the first 30 seconds of the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. Some of us were standing by and did not expect business to proceed quite as quickly as it did. I think some others may be in the same position.

The optics of this are not particularly good. I can understand the observations made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Allan. Clearly, individuals involved in this inquiry should not be able to hide behind process and conceal anything which may be relevant to the inquiry. I of course share with others the confidence in the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, as an entirely suitable chair with a very important role to fulfil.

I find some reassurance in the Statement in the description of the process, which has been undergone and will continue, in deciding what should or should not be disclosed. It says:

“Witnesses are required to identify any material that may contain potentially irrelevant information … with guidance from the counsel team supporting them. That is then reviewed by the counsel team, who identify any material that is unambiguously irrelevant. The counsel team discusses it with the witness in case there is any context or detail of which they may not be aware. The review … team includes … a King’s Counsel … No decision to redact material as unambiguously irrelevant has been or will be taken by a witness acting alone”.


There is an important role for the lawyers, rather than the witnesses, in deciding on relevance, although that is a continuous process. This is perfectly familiar to those like me who have been involved in disclosure and judicial review generally. It seems that there is a matter of importance in deciding what should and should not be disclosed, not just for the purposes of this inquiry but for inquiries in the future which may involve different Governments on different issues.

However, I ask the Minister whether it is possible to reach some kind of compromise on this, so that in the process described, which should be able to identify matters which are relevant or unambiguously irrelevant, there should be some circle of confidence involving the inquiry and its chair’s lawyers to enable her, her team and the government lawyers to ascertain what is truly relevant while not wasting a lot of time on things that are irrelevant and without forcing some judge to make a rather difficult decision on where the parameters lie.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his wise advice and the background. We miss him on the Front Bench, and it is good that he has come to talk to us today. As evidence of his point, materials are carefully considered. One of the issues under debate was the Sarah Everard processes. In this case, a message that appeared unconnected to Covid was initially redacted, but it was then identified as potentially relevant as part of the additional counsel review, which the noble Lord referred to, so the Cabinet Office then provided it to the inquiry proactively. A process is going on, and a large team is working away at this. All along, our legal team in the Cabinet Office looking after the inquiry has tried to agree on sensible arrangements. We have entered a JR, but we remain hopeful and willing to agree the best way forward with the inquiry, if that is possible.