TOP CIVIL SERVANT DURING PANDEMIC FACING COVID INQUIRY – Will he take revenge on Boris Johnson?
Lord Sedwill, who was the head of the Civil Service at the start of the pandemic, has explained why his messages and his phone from the government have not been given to the government’s Covid inquiry.
Comments by and about Lord Sedwill have already made headlines in the past few weeks, thanks to his suggestion that people should go to “chicken pox parties” to intentionally catch COVID.
He said it was “normal procedure” for messages on his phone to be deleted – this was because he was also national security adviser to the prime minister.
Lord Sedwill said his phone was regularly wiped, especially after foreign trips.
He also said this is why he no longer has access to the phone or the messages on it.
It was also confirmed Lord Sedwill did not keep a diary during the pandemic, although he did have notebooks which have been shown – where relevant – to the inquiry.
However, messages Lord Sedwill had sent were able to be recovered from the devices which received the messages – or were included in group chats in which they were sent, the inquiry’s lawyer said.
Lord Sedwill said some “two million” documents referring to him had been identified in government records from the pandemic, so some streamlining was required in identifying what was relevant to the inquiry’s work.
