Partygate Aide 'Auto-Deleted' Key Messages
Boris Johnson’s former aide has apologised for the ‘bring your own booze’ event, and says he ‘cannot recall’ why he set messages to delete, after the Covid Inquiry was announced. Report by Bangurak. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Martin Reynolds arriving for the Covid inquiry today, one of Boris Johnson's core team during
00:04 the pandemic. Perhaps not a well-known face, but his name infamously signed off an email
00:10 inviting dozens of staff to attend a bring your own booze party during the first lockdown.
00:15 The Covid inquiry has been conducting public hearings since June.
00:19 It's putting the government handling of the pandemic in the spotlight.
00:22 Today, Reynolds told the inquiry that he turned on the disappearing messages function in a WhatsApp
00:28 group of top officials back in April 2021. He said he could not recall why he did so,
00:34 but that he may have been worried about someone leaking his exchanges to the press
00:38 and that it did not mean he was trying to ensure the conversations would not be seen
00:42 by a future public inquiry. "I can speculate as to why I might have done it. As I said at the start,
00:49 I've kept all my other WhatsApps for the relevant period and handed them over.
00:54 So I don't believe it was intended to prevent the inquiry from having sight of this. It could,
00:59 for example, have been because I was worried of someone screenshotting or using some of the
01:05 exchanges and leaking them." Reynolds also acknowledged that the number 10 machine really
01:10 struggles when it goes into full crisis mode, adding it becomes extremely complicated with
01:15 very high friction. "If you have a very big pandemic, once in a generation crisis, and you
01:21 don't have the right plans in place, then of course the machinery starts to find it very,
01:27 very difficult to function." Boris Johnson's former top advisor Dominic Cummings was mentioned,
01:32 with Reynolds claiming he was the most empowered chief of staff Downing Street had seen,
01:36 and that the pair often were not working in tandem, which notoriously resulted in Cummings'
01:41 departure. It was also confirmed that key information was not sent to Boris Johnson
01:46 over a 10-day period in February 2020, when the pandemic was becoming more of a problem
01:52 around the world. The inquiry is set to continue. A number of areas are being looked at, including
01:57 the response to the spread of Covid in light of information received from the World Health
02:01 Organization, as well as the decision-making relating to UK-wide interventions such as
02:07 lockdowns and working from home. Reynolds' evidence will not be comfortable viewing for
02:12 those involved in the government's structures at the time.
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