Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting says the PM should ‘comply with the inquiry and do it today’
Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog. We begin the day with the Labour party accusing Rishi Sunak of being “slippery” in the row over whether the government will hand over Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and other documents to the Covid inquiry.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has told Sky News that the prime minister should “comply with the inquiry and do it today”.
I think the prime minister looks really slippery today. He says he wants the government to cooperate with the inquiry but the government has been withholding information the inquiry has asked for.
One minute the government says the messages they have are immaterial; the next minute they’re saying they don’t exist. Which is it?
So what the government is doing here is we have started this inquiry because we think it’s very important that we get to the bottom of some really important questions that many, many millions of people want to know the answers to around the Covid pandemic and our response to it.
We’ve provided around 55,000 documents, eight witness statements and corporate witness statements, as well, to the inquiry. And we absolutely intend to continue to be absolutely transparent and candid.
