Penny Mordaunt has told the Covid inquiry that a series of WhatsApp messages with Boris Johnson mysteriously disappeared from her phone, and that Johnson’s then chief of staff ignored 14 attempts by her to arrange a meeting to discuss the matter.
In a further twist to the saga of 5,000 WhatsApp messages lost by Johnson, Mordaunt said she was told by Cabinet Office officials it would cost about £40,000 to examine her phone to determine what had happened.
When Johnson gave evidence to the Covid inquiry early this month, he said it had been impossible to retrieve about 5,000 WhatsApp messages from his old phone – covering the crucial period from January to June 2020 – with the loss possibly caused by the device undergoing a factory reset.
In her written statement to the inquiry, Mordaunt, who is leader of the Commons and served under Johnson as paymaster general during the Covid period, said that in early May 2021, media coverage about the government’s handling of care homes during the pandemic prompted her to check something she had sent Johnson.
In the statement, Mordaunt said she had sent the then prime minister a WhatsApp message on 29 February 2020 “to raise the issue of shielding in care homes”, and that she received a reply from him.
But searching for the exchange, she found not only that it seemed to be missing but that she could find no messages to or from Johnson between March 2018 and March 2020.
In May 2021, Johnson had changed his phone number after it emerged his original number had been listed online, Mordaunt said, adding: “I was not sure at the time if the disappearance of the above messages relates to that.”
Her private secretary “kept pressing the No 10 security team for an answer,” she wrote.
The statement continued: “After some time it was suggested to us that because of a security breach the PM may have deleted all his messages and switched off his phone. However, this was portrayed to me as speculation on the part of the No 10 security team and would not explain why I had some messages and not others.”
Baffled at what might have happened, and being told that a third party could not delete messages, Mordaunt said she sought a meeting with Dan Rosenfield, Johnson’s chief of staff.
“From memory, we asked 14 times for a meeting with him, but had no response from his team, despite my office chasing this,” she said.
“I offered to have my phone forensically examined if this would help. I was told, after some chasing, that they would be happy to do this, but as my phone was my own personal device the CO [Cabinet Office] would have to charge me for this.
“The estimated bill was approximately £1,000 per day for six weeks’ work. I did some research with the government-approved cybersecurity contractors as to their rates and an initial interrogation of my phone would have costed approximately £1,000.”
The statement said that in January 2023 Mordaunt received a letter from the National Cyber Security Centre. “This was highly significant as this was the first time I had received any confirmation that no official advice had been given to the prime minister to delete his messages,” Mordaunt said.
Saying that two further sets of messages had gone missing involving Michael Gove, the then chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Mordaunt ended: “I would be content for my phone to be examined by the inquiry if it is thought this would assist.”
