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.
02:14 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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