Rishi Sunak insists he is helping Covid-19 inquiry after claims he 'failed to backup Whatsapp messages'

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has insisted he is helping the UK Covid-19 Inquiry after it was claimed he is unable to provide WhatsApp messages because he didn't back them up.

Mr Sunak wrote in his witness statement to the inquiry that he does 'not have access' to the messages from when he was chancellor, because he changed his phone several times, the Guardian has reported.

It comes as the second stage of the inquiry got under way on Tuesday (October 3) to examine the key decisions made by the government between January 2020 and February 2022.

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Asked by the BBC at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester whether it was true he no longer had the WhatsApp messages, the PM said: “What I can tell you because obviously this is a legal process which is going on, is that I’m helping the Covid inquiry fully and very, very expansively with everything.

“I think as people will know that this is the legal inquiry, there’s a full process, I submit a lot of different evidence and documentation. I will be interviewed, all of that will be transparent and public. And of course I’m helping with all of that, as people would expect. We want to learn the lessons from Covid.”

Lead counsel for the inquiry Hugo Keith KC told the hearing on Tuesday the inquiry had received messages from more than 250 WhatsApp groups from '24 custodians' in addition to thousands of pages of one-to-one WhatsApp threads.

“I should say that that material includes copies of