This is the best summary I could come up with:

In his witness statement to the public inquiry, seen by the Guardian, the prime minister claimed that he did “not have access” to the messages during the period running the Treasury because he had changed his phone several times and failed to back them up.

Boris Johnson faced fierce criticism when he said that he would hand over his pandemic WhatsApp messages only once government officials assessed the safety of the device he was forced to discard in April 2021 for security reasons.

The Guardian understands, however, that Johnson has told the inquiry that he has been unable to access messages between 31 January and 7 June 2020, significant dates in the first wave of the pandemic during which thousands of people died, despite the phone being in action until the following spring.

In the former prime minister’s witness statement, he suggests that other leading players in the government at the time – which could include Sunak, Michael Gove and Matt Hancock – could hand over their phones with WhatsApp or Signal messages on them instead.

Matt Fowler, co-founder of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, said: “If Johnson and Sunak don’t provide the inquiry with the messages it has asked for, they need to face the full force of the law.

The high court ruled in July that the government must hand over potentially embarrassing WhatsApp and Signal messages to the inquiry, after the Cabinet Office refused to do so, saying some of the material sought was “unambiguously irrelevant”.

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