There will be internal inquiry into the leak of private text messages between Boris Johnson and billionaire Sir James Dyson over the tax status of his employees, Downing Street has announced.
Mr Johnson promised the entrepreneur he would “fix” the issue after personal lobbying from Sir James as he sought to build ventilators at the height of the coronavirus crisis, in a series of text messages seen by the BBC.
No 10 had initially said there would not be a probe into how the exchange was made public, but a change of course was announced on Thursday as it said an internal inquiry will be led by the Cabinet Office.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told a Westminster briefing: “I can confirm that, yes, we have instructed the Cabinet Office to look into this.
“The position has changed from yesterday – it was correct at the time yesterday but, as usual, we keep things under review and we have now decided to undertake this internal inquiry.
“As you would expect, we continually look at this and the position we decided today is that we want to make sure we have this internal inquiry into that.”
Downing Street has said it will publish correspondence between Boris Johnson and Sir James Dyson “shortly”.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “The Prime Minister said in the House he’s happy to share all the details with the House, as he shared them with his officials.
“That’s what we’re working on, we’re pulling together that information, it will be published shortly.”
The spokesman confirmed the inquiry will examine the source of leaks of Mr Johnson’s private communication “as related to this issue of Dyson”.
But they said the investigation will not look into the leaking of reported communications between Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman and Boris Johnson.
Asked if the inquiry would not include those messages, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “That’s correct.”
He did not explain why they would not look at those communications, only saying: “The decision we’ve taken is to get the Cabinet Office to look into that and we stand by that position.”
The spokesman also said the National Security Adviser has not been called into the investigation: “This is something that’s being led by the Cabinet Office, it’s not something that’s been referred to the National Security Adviser.”
Downing Street did not deny reports that Cabinet Secretary Simon Case advised Boris Johnson to change his phone number because of concerns over the ease with which lobbyists and others from the business world were able to contact him.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “We don’t get into details of the advice provided between a Cabinet Secretary and a Prime Minister ,and so I’m not going to do that in this instance.”
