Hallett has said a failure to hand over the unredacted material, which also includes Johnson’s notebooks containing contemporaneous notes, would be a criminal offence. Last week, her inquiry demanded that the Cabinet Office release Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages and diary entries from the time in order to form a full picture of how government was working and, presumably, to get a feel for how professionally or otherwise things were being run at the heart of power as the Covid crisis grew. At one stage, she was heavily backed to become the first female lord chief justice of England and Wales.Ī good friend in the legal profession describes her as “not only a brilliant lawyer but also incredibly politically astute”.įor Johnson, however, the appointment is turning into something of a nightmare – even before Hallett holds her first public hearings next month. In 2009, she was chosen to act as coroner for the inquest into the 52 victims of the 7 July London attacks. In 1998, she became the first woman to chair the Bar Council, before being made a high court judge in 1999. Lady Hallett, the daughter of a policeman, had already made her mark, repeatedly, in the course of a long and stellar legal career.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |