Thread by @GeorgePeretzQC

Important point on government record-keeping. Government by WhatsApp is unaccountable government, vulnerable to corruption. opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocra…

At the moment, the Ministerial Code says nothing on the topic: though the danger is recognised in the guidance on face-to-face meetings, and guidance given.

There is government guidance on the use of private email and other electronic communication. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl….

This though relies on Ministers policing themselves. And there is inevitably a grey area between government business and other political business (party business) which gives Ministers a lot of wriggle room.

FOI requests will not generally lead to searches of WhatsApp or private emails (even if they are retained).

What should be done? IMO the Ministerial Code (which should be better enforced eg by allowing its enforcer to investigate complaints without the PM’s agreement) should expressly prohibit Ministers from using any private means for conducting government business.

That should generally be a sackable matter.

Moreover, given the difficulty of distinguishing government and non-government business, there’s a case that all their electronic communication should take place over government systems.

Ministers could be given a private channel to use for non-government communications, but material on that channel would be retained and kept securely for a period: and some civil servants would be able to access it in any case where there was a suggestion of misuse.

(There would have to be an exception for Ministers’ Parliamentary emails for constituency business.)

There should also be a blanket prohibition on ministers deleting any material on any communications platform used by them during their term of office, or using any platform with automatic deletion.

NB that all this could be achieved without legislation on the first day of a new PM’s term of office, by amendments to the Ministerial Code.