You are probably aware of the recent sacking of health minister Andrew Gwynne, and the suspension of another Labour MP, Oliver Ryan, over WhatsApp messages the government described as “unacceptable and deeply disappointing”. But don’t worry – it won’t happen again.
The reason it won’t happen again is not that MPs are going to stop saying unpleasant things to one another when they think they’re in private – everyone is obviously going to keep doing that – but that such chats will not surface in future, because Westminster has quietly decided to erase all of its messages.
Gwynne and Ryan sent messages to a group from 2019 to 2022. It was only the following year that the Covid inquiry demonstrated to politicians that their messages really could be requested by a government inquiry or an FOI request. Since then, the default setting for MPs and ministers is to set their messages to disappear within days of being sent. No future inquiry will uncover messages in a similar manner because they are all being destroyed.
Ask any political journalist and they will almost certainly tell you that every politician in their chats has disappearing messages switched on. I have found this to be the case even with politicians I consider to have a lot of integrity and who may have strong views about the need for transparency in politics. It is so common, I’m told, that some MPs find it hard to keep track of diary commitments they’ve made because they are all being automatically deleted.
I don’t think journalists talk about this problem enough, and there is a reason for that. Disappearing messages reassure sources that they can speak candidly on background. What we also don’t say is that this is an illusion, because a journalist receiving a message that contains anything newsworthy will obviously be saved as a screenshot – not because they intend to betray that confidence, but because the legal risks journalists face mean allowing materials that stand up a story to auto-destruct is not an option.
But we should also be clear that this is bad for democracy. It should not be the case that written correspondence between those in power and businesspeople, journalists, and other politicians should be shredded by default, by the people in power.
It’s also hypocritical, because even as the government destroys its own messages it is asking companies like Apple to provide access to the encrypted messages of other people. Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom can require technology companies to implement new ways (yet to be developed) to identify child abusers using their platforms.
There is a debate about the extent to which such powers should be used, but there’s no denying that platforms which allow people to communicate entirely in secret create very significant risks. Personally, I would rather an elected government had the decision over how secret that communication was, rather than Mark Zuckerberg. But while the government explores how it can address those risks, our politicians are routinely removing information which it should be possible for a court, an inquiry or someone with a reasonable request to access in future.
Businesses are legally required to maintain records – financial data are supposed to be kept for seven years. The same applies to HMRC records, and data covered by the Civil Service Code. It’s actually illegal, under the 1998 Data Protection Act, for public officials to delete information if it relates to government business. But it seems that is happening constantly, and the chances of anyone being caught are minimal because all the messages are memory-holed by a foreign company after seven days, and officials have at least 20 working days to respond to an FOI request.
There is plenty of debate over whether MPs and the government should be providing free content for Elon Musk. But the greater threat to democracy may be from allowing Mark Zuckerberg to handle their post.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Can Labour rebuild Britain?]
Content from our partners
