Government departments asked to disclose use of personal phones and emails for official business
Campaigners hope the evidence will support the call for a judicial review into what they call a 'WhatsApp government'
Transparency campaigners have submitted legal requests to two Whitehall departments demanding to reveal each instance when ministers and top officials used personal phones, emails or self-deleting messaging apps to conduct official business.
Transparency campaign group Foxglove submitted the requests to the Cabinet Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), as part of the lawsuit over government use of private messaging services, such as WhatsApp and Signal, to make key decisions.
The demand came in the form of a Request for Further Information, which can be used to provide evidence in the court.
The campaigners hope the evidence gathered through this legal request will support their call for a judicial review into what they call a 'WhatsApp government'.
Foxglove and non-profit organisation The Citizens are due at a permission hearing in the High Court on 12 October, where they will try to convince a judge that the government is breaching the law by using unofficial channels to discuss government business.
Foxglove's legal demand applies to ministers, their private secretaries and special advisors in the Cabinet Office and DCMS, who have been in post within the past two years. It also applies to the Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary in the two departments.
The officials and ministers will be required to reveal what government business was discussed through private emails or private messaging and what steps were taken to preserve the communication under both the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Public Records Act 1958.
"That's going to make for some awkward moments in the Number 10 WhatsApp group once their lawyers break it to them," said Foxglove director Cori Crider.
"Disappearing messages defeat democracy. We have to be able to hold elected politicians to account and we've got to have a historical record we can trust," she added.
A spokesman for the Cabinet Office told the Daily Mail that not all communications regarding government business were sensitive.
"Ministers will use a range of modern forms of communication for discussions, in line with legislative requirements, and taking into account government guidance," the spokesman said, adding that the officials often need to respond quickly, which is made easier with modern messaging apps.
Foxglove and The Citizens filed the case in May, challenging the use of self-deleting messages by ministers and staff. They argued that the use of self-deleting messages lacks transparency, and poses an 'urgent threat to democratic accountability and to the future of the public record'.
The campaigners asserted that the UK Public Records Act 1958 mandates all government records about government policy to be reviewed and retained for public archiving.
In response to a freedom of information (FoI) request in June, DCMS told campaigners that ministers can set their official messages to delete automatically after some time if there is no need to retain a record of communication.
The Department said that ministers and civil servants are allowed to use instant messaging (through Google Workspace) in preference to email "for routine communications where there is no need to retain a record of the communication".
Campaign group Good Law Project (GLP), which is also legally challenging the government, said earlier this month that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and three ministers - Matt Hancock, Lord Bethell and Greg Hands - repeatedly breached their own national security guidance over use of private emails accounts and mobile phones for government business.
Government lawyers confirmed to the campaign group that searches of the (now ex-) Health Minister Lord Bethell's private emails using keywords relating to Covid-19 contracts turned up hits of between 18,000 and 36,000 separate documents.
The precise number of emails could not be ascertained as the government refused to conduct detailed searches or examine the emails' contents, saying the effort would not be justified.