Two former heads of the United Kingdom Public Service have called for new controls on Ministers’ WhatsApp messages and other informal communications.
Lord O’Donnell (pictured) and Lord Sedwill told the House of Lords Constitution Committee that the Cabinet Manual or Ministerial Code should be updated to mandate that Ministers must have an official record of their conversations with businesspeople and media outlets.
They appeared before the committee days after text messages were leaked in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson told businessman, Sir James Dyson he would “fix” an issue related to tax arrangements for Sir James’ staff.
Lord Sedwill, who stepped down as the nation’s top Public Servant last summer, said there “must be a record of any conversations” Ministers had in an official capacity.
“The key principle, that official conversations should be on record, is one that the Government manual could certainly encompass,” Lord Sedwill said.
He said updates to the Cabinet Manual would need to include “separate guidance on what does this mean for WhatsApp, what does this mean for texting, what does this mean for this, that and the other or indeed for private conversations”.
Lord O’Donnell, who headed the Public Service from 2005 to 2011, agreed that rules should “keep pace with the way in which people operate [and] the increasing use of encrypted messaging services” such as WhatsApp.
“There should be guidance somewhere about, particularly the importance when there are discussions that really should be noted by Civil Servants, there really should be records of this,” Lord O’Donnell said.
“I would always want to have pretty firm control over my Prime Ministers in terms of the way in which they communicated; the idea of Prime Ministers briefing the press directly doesn’t appeal to me very much,” he said.
These latter comments came after reports that Mr Johnson had himself provided information to newspapers on a leak inquiry potentially implicating his former top adviser, Dominic Cummings.
The two former Public Servants were giving evidence to the committee as part of its examination into potential updates to the Cabinet Manual.
London, 1 May 2021
