Labour demands ministers’ private emails be given to public Covid inquiry

Angela Rayner has called on Michael Gove to guarantee that all official business carried out using private email accounts will be secured and provided to the public inquiry into the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Following the resignation of Matt Hancock as Health Secretary on Saturday, reports emerged that he and Tory peer Lord Bethell had used their personal email accounts for government business including approving contracts paid for by taxpayers.

Boris Johnson announced last month that an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic would begin in 2022. Rayner warned today that ministers should not be able to avoid scrutiny in the investigation through their use of personal accounts.

“The failures of Tory ministers resulted in the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of people. They cannot be allowed to hide from the public inquiry,” the Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said.

“The use of personal email accounts was clearly endemic in the Department of Health and Social Care. The public and the bereaved families in particular deserve nothing less than full transparency and accountability, and a guarantee there will be no more cover-ups.

“Michael Gove must intervene to ensure that the public inquiry has access to every decision, every meeting and every discussion as evidence – including government business conducted by ministers on private email accounts in an attempt to keep them hidden.”

Labour has pointed out that inquiry chairs have the power to require relevant people to “produce any documents” and “any other thing” that is in their possession or under their control and relates to the subject of the investigation.

But this power, outlined in the Inquiries Act, only applies once the inquiry has been established and the chair appointed. Labour’s deputy leader has therefore called on the government to establish the public inquiry immediately.

Labour has repeatedly pushed for the government to launch an inquiry into its handling of Covid. Keir Starmer welcomed the announcement of a start date last month, but has pushed for the investigation to start sooner.

Government lawyers recently rejected calls for the public inquiry to start in April, writing to the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign group to tell them that “an inquiry now is not appropriate” as there is “no capacity” for it.

According to The Sunday Times, as Matt Hancock routinely used a private account to conduct official business during the pandemic, the government holds no record of much of his decision-making throughout Covid.

Following the revelations over the weekend, Labour called for a “full-scale” investigation into the use of private accounts by ministers, saying it was concerned about security risks and ministers avoiding scrutiny.

Commenting in the wake of the call from the opposition party, information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said she is “looking carefully at the information that has come to light” and considering “what further steps may be necessary”.

Rayner used an urgent question in parliament today to challenge the Conservative minister and highlight the claims from government conflicting with the evidence surrounding ministers’ use of email accounts.

“This morning, a government spokesperson claimed that all ministers only conduct government business through their departmental email addresses,” the deputy Labour leader told MPs this afternoon.

“Yet I have right here the minutes of a departmental meeting in which senior civil servants report government contracts being approved from the minister’s private email address. Who is telling the truth?”

Julia Lopez said government guidance for ministers states that official devices, email accounts and applications should be used for communicating classified information but that “other forms of electronic communication may be used in the course of conducting government business”.

The Cabinet Office parliamentary secretary added: “Each minister is responsible for ensuing that government information is handled in a secure way, but how that is done will depend on the type of information and the specific circumstances.”

She also argued that at the height of the pandemic, there was a “huge volume of correspondence” was coming into various private and work addresses of ministers from individuals offering to provide personal protective equipment.

But Rayner warned that the issue “goes well beyond any one department”. Gove, the minister responsible for public inquiries, has himself been accused of attempting to avoid scrutiny after claiming that emails about government business on private accounts are not subject to freedom of information legislation.

Earlier today, Jonathan Ashworth demanded that Bethell step down from his role as parliamentary undersecretary of state for innovation, questioning new Health Secretary Sajid Javid on whether he has “confidence” in the minister.