The widespread use of WhatsApp by parliamentary ministers and officials in Whitehall poses risks for transparency, the information commissioner has said. Writing in the Telegraph, John Edwards said there was nothing necessarily wrong with the use of WhatsApp, but that the form of communication did pose questions for current policies and procedures. Edwards said: “Put simply, how are we going to learn from the experience of the pandemic if we cannot remember it?” He added: “When the stakes are so high, we cannot rely on individuals’ recollections. We cannot rely on tranches of WhatsApp messages stored on a person’s phone.” His warning follows the publication by the Telegraph of a series of articles, based on a leak of thousands of WhatsApp messages from the former health secretary Matt Hancock, regarding the handling of the Covid pandemic.
The leak came from Isabel Oakeshott, a journalist who had signed a non-disclosure agreement over the messages, and had access to them because of co-writing a book with Hancock based on his experiences as health secretary after the outbreak of the virus. The revelations have included details of how Hancock clashed with the then education secretary, Gavin Williamson, over school lockdowns and how he attempted to save his career after footage emerged of his embrace with an aide, Gina Coladangelo. Oakeshott has defended her actions, saying the leak of the material was in the public interest. “The greatest betrayal is of the entire country,” she said in a statement responding to Hancock’s accusation that she had betrayed his trust. Oakeshott added: “Hard though it may be for him to believe, this isn’t about Matt Hancock, or indeed any other individual politician. Nor is it about me.” Edwards, who became the head of the information rights body last year, said the Telegraph’s reporting “exposes how WhatsApp messages were used to discuss and decide key government business during the pandemic”.
He added: “It also underlines the importance of maintaining a public record of these private transcripts for transparency, accountability and lesson learning in the future. “This is not about preventing the use of WhatsApp. New technologies bring new opportunities and these can play a crucial role in keeping us connected. “But the risk is that decision-making made via WhatsApp risks being lost from the public record if it is not properly recorded and stored.” Although WhatsApp messages are covered under freedom of information laws, Edwards said that in reality “much of this information rests on people’s personal phones, or within personal accounts, and that it is rarely properly documented and archived”. “The issue then is not that WhatsApp is being used by ministers, but that policies and procedures in place across Whitehall no longer reflect how ministers and officials work and interact in practice.”