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Case Update

BREAKING: Government admits at least 4 Ministers used private emails for Government business

23rd July 2021

Following the revelations that disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Health Minister Lord Bethell used private email accounts for Government business, our lawyers wrote to Government lawyers asking them to confirm they had searched the private email accounts of Ministers for material relevant to our PPE procurement challenges. 

We received an extraordinary response from Government. 

In it Government admits for the first time that as well as Hancock and Bethell – Trade Minister Greg Hands and the PPE Tsar, Lord Deighton – the Tory Peer directly appointed by Boris Johnson and responsible for coordinating the multi-billion pound procurement process – were using private email accounts. 

But still, it refuses to search those accounts. 

We are left with the farcical situation of Government behaving like the three wise monkeys, declining even to look at what business private email accounts were used to conduct.

How can Government lawyers be sure they have complied with their duty to put their cards face up on the table when they won’t even look at their cards? We have the prospect of highly partial disclosure on VIP contracts worth hundreds of millions or billions of pounds.

Government has also so far refused to confirm that relevant emails in Ministers’ personal accounts will be included in the future public inquiry.

The Government is shaping up to be as evasive as possible. But we won’t back down. Support our fight for full disclosure here.

Case

This article is part of our Private emails, public accountability? case

Government Ministers have been using private email accounts to conduct official business. This was the case throughout the pandemic, when Boris Johnson and others were making important, costly decisions. So far our legal action to challenge the practice hasn’t succeeded, but we’re not giving up. We’re now seeking an appeal hearing in the Supreme Court.

See more about this case