Adam Boulton: Politicians are drawn to WhatsApp – it may stop us ever knowing whole truth
Matt Hancock, who resigned as health secretary in the midst of the pandemic, and his memoir’s co-author Isabel Oakeshott, who subsequently handed over confidential information he gave her to The Daily Telegraph, have both come under heavy public criticism.
But they also performed one important public service by revealing the central role played by WhatsApp for communications between ministers and others during the crisis.
The cache of over 100,000 messages – more than two million words’ worth – which Mr Hancock downloaded from his phone and gave to Ms Oakeshott, provided the substance for their self-justifying book Pandemic Diaries and for the revelations in The Telegraph’s Lockdown Files reporting.
Thanks to Ms Oakeshott’s betrayal, the Hancock messages are effectively in the public domain.
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Leaked WhatsApp messages from Matt Hancock
So what about all the other informal communications in 2020, 2021 and 2022 inside government during COVID-19? Surely they should be gathered in the evidence for Baroness Hallet’s official UK COVID-19 Inquiry, which will start hearings in a few weeks’ time?
Lady Hallet has already assured “the bereaved that this inquiry is in the process of obtaining all relevant WhatsApp messages from all relevant groups, not just those from Mr Hancock”.
The government must be regretting giving Heather Hallet, a retired justice of appeal, such a wide-ranging remit for her inquiry. Alongside other vital matters such as how the health services dealt with patients and the pandemic, she is instructed to examine “how decisions were made, communicated, recorded, and implemented” in “the public health response across the UK.”
This puts Boris Johnson, his ministers and their advisers in her sights from the very start of the pandemic.
On Thursday, the government took the remarkable decision to take legal action against the inquiry it set up in an attempt to avoid handing over the unredacted emails of the then prime minister, Mr Johnson.
The bitter tussle over disclosure involves Lady Hallet, Mr Johnson, the courts, the Cabinet Office, and ultimately the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
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Government ‘carefully considering next steps’
Yet the nature of modern communication means whatever is handed over cannot give a full picture. Messaging by WhatsApp is an easy option for hard-pressed ministers and an invitation for ill-judged comments.
It also usually leaves a trail, if that can be accessed. WhatsApp messages can also be lost or deleted, or conducted in other conversations on undetected devices.
Lady Hallett is taking a tough line. She insists it is not up to the Cabinet Office to decide what internal government communications and messages, formal and informal, are relevant to her inquiry.
She wants to see everything: WhatsApp exchanges, emails, minutes, notes and diaries, “including the other (superficially unrelated) political matters they were concerned with at the time” – because it is possible a minister dealt with COVID matters “inadequately because he or she was focussing (perhaps inappropriately) on other issues.”
Before modern digital communications, it was simpler to keep track of how official decisions were reached. Most of the discussions or ideas were written down by those involved or recorded by their aides. Even telephone calls on direct lines were listened into and minuted.
Of course, important off-the-record conversations took place. But there was a generally respected code of honour that politicians would stand by their word, under oath, if required.
Smartphones have changed all that. There is little trust in what those in government say or say they have said. Personal phones and email servers have made it easier to avoid official channels and to express views casually. It is easier to dash off a hasty text message than to write a memo or to have a formal conversation.
Many involved in politics have been attracted to WhatsApp in particular by its promise of confidentiality through “end-to-end encryption”. As a result, WhatsApp records are often at the centre of contemporary demands for evidence, including from the COVID-19 Inquiry.
Even emails are old hat. Only yesterday, one senior official asked me for another’s mobile number, so they could send them a WhatsApp complaining “they never answer my emails”. Do they even read them? Nobody actually answers a telephone call these days. Until 20 years ago, the work of a political reporter was carried out essentially at first hand, through conversations face to face or on the phone. Now most communications take place in text message form on phones, most of it on WhatsApp.
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Johnson refutes ‘COVID rule breaches’
Paradoxically, as the Hancock files demonstrated, there is no privacy if WhatsApp trails can be accessed at either end. If an end-user’s phone can be opened, it is easy to recover an account of what was really said in chains of messages in numerous WhatsApp groups.
Many news stories in recent years have been based on what people have said to each other on WhatsApp. Hence, the contortions by former health minister Lord Bethell explaining why he had deleted or lost messages on his phones and the celebrated case of Rebekah Vardy’s agent’s phone dropping into the North Sea.
MPs are among those making increased use of the facility which automatically deletes messages after a set time. This is a genuine threat to ever being able to assemble a proper record in an inquiry. A bid to ban the practice of message self-destruction by ministers failed in the UK courts.
Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott. Pic: Parsons Media
The government’s proposal to legislate against encryption in the Online Safety Bill has no bearing on disclosures through end users. It would allow security services to scrutinise messages without the knowledge of those communicating. WhatsApp says it would rather shut down in the UK than hand such power to the authorities. Its parent company Meta has floated extending encryption to Facebook and Instagram.
In its advice on data handling for doctors, the British Medical Association noted that international or US based companies, such as Meta, can never be fully subject to UK law.
A year ago, the Institute for Government blamed WhatsApp for poor decisions based on incomplete information, for making record keeping more difficult and for undermining accountability and transparency. Regulators and watchdog organisations accept however that it is impractical to disinvent, or completely ban the use of, personal phones and email accounts and WhatsApp.
In the wake of Mr Hancock’s resignation, the UK Information Commission Office issued “a reprimand” to the Department of Health (DHSC) for insufficient data protection. Commissioner John Edwards is leading calls for stronger guardrails to be put in place.
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What is in the online safety bill?
Civil servants have been issued with a colour code on the use NCCCs (non-corporate communications channels). It is in the red zone to use personal devices or emails for “secret” or “top secret” information. As so often in this country, rules for civil servants are merely guidelines for elected politicians. Disciplining ministers is subject to the whim of the prime minister.
That explains why Mr Johnson passed his records back to the Cabinet Office rather than directly to the COVID-19 Inquiry, gift-wrapped with the unhelpful suggestion to “urgently disclose” them. In practice, Mr Johnson put that tricky decision, and the controversial legal bid to protect his WhatsApp privacy, back in the hands of his rival Rishi Sunak.
In launching its appeal this week, the Cabinet Office revealed that it had only seen Mr Johnson’s WhatsApp messages from May 2021, 18 months after the pandemic began. Prior to that, he used a different personal phone which he has not made available, raising questions over how frank he intends to be.
Mr Hancock and Ms Oakeshott are not the only ones who think that official information, of interest to the public, is something to be manipulated for their own ends. WhatsApp is a powerful tool, but the trails of information it leaves behind do not tell the whole truth.
US president-elect Donald Trump has suggested Israel and Hamas could agree a Gaza ceasefire by the end of the week.
Talks between Israeli and Hamas representatives resumed in the Qatari capital Doha yesterday, after US President Joe Biden indicated a deal to stop the fighting was “on the brink” on Monday.
A draft agreement has been sent to both sides. It includes provisions for the release of hostages and a phased Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza.
Qatar says Israel and Hamas are at their “closest point” yet to a ceasefire deal.
Two Hamas officials said the group has accepted the draft agreement, with Israel still considering the deal.
An Israeli official said a deal is close but “we are not there” yet.
More than 46,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its ground offensive in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Read more:
What’s in the proposed deal?
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on beachfront cafe in Deir al Balah. Pic: Reuters
Biden hails possibility of agreement
President Biden said it would include a hostage release deal and a “surge” of aid to Palestinians, in his final foreign policy speech as president.
“So many innocent people have been killed, so many communities have been destroyed. Palestinian people deserve peace,” he said.
“The deal would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel, and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians who suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started.”
Qatari mediators have sent Israel and Hamas a draft proposal for an agreement to halt the fighting.
Analysis:
Deal might be close, but there are many unanswered questions
Pic: Reuters
Trump: ‘We’re very close’
President-elect Donald Trump has also discussed a possible peace deal during a phone interview with the Newsmax channel.
“We’re very close to getting it done and they have to get it done,” he said.
“If they don’t get it done, there’s going to be a lot of trouble out there, a lot of trouble, like they have never seen before.
“And they will get it done. And I understand there’s been a handshake and they’re getting it finished and maybe by the end of the week. But it has to take place, it has to take place.”
Read more:
Pope Francis honoured by Joe Biden
Donald Trump’s inauguration 2.0
Pic: AP
Israeli official: Former Hamas leader held up deal
Speaking on Tuesday as negotiations resumed in Qatar, an anonymous Israeli official said that an agreement was “close, but we are not there”.
They accused Hamas of previously “dictating, not negotiating” but said this has changed in the last few weeks.
“Yahya Sinwar was the main obstacle for a deal,” they added.
Sinwar, believed to be the mastermind of the 7 October attacks, led Hamas following the assassination of his predecessor but was himself killed in October last year.
Under Sinwar, the Israeli official claimed, Hamas was “not in a rush” to bring a hostage deal but this has changed since his death and since the IDF “started to dismantle the Shia axis”.
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Biden: ‘Never, never, never, ever give up’
Iran ‘weaker than it’s been in decades’
Yesterday, President Biden also hailed Washington’s support for Israel during two Iranian attacks in 2024.
“All told, Iran is weaker than it’s been in decades,” the president said.
Mr Biden claimed America’s adversaries were weaker than when he took office four years ago and that the US was “winning the worldwide competition”.
“Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are
weaker,” he said.
“We have not gone to war to make these things happen.”
The US president is expected to give a farewell address on Wednesday.
A draft ceasefire deal on the table between Israel and Hamas would see 33 hostages set free and a phased withdrawal of IDF forces from parts of Gaza.
President Joe Biden said an agreement to stop the fighting was “on the brink” and high level negotiations between the two sides resumed in Qatar on Tuesday.
The deal would see a number of things happen in a first stage, with negotiations for the second stage beginning in the third week of the ceasefire.
It would also allow a surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has been devastated by more than a year of war.
Details of what the draft proposal entails have been emerging on Tuesday, reported by Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages hold photos of their loved ones during a protest on 8 January. Pic: AP
Hostages to be returned
In the first stage of the potential ceasefire, 33 hostages would be set free.
These include women (including female soldiers), children, men over the age of 50, wounded and sick.
Israel believes most of these hostages are alive but there has not been any official confirmation from Hamas.
In return for the release of the hostages, Israel would free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
People serving long sentences for deadly attacks would be included in this but Hamas fighters who took part in the 7 October attack would not be released.
An arrangement to prevent Palestinian “terrorists” from going back to the West Bank would be included in the deal, an anonymous Israeli official said.
Read more:
A timeline of events since the 7 October attacks
The hostages who still haven’t returned home
Smoke billows as buildings lie in ruin in Beit Hanoun in Gaza. Pic: Reuters
Phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza
The agreement also includes a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, with IDF troops remaining in the border perimeter to defend Israeli border towns and villages.
Security arrangements would be implemented at the Philadelphi corridor – a narrow strip of land that runs along the border between Egypt and Gaza – with Israel withdrawing from parts of it after the first few days of the deal.
The Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza would start to work gradually to allow the crossing of people who are sick and other humanitarian cases out of Gaza for treatment.
Unarmed North Gaza residents would be allowed to return to their homes, with a mechanism introduced to ensure no weapons are moved there.
“We will not leave the Gaza Strip until all our hostages are back home,” the Israeli official said.
What will happen to Gaza in the future?
There is less detail about the future of Gaza – from how it will be governed, to any guarantees that this agreement will bring a permanent end to the war.
“The only thing that can answer for now is that we are ready for a ceasefire,” the Israeli official said.
“This is a long ceasefire and the deal that is being discussed right now is for a long one. There is a big price for releasing the hostages and we are ready to pay this price.”
The international community has said Gaza must be run by Palestinians, but there has not been a consensus about how this should be done – and the draft ceasefire agreement does not seem to address this either.
In the past, Israel has said it will not end the war leaving Hamas in power. It also previously rejected the possibility of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited governing powers in the West Bank, from taking over the administration of Gaza.
Since the beginning of its military campaign in Gaza, Israel has also said it would retain security control over the territory after the fighting ends.
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