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.
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World
In the idyllic Cognac region of southern France, Trump’s tariffs threaten a centuries-old way of life
The impact of Trump’s tariffs is reaching deep into every economy.
We travelled into the French rural heartland, heading for Cognac – the home of French brandy.
It is only half the size of Surrey but its exports to America are worth €1bn a year and that trade is now severely threatened.
The first buds are out on the vines of Amy Pasquet’s vineyard.
An American, she has married into the industry and with her French husband owns JLP Cognac.
She knows more than most the bond brandy has formed between their two countries that goes back to the war.
Tariffs latest: Follow live updates
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
Her French neighbours are appalled by what US President Donald Trump is doing.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Read more:
What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war
How tariffs will affect your money
Could Trump’s tariffs tip the world into recession?
Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Sylvie Courselle with distributers
The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Donald Trump its now seen here as turning on France and the rest of Europe in a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
World
In the idyllic Cognac region of southern France, Trump’s tariffs threaten a centuries-old way of life
The impact of Trump’s tariffs is reaching deep into every economy.
We travelled into the French rural heartland, heading for Cognac – the home of French brandy.
It is only half the size of Surrey but its exports to America are worth €1bn a year and that trade is now severely threatened.
The first buds are out on the vines of Amy Pasquet’s vineyard.
An American, she has married into the industry and with her French husband owns JLP Cognac.
She knows more than most the bond brandy has formed between their two countries that goes back to the war.
Tariffs latest: Follow live updates
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community. and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
Her French neighbours are appalled by what US President Donald Trump is doing.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Read more:
What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war
How tariffs will affect your money
Could Trump’s tariffs tip the world into recession?
Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Sylvie Courselle with distributers
The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Mr Trump it is now being as turned on, as France, along with the rest of Europe, finds itself in what many would argue is a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
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