Ministers should have to publicly declare contact from lobbyists on WhatsApp or face a ban on its use on official government devices, a committee of MPs has said.
The public administration committee said current transparency measures did not command public confidence, as a result of the Greensill scandal over David Cameron’s private lobbying of ministers on behalf of his employer.
The cross-party committee said WhatsApp encounters between ministers and lobbyists should be transparently declared in the same way as meetings and other forms of contact.
“If WhatsApp and other non-corporate communication channels [NCCCs] are to be used in government, and in particular if they are to be used to communicate with third parties, then they should be subject to the same disclosure regime as other forms of contact,” the committee said.
“Where exchanges by means of NCCCs are in place of a face-to-face meeting or prompt significant consideration in government, they warrant inclusion in the government transparency releases. If an appropriate transparency regime cannot be found that can command public confidence, which we consider the current arrangements do not, the use of any NCCCs should be blocked on official devices.”
The committee had been chaired by William Wragg, a former Tory MP who gave up the whip after admitting he passed on colleagues’ numbers to a honeytrapper seeking information from people in Westminster.
Its inquiry looked into whether stricter rules were needed to make sure lobbying of ministers and officials was not taking place under the radar.
The MPs also said the government must improve the quality of declarations of meetings between ministers and lobbyists, or consider the case for a more wide-ranging register of lobbying.
It urged the government to release records of meetings held by government ministers and officials on a “more frequent and more comprehensive” basis to help build confidence in the system.
These logs are intended to disclose meetings, gifts and hospitality involving ministers and senior officials. The records are released on a quarterly basis, and the committee recommended this should move to monthly reporting.
The committee said releases were “frequently late, have missing information, and often include too little information to be useful”.
It also recommended that high-profile opposition politicians should voluntarily disclose any meetings with lobbyists on the same basis as ministers do.
The committee’s acting chair, the Conservative former minister David Jones, said: “Increasingly, lobbying activity is undertaken on instant messaging channels such as WhatsApp, and this is an area which we think needs greater transparency, to bring it in line with reporting of face-to-face meetings held with ministers, in order to increase public confidence in the democratic process.”
A government spokesperson said: “As you would expect, modern government will use a variety of communication channels, but we have clear guidance in place on the use of electronic communications, including WhatsApp.
“We updated this guidance in March 2023 for WhatsApp, to reiterate that all relevant information must be recorded through official channels. Both the high court and the court of appeal have been clear on the lawfulness of this approach.
“We also committed in our revised transparency guidance, published in December, to stricter standards to ensure transparency returns and publications contain relevant and instructive information.”
