Whitehall investigation over 'FoI avoidance' in Nominet emails

Sir Bob Kerslake’s office said it would examine evidence that emerged during a recent employment tribunal and was obtained by The Daily Telegraph.

It appears to show civil servants using private email accounts provided by Hotmail and Yahoo! to conduct official business, in the belief it would be exempt from demands for disclosure.

“It feels wonderful to work free from fear of FoI!!” wrote Geoff Smith, a Department for Business civil servant.

The emails detail negotiations between officials and staff at Nominet, the Oxford-based non-profit company that runs the database of web addresses ending in “.uk”. Like utilities firms, it is now considered a part of “critical national infrastructure” because of its importance to the online economy, which was valued at £82bn earlier this year.

In 2008 Nominet was in crisis over its corporate structure, prompting Government involvement that culminated in 2010 with new laws that allow Ministers to take control if they believe the company is not being run in the national interest.

A recent disability discrimination tribunal brought and won by Nominet’s former director of policy, Emily Taylor, showed how staff and officials apparently worked together in an attempt to keep the company’s customers, and the public, in the dark.

Despite the use of private addresses, in one email to Geoff Smith and others, Nominet’s senior policy adviser Martin Boyle, himself a former Whitehall civil servant, encouraged them to delete correspondence because he feared an “FoI is just around the corner”.

The emails have caused uproar among Nominet’s customers, who buy and sell web addresses and have many of whom have suspected the company secretly called in the Government. Nominet denies their claims.

Ms Taylor’s local MP, Andrew Smith, told Sir Bob Kerslake, the Head of the Civil Service, that he understood the evidence presented to her employment tribunal showed the “apparent intention of circumventing freedom of information requests” and reflected “some inappropriately close relationships”.

“These are obviously very serious matters,” said Mr Smith, the Labour MP for Oxford East.

Sir Bob’s office replied this week that an investigation would be mounted by the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Ethics team.

The investigation will add to suspicions that attempted FoI avoidance is a long-running and common practise in Whitehall and not limited to political advisers. The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, used private email accounts to communicate with his political advisers but was last year told by the regulator that he must disclose the correspondence.

“Information held in non-work personal email accounts (eg Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail) may be subject to the Freedom of Information Act if it relates to the official business of the public authority,” said the Information Commissioner last year.

The Department for Business said it would not comment "on individual cases, or on leaked documents".

"However, our longstanding IT security policy is clear: All official correspondence from BIS must be undertaken from a BIS email account and all breaches of our IT policy are thoroughly investigated. Additionally, the Department is fully committed to the Freedom of Information regime, including the latest guidance from the Information Commissioner's Office regarding the use of personal accounts."