Bureau Recommends: Gove questioned over official use of private emails
Michael Gove is under scrutiny following a Financial Times investigation which acquired evidence suggesting the systematic use of private emails for department business. This use of emails concealed sensitive information from the department’s civil servants and the public.
The FT passed on email traffic to the Information Commission suggesting the education secretary conducted government business privately with his closest advisers without the knowledge of his department’s own staff.
Details emerged after the newspaper saw emails from third parties discussing government business circulated through private accounts.
It then sought disclosure of all or part of seven of them using Freedom of Information requests.
However civil servants were unable to retrieve the emails because they had been sent using private accounts.
The circumventing of the official government email account appears to have begun within days of the coalition entering government.
It is not against the law for ministers to use private emails for government business as long as they disclose it.
