Michael Gove Defends Office In Private Emails Row

Michael Gove Defends Office In Private Emails Row

Education Secretary Michael Gove has insisted his officials had acted with the "highest standards of propriety" following claims government business was carried out using private email accounts.

Gove told MPs the Department for Education's communications policy was in accordance with Cabinet Office guidance.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) was asked to look into allegations that messages containing sensitive information were being kept away from the department's own civil servants as well as the public.

New guidance set out how non-governmental email addresses, as well as text messages, are covered by the Freedom of Information Act (FOI).

At education questions in the Commons, Labour frontbencher Kevin Brennan asked Gove to assure MPs that emails sent from private accounts would not be deleted.

He asked the education secretary: "Can you give the House an absolute assurance that neither you, nor your special advisers, have deliberately destroyed or deleted emails related to Government business that you have sent or received through private email accounts?"

Gove told him: "Every single aspect of communications policy in the Department for Education (DfE) has been in accordance with the highest standards of propriety as laid down by the Cabinet Office."

He pointed out to MPs that the IT curriculum had been changed and joked that many who had been through the old system "may not always have been as handy with the cursor as we should have been".

In February last year Dominic Cummings, the Secretary of State's chief political aide, wrote to colleagues stating he "will not answer any further emails to my official DfE account".

Gove's aides stressed the email was about political rather than governmental business and did not breach the rules, when it came to light in September.

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