Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether his Department considers that electronic messages held on non-corporate devices relating to official government business held by (a) Ministers and (b) Special Advisers are owned by the Government.

Official information, wherever stored, is considered to be held by the Crown.

I refer the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire to the Government’s 2023 ‘Guidance on Using Non-Corporate Communication Channels for Government Business’ for further detail that was produced and published under by the previous Government.