Former health secretary Matt Hancock is facing investigation over allegations that he used a personal email address for work purposes – including referring his former neighbour for a multi-million NHS contract.
The MP, who resigned on Saturday after breaking his own social distancing rules by kissing his aide, faces scrutiny after it emerged he may have secured taxpayer-funded deals with friends on his personal address.
Hancock has repeatedly denied that he had any involvement with £50m worth of contracts for NHS test-and-trace supplies secured by Alex Bourne, who used to run the Cock Inn, near Hancock’s old constituency home in Thurlow, Suffolk.
However, Bourne admitted that he exchanged text and email messages with Hancock over several months.
It is claimed that Hancock had been using his personal account for government dealings since March 2020, thereby concealing information from officials and potentially from the public.
The alleged breach of guidelines would mean that the government does not have records on all of Hancock’s exchanges, including key negotiations on multimillion-pound contracts for personal protective equipment (PPE) and emails setting up the £37 billion test and trace programme.
It has since emerged that junior health minister Lord Bethell may have also used a personal email account to sponsor a parliamentary pass for Hancock's lover Gina Coladangelo last year.
But what are the rules on using your personal email address for work purposes and is it a sackable offence in ordinary cases?
“While it’s not illegal to use your personal email for work, your employer may not want you to or allow you to do that and can discipline or lawfully dismiss you if they have relevant policies or contractual restrictions in place,” explains Pam Loch, employment partner at Loch Solicitors.
She told The Mirror the rules – and consequences for breaking them - should be detailed in your contract.
In any case, even where the rules are not clearly spelt out, employees could find they are breaking confidentiality guidelines – and even GDPR rules – by using personal addresses to discuss sensitive information, as may be the case with ministers.
“There is also an obligation which is implied into all contracts of employment, which means employees should not disclose confidential information to a third-party. Using another email account could be in breach of that and therefore a breach of contract too, and potentially damages could be due,” adds Loch.
She advises checking your employer’s stance by looking at your contract, the employer’s IT and email policies, as well as the rules around Company property and confidentiality.
“Employers may require employees to get written permission from a manager before sending or taking emails or documents outside the company.”
In a tribunal, it all stems down to the rules on your paperwork.
Your employer may lose a case against you if it at no point attempted to clarify the rules.
In this case, the employee could claim they believed they were allowed to use their personal account.
“We have encountered employees forwarding on vast numbers of emails to their personal email accounts, later justifying it by saying they are working from home,” explains Loch.
“An Employment Tribunal Judge, while considering the specific facts and policies the employer had in place, found one employee was fairly dismissed because he was warned that doing this was not acceptable in the company policies.”
In a final word of warning, she says employees should be careful about printing out emails and taking them home.
She says: “An employer could argue that it’s their property and there could be a policy in place which prohibits employees taking that information home with them.”
In the case of Hancock, Labour is now calling for a full investigation into the practice.
Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said "the buck doesn't stop with Hancock".
She has written to the Information Commissioner and Cabinet Secretary calling for a full investigation into whether ministers have used private emails to negotiate government contracts and whether this constitutes a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
Rayner also raised concerns private email use could lead to further security breaches within government and would prevent ministers' communications being used at the public inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
"This shady practice has the potential to conceal vital information of public interest and cover up the waste of taxpayers' money that has been given to friends of Conservative ministers," she said.
"We need to know how wide this goes and how much government business is being conducted in secret."
