Broadcaster to government minister: “Do you use a default delete function on WhatsApp?”

Admittedly, it doesn’t have quite the same poetry as other political questions we have known. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party, say, or who governs Britain?

But it was the question Martin Geissler asked Lorna Slater, the minister for green skills, circular economy and biodiversity on BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show.

The inquiry was at least in keeping with the tech-dominated week ahead. On Wednesday and Thursday, Rishi Sunak will host an artificial intelligence safety summit at Bletchley Park.

Among those expected to attend are EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, and US vice president Kamala Harris.

Meanwhile, the row over Scottish Government WhatsApp messages rumbles on., which brings us to the Geissler-Slater exchange. As is often the case when middle-aged people talk about tech, it was not long before confusion set in. Thank heavens it was Sunday morning and teenagers were sleeping. Otherwise, it might have been horribly embarrassing for all concerned.

Slater was at the Scottish Greens conference in Dunfermline, Geissler at the BBC studios in Glasgow.

With WhatsApp messages making the headlines at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, and likely to do so at the Scottish inquiry, Geissler wanted to know what the drill was for ministers when it came to retaining or deleting information. He started with the easy stuff.

Geissler: Do you use WhatsApp in the course of your work?

Slater: I do not use WhatsApp for government business, no.

Geissler: Not at all? No discussion of any government business, nothing, purely personal WhatsApp, nothing work-wise?

Slater: Correct. No government business, absolutely.

Geissler: Party business?

Slater: Indeed. Personal business, sometimes party work, volunteering work that I do, chatting with my friends, sharing silly memes, all that stuff. But government business is only done on government devices.

Geissler: You joined government on 21 August 2021, two or three days before the public inquiry was announced. As far as you were aware you didn’t see any WhatsApp correspondence at all that related to covid?

Slater: Not at all. All government correspondence goes through official channels. There are very secure government devices where all that work is done and therefore can be monitored, can be shared out under Freedom of Information and other transparency procedures.

Geissler: Do you use a default delete function on WhatsApp? [With WhatsApp you can change the settings to make messages automatically “disappear” after a set period, say 24 hours or 90 days.] Do you default delete your messages?

Slater: I do use WhatsApp for personal reasons. I can’t remember if some of the chats may have deletes on them, I’d have to go through the phone.

Geissler: But you haven’t been advised by anyone within the Scottish government that WhatsApp should be default deleted? Is it government policy?

Slater: I don’t have a government phone. My phone is for my personal use and there has been no advice on that because it isn’t used for government business.

Geissler: You are a government minister. Why don’t you have a government phone?

Slater: “For exactly this reason. So that all the work I do is on that government device and can clearly be seen what government work is done. So that personal and government business is totally separate and there can be no confusion between the two.”

Geissler: So you do have a government phone?

Slater: I do not have a government phone.

It was like the Two Ronnies’ Mastermind sketch , where Ronnie Corbett’s chosen subject is “answering the question before last”. Catch it on YouTube, kids.

No wonder Geissler was confused. We all were. How does anyone contact her if she does not have a government phone? On what device does she do government work?

Victoria Derbyshire, hosting BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, was in default straight-talking mode when she quizzed Peter Kyle, shadow science and technology secretary, on divisions within Labour on the Israel-Gaza war.

When Kyle began his answer with “We are united as a party …” she jumped in with “No you’re not!’ Later he was treated to: “It’s really just a yes or no.”

Would a robot interviewer have been less confrontational? Probably. Maybe there is hope for us humans yet.