Yvette Cooper has rejected calls backed by Harriet Harman for a ban on disappearing messages for politicians, arguing some ministers use the feature to protect international relations.
The foreign secretary said “lots of people”, including herself, had WhatsApp’s auto-delete tool turned on for some exchanges.
It comes amid a row over the emergence of exchanges between Lord Peter Mandelson and Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones which were absent from a tranche of documents relating to his appointment as US ambassador.
The documents were released by government after requests for transparency, after Mandelson as sacked from his Washington job over his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Jones, who reportedly told the disgraced peer he was “so sorry” on the day he was sacked, has said he was among those who may have lost access to some material by not backing up when switching devices or turning on disappearing messages.
The revelations have prompted calls for a ban on ministers using the feature, but the foreign secretary did not support this idea when asked.
“I think lots of people use disappearing for some things – I’m no exception, I don’t think anybody else is either,” she said.
“I have seen some foreign ministers who use disappearing messages for all their communications, in order to prevent international relations being passed on separately.
“But no – I think there’s clear guidance that we need to follow to make sure that all decisions are properly recorded and anything that needs to be properly recorded is.”
However, Harman the former deputy Labour leader, who Prime Minister Sir Keir Starer recently appointed as an adviser on women and girls, said on Thursday that the use of the feature made her “suspicious”.
Suggesting it should be banned for politicians, she said: “Why would you disappear the message unless you have something to hide?”
Downing Street has suggested the prime minister retains confidence in his chief secretary despite the fallout over messages, published in The Spectator magazine.
Jones is said to have written: “You’ve been doing such a great job, and you worked wonders with Trump. I’m so sorry about today.”
He also appeared to criticise Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Commons Chief Whip Jonathan Reynolds and prominent Labour MP Angela Rayner, who were all Cabinet colleagues at the time, in another message after Lord Mandelson said growth plans were in their hands.
“It doesn’t fill you with confidence,” he reportedly replied.
Starmer and Reeves are among others in government who have confirmed they use disappearing messages on WhatsApp.
Asked by reporters on a visit to Yorkshire why Jones’ messages were not included in more than 1,000 pages of the so-called Mandelson files released by the government on Monday, the prime minister did not answer directly.
“We went through a process, it was a transparency process, and the point of that really was to put everything before Parliament, and people can then see the material and make their minds up,” he said.
The files have been redacted in a number of ways, including where the International and Security Committee (ISC) agreed the information would be prejudicial to national security or international relations.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said she does not use disappearing messages on her work phone, but revealed on Thursday she does use them on her personal devices.
She told reporters: “For personal phones, I do use disappearing messages because I get a lot of spam and junk. As much as I enjoy the Instagram links and TikToks that people try to send me, it does clog up my phone.”
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