Dear Cabinet Office,

It is evident by virtue of the official Parliamentary record that at the end of February 2021, your office was asked to contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) - In this respect, I would refer you to oral evidence given by the then Prime Minister's Chief Advisor, Mr. Dominic Cummings, on 26th May 2021, in which it was stated as follows,

"At the end of February, I had got the Cabinet Office to call the ICO and basically put out a notice that just said, “If you are working on covid, assume that what you are doing is legal, in terms of GDPR.” That was a completely extraordinary thing; no one even knew if that itself was legal—it almost definitely wasn’t."

The above is a verbatim extract taken from the oral evidence (which is supplemented and confirmed by official video-recorded evidence) recorded in paragraph Q1064 of an official Parliamentary transcript which is on public record and accessible at https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevi...

In the circumstances, please provide;

(1) Copies of all communications (electronic or otherwise) passing between the Cabinet Office and the ICO's Office and also all internal communications within the Cabinet Office (including any between the Cabinet Office and Mr. Dominic Cummings) which relate to this matter referred to in the transcript extract aforementioned and

(2) Provide confirmation that the Cabinet Office is aware that regulators (such as, for example, the Information Commissioner's Office) are supposed to be allowed and indeed have a duty to operate independently and impartially and that external interference such as that highlighted above is inappropriate.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

A. I. Clayton