Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy demands answers after the Government says evidence submitted to its anti-Muslim hostility working group no longer exists, leaving the public unable to scrutinise who influenced a definition ministers are encouraging organisations across Britain to adopt
A Labour government that repeatedly talks about transparency now faces an extraordinarily simple question: what happened to the evidence behind one of its most sensitive new policies?
Nick Timothy, the Conservative MP for West Suffolk and Shadow Justice Secretary, has written to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government demanding answers after, he says, the department claimed that evidence submitted to the Government’s Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hostility had been deleted.
Posting his letter publicly, Mr Timothy asked:
“Did Labour allow extremists to help draft their ‘Islamophobia’ definition? They’ve deleted every response to their consultation. It’s a clear breach of the rules and a cover-up.”
That is Mr Timothy’s allegation, and it is important to distinguish it from what has so far been established.
But the underlying questions are serious.
The Government established an independent working group in February 2025 to develop a definition of anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia. It subsequently ran a five-week Call for Evidence between 16 June and 20 July 2025, seeking submissions from organisations and individuals.
In March this year, ministers adopted a new non-statutory definition of “anti-Muslim hostility”. The Government’s own account says the working group conducted a “significant evidence gathering exercise”, including the Call for Evidence, and explicitly states that this informed its private advice and formed the basis of the definition the Government adopted.
That definition is not merely gathering dust in Whitehall. The Government says it will use it when developing and revising relevant policy and is encouraging organisations, employers and sectors to adopt it too.
Which makes what happened to the underlying evidence a matter of legitimate public interest.
Where has the evidence gone?
In his letter dated 18 August, Mr Timothy tells interim permanent secretary Will Garton that the department has claimed the information “no longer exists”.
He writes that the department has refused to identify the organisations invited to contribute, has not published the evidence submitted and has not published the working group’s final report.
Mr Timothy has not suddenly developed an interest in the issue. Parliamentary records show that as far back as October 2025 he was asking ministers whether they would publish the working group’s final report and disclose the people and organisations invited to contribute. The ministerial answer at the time said the group’s independent advice had been submitted to ministers, but did not provide the information Timothy sought.
Now, according to Timothy, the department says the evidence itself has been deleted.
If that account is correct, Labour has a considerable transparency problem on its hands.
This is not some collection of disposable administrative emails about the office Christmas party. It is evidence gathered specifically to inform a controversial definition that the Government has subsequently adopted and is encouraging bodies outside government to use.
The Government itself says that evidence gathering formed the basis of the definition.
Yet the public is apparently unable to inspect that evidence.
We cannot see who submitted it.
We cannot independently examine the arguments they made.
We cannot assess how representative the contributors were.
And, crucially, we cannot establish from the underlying submissions whether organisations regarded by government as unsuitable for engagement had any influence on the process.
That does not prove that extremists helped shape the definition. There is currently no evidence establishing that they did.
But that is precisely why preserving and disclosing an adequate audit trail matters. Transparency allows such suspicions either to be substantiated or laid to rest.
Government’s own rules expect scrutiny
There is another awkward problem for Labour.
Cabinet Office consultation principles state that consultation should “facilitate scrutiny”. They say departments should explain the responses received from consultees, explain how those responses informed policy and state how many responses were received. They also say government responses should ordinarily be published within 12 weeks, or an explanation given for why that is not possible.
More recent government guidance on Calls for Evidence, updated only last month, tells officials to plan from the outset how submissions will be received and stored, how information will be handled and how evidence will be analysed and synthesised transparently. It also specifically calls for contributions and evidence to be acknowledged and cited.
Against those standards, the questions raised by Timothy deserve proper answers.
Was all the original evidence really deleted?
If so, when?
Under what retention policy?
Who authorised its deletion?
Does a summary, analysis, database, correspondence trail or other record of the submissions survive?
How many submissions were received?
Which organisations submitted evidence?
And why was material used to help construct a government-wide definition apparently disposed of before the public could properly scrutinise it?
These are not questions about whether hatred against Muslims should be tolerated. It should not.
British Muslims have exactly the same right as every other British citizen to live free from violence, intimidation, harassment and unlawful discrimination. Indeed, the Government reports that 4,478 religious hate crimes targeting Muslims were recorded in the year to March 2025.
Nor should legitimate criticism of the process be confused with hostility towards Muslims.
The issue here is government accountability.
When Whitehall asks outsiders for evidence, uses that exercise to help formulate policy and then encourages institutions across the country to adopt the resulting definition, the public is entitled to know how that definition came about.
A definition with potentially enormous reach
Ministers emphasise that their definition is non-statutory and does not change criminal law. The published guidance also expressly protects criticism, ridicule and criticism of Islam or other religions, as well as legitimate academic and political debate.
Those safeguards matter.
But the Government simultaneously describes the definition as a tool that can inform policy, staff training, guidance, education and institutional responses, and is actively encouraging organisations across the public, private and third sectors to consider adopting it.
Its practical influence could therefore extend considerably beyond a page on GOV.UK.
That makes transparency more important, not less.
The public should be able to understand who influenced the Government, what arguments were considered and why ministers ultimately settled upon the wording they adopted.
Instead, we are being asked to trust the process while apparently being denied access to much of the material needed to scrutinise it.
For a government, “trust us” is not an adequate substitute for evidence.
Labour needs to come clean
Timothy has now asked the permanent secretary to establish whether the deletion was simply the result of departmental processes or whether ministers played any role.
He has also asked the department, if the original submissions really are gone, to publish a list of organisations that contributed and confirm whether any organisations or individuals subject to a government non-engagement policy participated.
Those are reasonable questions.
There may ultimately be an innocent administrative explanation. Perhaps records were destroyed pursuant to a predetermined retention policy while summaries or other records were preserved. Perhaps the department can demonstrate that the evidence was properly analysed and that no inappropriate organisation influenced the process.
If so, ministers should publish the relevant information and settle the matter.
But if the department genuinely solicited evidence on an issue this sensitive, used it to inform a definition with nationwide application, repeatedly declined requests to identify contributors and publish the working group’s report, and then destroyed the underlying submissions before they could be scrutinised, the public is entitled to ask how on earth that was allowed to happen.
Labour cannot simultaneously tell the country that its definition is important enough for government departments, employers and organisations to use while behaving as though the evidence behind it is none of the public’s business.
This is bigger than one definition and bigger than one political argument.
It goes to the basic relationship between government and governed.
Who advises ministers? What evidence influences policy? What competing arguments were considered? And can Parliament, journalists and the public check the answers?
Nick Timothy has put those questions squarely before the department.
Now Labour needs to answer them.
Because when the evidence behind government policy disappears, telling the British public simply to trust Whitehall is nowhere near good enough.
