Angela Rayner’s department stands accused of breaching the Ministerial Code after wiping out every piece of evidence behind Labour’s controversial new Islamophobia definition, and Conservatives say the public deserves to know why.
Nick Timothy, the Shadow Justice Secretary, has fired off a stinging letter to Will Garton, the top mandarin at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, accusing Rayner’s officials of trampling over transparency rules and possibly breaking the Ministerial Code itself.
The scandal centres on the Working Group tasked with drafting Labour’s “anti-Muslim hostility” definition, a definition the Government wants forced onto every public body, business and charity in the country. Evidence submitted to that group between June and July 2025 was, MHCLG itself admits, the very foundation of the definition published in March 2026. Yet a Freedom of Information request has now revealed that every single submission was deleted by July 2026, wiped from the record, with no explanation offered to Parliament or the public.
Timothy did not mince his words: “Labour has shown an unacceptable disregard for transparency and accountability by deleting the evidence behind a definition which they want the entire public and private sector to adopt.”
He went further still, warning of a possible cover-up: “There’s a cover-up. Extremists almost certainly influenced Labour’s ‘Islamophobia’ definition. But ministers have deleted the evidence. It’s a clear breach of their own rules on keeping important records. And possibly the ministerial code.”
That warning is not made in a vacuum. Timothy’s intervention follows a briefing by the Free Speech Union’s Director of Research and Policy, David Rose, who has alleged that all five members of the Working Group had links to Islamist-linked organisations, including the Muslim Council of Britain and MEND. Those claims have not been independently verified and MHCLG has not responded to them directly — but they raise an obvious and troubling question: if there was nothing to hide, why destroy the paper trail?
Timothy’s letter methodically sets out the case against the department. MHCLG’s own records policy commits it to managing information in a way that “enables transparency and accountability”, a commitment that rings hollow, Conservatives say, given what has happened here. The same policy states that records of “short-term administrative value” must be kept for at least two years, and material of “potential historical value” for at least twenty. A definition ministers are pushing on every institution in the country, Timothy argues, self-evidently clears that bar.
“This is a definition the Government is encouraging all public and private sector organisations to adopt, meaning it could have a role in public sector decision-making for years to come,” he wrote. “It clearly has historical value, and so it is vital to retain the evidence on which it was based.”
He did not spare the department’s conduct: “By deleting all the evidence the working group received and refusing to provide information about which organisations submitted evidence, you have acted with neither transparency nor accountability.”
Timothy has now demanded Garton explain, in writing, how the deletion squares with the department’s own policy and the Ministerial Code, which requires ministers to “act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner,” and states that “information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for doing so.”
MHCLG’s response so far has been thin gruel. A spokesman said only that the department “takes the handling of personal and sensitive information very seriously” and has “clear rules governing the safeguarding, use and retention of personal data” — a statement critics say sidesteps the actual accusation entirely.
Free speech campaigners have long warned that the “anti-Muslim hostility” definition risks functioning as a backdoor blasphemy law, chilling legitimate criticism and debate about Islam, and drawing comparisons to the widely criticised non-crime hate incident regime. With the evidence behind the definition now destroyed, those concerns look set only to grow.
Angela Rayner’s department has serious questions to answer. The Conservative Post will continue to follow this story.
MHCLG has been approached for further comment.
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