Humpty Dumpty, Did Boris Johnson break the Ministerial Code?

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be the master, that’s all.”

A slew of articles with this title have appeared in the papers and on news websites in the wake of revelations that the Prime Minister failed to declare his external contract with James Dyson. The answer to that question, they would have it, is no. The Guardian reported that a former senior civil servant believed that text messages were not covered by the Ministerial Code. Tom Brake, a former Liberal Democrat MP who helped design the lobbying register, wrote a letter asking the Cabinet Secretary to close this ‘gaping hole’ in the Code. Laura Kuenssberg has opined that ‘One of the big problems with rules about how ministers’ [sic] are meant to behave is proliferation of politics being done by text and whatsapp — whatever happened in this case, the rules don’t really cover the reality of how people communicate now’ [emphasis mine]. Doubtless, the Government agrees with this read of the Code. But I was taken aback by this assertion. Is it really the case that the rules do not cover how we communicate now?

So, I read the Code. Only by the most contrived reading of the Code can it possibly be the case that texts do not come under the ambit of the Code. The relevant section is Rule 8.14:

‘Meetings on official business should normally be arranged through Ministers’ departments. A private secretary or official should be…