The Cabinet Office is refusing to release the findings of an investigation it’s concluded into which senior civil servant – with access to their official Twitter account – posted an anti-Dominic Cummings Tweet on the day of his post-Barnard Castle Rose Garden press appearance. Ironically exactly the sort of biased, left-wing civil service culture Cummings was desperate to reform…

An FoI request asking for an update to their investigation has revealed the information regarding the internal investigation, launched in May 2020, does now exist and is held by the department, however they are refusing to release it on grounds that disclosure:

“would be likely, to prejudice the exercise of the Cabinet Office’s functions”

They won’t even say whether the person who Tweeted that the PM’s office were “truth twisters”, and that his defence of Cummings was “arrogant and offensive”, falls below the standards of “proper conduct”.

Unsurprisingly the legal request for information also failed to yield the name of the person responsible, refusing even to say whether that information is held by the Cabinet Office. The release goes on to imply the department’s head of FoI’s believes that releasing the name of the anti-Cummings civil servant would undermine their ability to investigate future acts of improper conduct. Desperate, self-serving obfuscation…