Angela Rayner's department admits it still has the Islamophobia consultation responses — but won't let us see them

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

9 October 2026

Another week brings yet another whiff of sulphur to the Government's handling of the drafting of the official Islamophobia definition — repackaged as "anti-Muslim hostility".

If it was not bad enough when, at the start of the year, a briefing by the Free Speech Union's Director of Policy and Research, David Rose, exposed that all five members of the Working Group tasked with drafting the definition had troubling links to Islamist organisations — including the Muslim Council of Britain and MEND — it has just got even worse for Angela Rayner, the Communities Secretary.

A Freedom of Information request from the Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy, yielded a surprising response from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which said that it had deleted all the responses to the Working Group's consultation. This not only raised questions over whether the ministry had breached the Government's own data policy, but also intensified our belief that extremists were given an opportunity to influence the definition.

This would be particularly shocking given that neither the Free Speech Union nor the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had been asked to submit evidence, despite our shared concerns over the negative impact such a definition would have on free speech, and our view that existing law already protects individuals from religious hatred and discrimination.

Following this stunning admission, the Free Speech Union sent MHCLG a pre-action letter, warning of a legal challenge if it did not disclose who had submitted evidence to the consultation.

After considerable delay, and an investigation by Will Garton, the top civil servant at MHCLG, the ministry has written back to both Mr Timothy and the Free Speech Union to inform us that the department did, in fact, still have the records on its system, but that it was not going to show them to us.

Well, did officials lose these important documents down the back of the sofa, or did they attempt to cover up the possibility that they had allowed extremists to influence a definition that, since its publication in March, has been weaponised against those who criticise, mock, or debate Islam?

This raises a number of important questions on which Angela Rayner, as Secretary of State, must come clean.

• Why did officials originally claim that the data had been deleted?
• If it had been deleted, and subsequently "recovered", why did this happen, and why did the department attempt to hide behind data protection legislation?
• Did the Government allow extremists to influence the drafting of a definition that has had a chilling effect on free speech — and then mislead the public about what happened to the consultation responses?

Either way, the British public deserves to know the truth.

We are one step closer to finding out who helped design Britain's de facto Islamic blasphemy law, eighteen years after Parliament voted to abolish such laws.

Read more in The Telegraph.