Fake letter from Cabinet Office spreads on social media

A fake “leaked” letter claiming to come from the Cabinet Office has been spread on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, apparently showing that “damage to the wider economy” is a government priority, and disorder will be quelled with the help of a “public health campaign”.

The letter, which is dated 3 November 2019, contains a Freedom of Information (FOI) reference number, and claims to be an amendment to a memorandum circulated to ministers on “Key Treasury objectives” for 2020-23, for the consideration of the Treasury and Home Office. It’s unclear what this has to do with an FOI request.

The letter says that “damage to the wider economy” will only be achievable by imposing measures to prevent trade “amongst the commerce and service industries”, and that public disorder caused by these measures “will be discouraged by a public health campaign that will bring on board a mixture of health information, analysis and data presented by government and Independent institutions. All ministers will be complicit in the publication of the health directives using public and private media organizations [sic].”

There are a few immediate clues that this is fake. The letter includes errors, such as not capitalising certain words (e.g. “treasury and Home office” rather than “Treasury and Home Office”) and uses Americanised spellings (“organizations” instead of “organisations”) which you would not expect to receive in official communications from the Cabinet Office. 

It also states that the information shared “remains strictly within the terms of The Official Secrets Act 1911(Section 1) and Official Secrets Act 1989 (Prescription) Order 1990”. The information contained in this letter would be unlikely to fall under the Official Secrets Act even if it was real.

Although it contains an FOI reference number, it does not appear to be trying to mimic an FOI response. If we compare this fake FOI response to other genuine FOI responses from the Cabinet Office dated from around the same time (end of 2019), we can see it is also missing other information that we would expect to be included in an FOI response. It does not begin by stating the query submitted and does not confirm that the information is held by the Cabinet Office. The Cabinet Office confirmed to Full Fact that this is not a real FOI response. 

Another sign the letter is fake is the FOI reference number provided, FOI322150.

Full Fact was unable to find the real FOI with this reference number.  We did find the FOI response for reference number FOI322178 which, due to the similarity of the reference number is likely to be from a similar time as any FOI with the reference number used in the letter. This was submitted back in December 2015 - four years before the date of this supposed “leak”. 

It makes little sense that a letter claimed to have been circulated among ministers in late 2019 about key objectives from 2020 to 2023 would make reference to an FOI that was likely submitted back in 2015.