A few weeks ago, Westminster went into a frenzy over allegations in The Observer about the relationship between Vote Leave and the campaign group BeLeave. I have seen a copy of a statement that Vote Leave has sent to the Electoral Commission which they believe proves that they did not destroy evidence.
Vote Leave statement:
This statement concerns a serious allegation against Ms Victoria Woodcock recently made by Shahmir Sanni et al, which we have reviewed urgently and needed to respond to more immediately, alleging what was variously described as data deletion on, or removal of access permissions from, Vote leave’s ‘BeLeave’ folder on March 17th 2017. We are now in a position to respond on this matter following a forensic review of Vote Leave’s Google Drive.
Ms Woodcock did not on that date access, delete, amend, or change permissions for any data or files on the BeLeave folder, as alleged by the so-called whistle-blowers and as is purported to be shown in the GIF published by The Observer. Allegations that claim she did are false and are based on misconceptions and misunderstandings of how Google Drive works.
Prior to March 17th 2017 Ms Woodcock was the Data Controller for Vote Leave and, in preparation for closedown, the majority of documents on its drive had been incorporated by her into a super-folder in her name. As a next step in the closedown process, it was decided that Ms Woodcock should hand over her responsibilities on March 17th 2017, and accordingly, on that date, her access to the Vote Leave Gdrive was removed. Later that day, continuing the closedown, at the direction of the Board and as a part of a standard data protection exercise, permissions were removed from folders across the Gdrive (of which the BeLeave folder was a part) for a group of high-level users (this group included, but was by no means merely, Ms Woodcock and the other two individuals shown in the GIF).
Ms Woodcock’s name appears as the user making the changes because she had been the super-administrator and data controller, so the “Victoria Woodcock” account was a convenient one to use, to achieve best visibility across the G Drive; the changes were in fact made by an authorised Vote Leave administrator, using her account, at a time when Ms Woodcock had had her access removed so would therefore not even have known that this activity was taking place. Independent IT consultants have verified that no BeLeave files were deleted from the folder. Permissions were removed, not by Victoria Woodcock; from folders across the drive, not just the BeLeave folder; and for a wider group than the three individuals shown in the Observer’s GIF.
These allegations against Ms Woodcock are therefore groundless.
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