Should the government review the use of non-corporate communication channels by public bodies?

A modest win for the Yes camp, 25 votes to 19, on a question that sounds procedural but touches the raw nerve of WhatsApp diplomacy and Covid-era text messages that Whitehall would rather forget. This was not a landslide; it was a majority built on the older half of the electorate here rather than a national consensus.

The generational split is the story. Under-35s were unmoved or hostile — the 16-24s broke against by two to one and the 25-34s split dead even, 7-7 — while support climbed steadily with age, peaking at 70 per cent among 55-64 year-olds. It reads like a divide between those who came of age distrusting institutions on principle and those who remember, and perhaps resent, the informality of pandemic-era governance.

Gender cut the other way just as sharply: men backed the review 60 to 40, women rejected it 60 to 40. That inversion, layered on top of the age gradient, suggests this was less a verdict on transparency itself than on who gets to police it — echoes of the same trust-in-institutions fault line that runs through debates on the ICO's own powers and the wider row over ministers' private messaging.

A review nobody much disputes in principle, then, but one that splits neatly along the same lines as almost every other question about how power should be watched.