The Evidence Wasn't Deleted. So Publish It For months, the government's answer to who shaped its new definition of anti-Muslim hostility was simple: the evidence was gone. It never was. Will Garton, director general at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, has confirmed in writing that more extensive searches, including technical work by departmental IT specialists, found that "the underlying Call for Evidence response dataset is still held on Departmental systems." Nick Timothy was first told the material wasn't held. He kept pushing. The department eventually discovered that it was. This isn't some incidental pile of correspondence. The government's own published account calls the working group's evidence gathering "significant" and says the Call for Evidence "forms the basis of the definition that the government is now adopting." If this evidence underpins a definition ministers want organisations across Britain to use, the public has an obvious interest in knowing who submitted it and how it shaped the outcome, personal data protected where the law requires. Questions about the process predate the dataset reappearing. Rayner appointed Dominic Grieve to chair the supposedly independent group despite Grieve having written the foreword to the 2018 APPG report proposing the earlier Islamophobia definition. Akeela Ahmed, a panel member, had publicly championed that same definition. Harder to find among the five members is any voice for the free-speech or secularist case. Sir John Jenkins, a former ambassador the group approached, refused to take part, believing its direction already appeared predetermined. There's also a question ministers haven't properly answered. In June, James Cleverly asked specifically whether MEND, CAGE, the Muslim Association of Britain or the Muslim Council of Britain had submitted written evidence. The government replied that the consultation was open to everyone, that the department hadn't engaged with those groups, and that the working group hadn't met them. Cleverly hadn't asked who they'd met. He asked who had submitted evidence. That distinction matters. An organisation doesn't need to sit across a table from Grieve to shape an open consultation. It only needs to send a submission. That alone doesn't prove the process was captured, even though it might look that way. It does mean transparency matters more, not less, and the records now survive to provide it. Publish the submissions, redact what the law requires, and let the public see who tried to shape this definition. The deeper problem goes beyond Islamophobia. A department built national policy on what it calls a substantial evidence exercise. When an opposition MP sought the material, officials said it wasn't held. Only further pressure and a forensic search found it was. Garton's letter says ministers weren't involved in handling or retention decisions, so there's no evidence yet that ministers ordered anything concealed. There's every reason to ask how an official FOI process missed evidence important enough to justify government policy. The government can no longer claim disclosure is impossible because the evidence vanished. Its own director general confirms it survives. If the process was as rigorous as ministers maintain, publishing it should only prove that. If it wasn't, the public deserves to know that too. The question was never really where the evidence went. It's why, now the government admits it still has it, the country still isn't allowed to see it. "Rayner appointed Dominic Grieve to chair the supposedly independent group despite Grieve having written the foreword to the 2018 APPG report proposing the earlier Islamophobia definition."