I’ve enabled full disk access on both machines now - but it has not changed anything.
It’s definitely isolated to the global inbox (not the database inboxes if they are separated). I’ve wondered if there’s another programme conflicting but it seems odd that the function works everywhere else in DT.
Culturedcode have come back to say: “ I checked with our engineer, who also uses DT from time to time, and he confirmed that this is not a Things bug. It’s due to how DT sends information to us”.
So that’s where I am.