Mark Spencer jokes that ALL ministers speak on personal phones after Liz Truss row
Mark Spencer #MarkSpencer
A minister joked there might be ‘some little man in China listening to me and my wife’ today after it emerged Liz Truss’s phone had been hacked.
Mark Spencer said all ministers used ‘personal’ phones but stressed he was ‘careful’ and never discussed government business.
The comments came after extraordinary revelations in the Mail on Sunday that the ex-PM’s personal mobile phone was hacked by agents suspected of working for the Kremlin.
Cyber-spies are believed to have gained access to top-secret exchanges with key international partners when she was Foreign Secretary, as well as private conversations with close ally Kwasi Kwarteng.
One source told the newspaper the phone was so heavily compromised that it has now been placed in a locked safe inside a secure Government location.
Boris Johnson is said to have been informed when he was premier, but a news blackout was put in place to minimise damage.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman is also embroiled in a separate row about use of her private email account to circulate sensitive government information.
A Whitehall source said all ministers involved in national security would be expected to attend fresh training with the security services this week ‘to ensure everyone is aware how this material should be handled’.
Ministers will be warned they should never use their personal mobile phones to conduct Government business as they are likely to be the target of hostile states such as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
Mr Spencer told Sky News ministers get ‘quite a lot of briefing’ from the security services on ‘what to do and what not to do’.
Asked if he uses his Government phone for personal business, he replied: ‘I do not, no.’
He added: ‘You do get quite a lot of briefing from the security services on what to do and what not to do. So, you know, it’s quite important to get that right.
‘I don’t want to comment too much on it because, of course, what I don’t want to do is tell the world exactly what that briefing says. But you do get a lot of support when you become a Government minister on what is appropriate and inappropriate as a Government minister.’
He said the ‘super-careful’. ‘We all talk on personal phones don’t we. I ring my wife, maybe there’s some little man in China listening to the conversation between me and my wife, but you know, you’ve just got to be careful about what information you use on which phone…
‘There’s a lot of people that want to do this country harm, which is why you’ve got to be careful.’
Pauline Neville-Jones, former chairman of Britain’s joint intelligence committee, yesterday said she was ‘not at all tolerant of the notion that it’s OK for ministers to use private mobile phones’.
