Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to the letter of 15 September 2017 from the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office summarising the findings of the 2017 BPD Audit, for how long data gathered from social media services is held by GCHQ before being deleted; and how large the bulk dataset holding that data is.

It is the longstanding policy of the Government not to comment on intelligence matters.