Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent assessment his Department has made of who was responsible for the cyberattack on Electoral Commission systems in October 2022; and how many people were affected.

It is, and always will be, an absolute priority for this government to protect our democratic and electoral processes. Since the Electoral Commission reported the incident to the National Cyber Security Centre the government has worked closely with the Commission, providing expertise and support to deal with this incident and guard against the risk of future attacks.

The Government does not routinely comment on incident specifics for operational reasons.

The Commission has stated that the information accessible during the cyber attack included the names and addresses of anyone in Great Britain who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, and anyone registered in Northern Ireland in 2018. The registers did not include the details of those registered anonymously.