Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, which news applications staff in his Department are authorised to download and use on their work-provided phones and tablets.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) provides many of its staff with Blackberrys, but for security reasons the ability to download apps has been disabled. Only one FCO-provided smart phone has authorised news apps downloaded to it. These are the Gorkana press-cuttings and BBC news apps. The apps have been downloaded as part of a pilot to test the viability of smart phone devices for work purposes.