Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department's policy on (a) Ministers and (b) civil servants using (i) SMS, (ii) WhatsApp, (iii) Signal and (iv) other messaging platforms for (A) sending information and (B) holding discussions relating to departmental business been reviewed or amended in each of the last five years.

The FCO "WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Line, Signal or WeChat Policy" (2017) was reviewed and updated in December 2018 and remained in place throughout 2019. The policy was next updated in August 2020 ahead of the merger with DFID (on 2 September 2020) when it was re-named "FCDO WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Line, Signal or WeChat Policy". The FCDO policy was updated in January 2021 and again in February 2022 when it was re-named the "FCDO Instant Messaging Policy" and included instructions to staff to enable two-factor verification on all instant messaging applications used for business purposes.