Former PM Liz Truss seen on the phone leaving Downing Street (Picture: Nigel Howard)
Ministers are not taking national security seriously enough, a former head of the Army has said.
Lord Dannatt criticised ‘ill discipline’ after The Mail On Sunday reported that Russian agents had hacked Liz Truss’s phone while she was foreign secretary.
It followed the furore over home secretary Suella Braverman, who shared a confidential document through her personal email address.
Warning that voters would punish such slackness, he told Times Radio: ‘Our leaders must be sufficiently disciplined to only communicate through authorised means, which themselves are encrypted and are secure.
‘We’ve seen it with Suella Braverman, apparently sending messages that she shouldn’t have done on a personal email, and now we get it with Liz Truss.
‘This, frankly, is not good enough, if these people aspire to be in senior positions – positions of leadership – they’ve got to be disciplined, they’ve got to follow the rules, or, frankly, we’ll put other people in their place.’
Retired senior British Army officer Lord Dannatt criticised the government over its poor handling of members of government in breach of security measures (Picture: Getty Images)
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When asked if political leaders should be using certain messaging services, Lord Dannatt, who was chief of the general staff between 2006 and 2009, added: ‘If you want to communicate government business, use an encrypted handheld device, use a secure telephone line, use a secure means of communication.
‘People in senior positions have got access to these secure means of communicating and they should use them. Not doing so is ill discipline and, frankly, reflects very poorly on their judgment.’
New prime minister Rishi Sunak faced questions last week when he reinstated Ms Braverman – dubbed ‘Leaky Sue’ in Whitehall – just six days after she resigned.
The Mail On Sunday said details of the phone breach, apparently discovered in the summer when Ms Truss was running for the Tory leadership, were ‘suppressed’ by then-prime minister Boris Johnson and cabinet secretary Simon Case.
Cyber-spies are believed to have gained access to top-secret exchanges with international partners and private conversations between Ms Truss and her future chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, it reported.
One source said the phone was so heavily compromised, it had now been placed in a locked safe at a secure location. Speaking to Sky News’s Sophy Ridge, the levelling-up secretary Michael Gove declined to deny the reports about Ms Truss’s phone.
Suella Braverman is said to have shared confidential information by way of her own personal email address (Picture: EPA)
‘I don’t know the full details of what security breach, if any, took place,’ he said.
Mr Gove insisted ‘very robust protocols’ were in place to ensure individuals, government and national security were protected. He added: ‘I’m sure Liz, both as foreign secretary and as prime minister, will have followed the advice she was given by the intelligence and security communities.
‘The more that we talk in detail about these things, the more that we risk giving information to people who wish this country and its citizens harm.’
Norway academic ‘unmasked as deep cover Russia spy’
Mikhail Mikhushin went by the name José Assis Giammaria (Picture: Christo Grozev/Bellingcat)
An academic in Norway who colleagues believed to be from Brazil has been accused of being a deep cover Russian spy.
José Assis Giammaria worked at Tromsø university but on Friday was arrested on suspicion of entering Norway on false pretences. Prosecutors named him as Mikhail Mikushin.
Investigative website Bellingcat claimed Mikushin was a colonel with the GRU – Russia’s military intelligence agency – and had spent years crafting a secret undercover identity. An Oslo court remanded him in custody for four weeks.
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the claims raised concerns about ‘cybersecurity, the role of hostile states, but also the allegations about whether a cabinet minister has been using a personal phone for serious government business’.
She added it was essential the issues were investigated and addressed at the very highest level.
Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran called for an independent inquiry, saying the reports raised ‘serious questions for Boris Johnson and those at the heart of this government’. She asked: ‘Was Liz Truss’s phone hacked by Russia; was there a news blackout and, if so, why?
‘If it turns out this information was withheld from the public to protect Liz Truss’s leadership bid, that would be unforgivable.
‘We cannot allow the Conservative party’s political games to be put ahead of the country’s interests and national security.’
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‘People in senior positions have got access to these secure means of communicating and they should use them.’