I did not send the hon. Lady a copy of my speech but I am glad she has jumped into this because I want to move on to that point now.
Finishing on the point I have been making, however, it is good that the Government are moving on this, but I do not think they have moved enough because I am very worried about the word “sensitive”, which the Minister is talking about. I will come back to that, but this move will begin to bring us into line with the United States, who moved on this under their Hikvision Act, which banned it back in 2019. It is worth reminding colleagues, too, that the European Union is also ahead of us on this now, because the President has said that they must do some “de-risking” on the issue of threats from China. So we are coming back into line on doing that and the west is waking up to this threat.
It is not just about all the threats that are clear under the obligations and the data China collects—it data-harvests, by the way. When the Government said that they were banning TikTok from Government telephones, I made the observation that that is not enough because people
might still have TikTok on their own phones. Having run a Department for six years, I know that Ministers’ telephones sit on their desks next to their Government telephones, and therefore the Chinese will be data-harvesting on the back of that. One of my Government colleagues said that he wants to get in touch with the younger people; fat chance they are going to listen to a word they are saying. The truth is he should get rid of TikTok like the rest and be real about it. We must now make it clear that Government telephones and the telephones of Ministers should no longer have TikTok.