Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether his Department has banned the use of DeepSeek.

The Ministry of Defence takes security very seriously in order to protect its personnel, information, and systems. We do not comment on specific details.

The Government has a robust set of security policies in place to oversee how information is handled, within our buildings, on our IT, and by our staff.

We keep these policies under constant review to ensure they are applicable to new technologies.

The AI Playbook for the UK Government outlines that only corporately assured Generative AI tools should be used to process HMG information. The Mobile Device Management policy mandates that any application downloaded onto Government devices must first be approved by security and technology teams. Everyone who works in Government has a duty of confidentiality and a responsibility to safeguard any Government information or data that they process, access or share, and all Government Departments are required to meet a range of mandatory security standards.