Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential positive impact of GCHQ’s cloud computing contract with Amazon Web Services on the domestic cloud sector.

The national security community does not routinely avow details of the technology partnerships it enters into. Releasing details concerning national security technology can have significant security implications as would be the case in this scenario. Any contract can be fully scrutinised through the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.

We have a long-standing, 75-year intelligence relationship with the United States, which is invaluable to each country's national security. The alliance has clear guidelines for how we share communication, translation, analysis, and code breaking information, and has helped protect our countries and allies for decades. Any move to cloud does not change this agreement.