15:01

Following Amber Rudd’s comments about security services needing access to communications secured with end-to-end encryption, such as WhatsApp (see 12.26pm), one of her junior ministers, Ben Wallace, has hinted there might be other solutions available.

Wallace, the security minister, told a fringe event that he believed tech companies could do more to assist on the issue. He said:

There are other ways I can’t talk about in which we think they can help us more without necessarily entering into end-to-end encryption. We think they can do more.

Wallace said end-to-end encryption was a worry for his department:

We’ve seen on a daily basis that end-to-end encryption protects paedophiles, it protects organised crime. It is very disturbing in my job when I know that we know two paedophiles are talking, we think they’re doing something about snatching a child, but we can’t get into that communication.

He would have said more, but had to dash off to answer a phone call – and not just any call. Before the event began Wallace had warned that there was an anti-terrorism exercise taking place and he might have to take a call from the government’s Cobra security committee. Not a bad excuse for leaving early.