Boris Johnson’s mobile phone number was freely available on the internet for the last 15 years, according to reports.
A contact number for Mr Johnson was listed on the bottom of a press release when he was still shadow higher education minister in 2006 – a document which was still available online in 2021.
Reports earlier this month suggested senior officials had called on Mr Johnson to change his number because of concerns about how many people contacted him directly.
Downing Street declined to comment on the report – first revealed on the Popbitch gossip website – that Mr Johnson’s phone number was available online to anyone who searched for it.
The press release, which related to his work as shadow higher education minister, invited journalists to contact Mr Johnson directly on either a Commons office number or his mobile.
Attempts to call the number on Thursday night were met with an automated message saying the phone was “switched off” and an invitation to “please try later or send a text”.
The Prime Minister’s use of his mobile phone has been in the spotlight after text message exchanges with entrepreneur Sir James Dyson and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman were leaked.
Earlier this month, The Daily Telegraph reported that Simon Case, the head of the civil service, suggested to the Prime Minister that he change numbers because his current one is too widely known.
Former UK national security adviser Lord Ricketts said it was in Boris Johnson’s “own interest to be much more digitally secure than seems to be the case now” following reports his mobile phone number was available online.
“I’m talking really of the most senior politicians in sensitive positions, whose phone conversations might well include sensitive material, commercially sensitive material, people trying to lobby them for favours, or tax advantages, or talks with foreign leaders,” he told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme.
“And there, I think you do have to accept, just as you do – you can’t just walk around on your own and talk to anyone you like – equally you shouldn’t be in a position where anyone who once had your phone number can get to you when you are a Prime Minister.
“And that’s one of the inconveniences of being prime minister but it’s for their own sake and their own protection really, that access to them ought to be controlled and monitored.
“So that there can be no suspicion of favours asked for and done or the kind of things that we are now seeing with the exchanges that we see with James Dyson.
“I think it’s for the Prime Minister’s own interest to be much more digitally secure than seems to be the case now.”
