David Cameron has spoken of how he detected a hoax caller after the anonymous man apologised to him for waking him up at 11am on Sunday.
In his public comments, after Downing Street admitted the caller had tricked the No 10 switchboard into connecting him to the prime minister, Cameron laughed off the incident but said that a review would be carried out to try to avoid a repeat.
Speaking during a pre-election visit to the Liberal Democrat-held marginal seat of Eastleigh in Hampshire, the prime minister said he answered the call on his Blackberry during a family walk in his Oxfordshire constituency. But he realised the call was fraudulent when the manclaiming to be GCHQ director Robert Hannigan setting up a conference call with the prime minister and his staff apologised for waking him at 11am.
Cameron said: “On the hoax telephone call – these things do happen from time to time. It is right, when they do, we properly look at security and try to avoid them happening.
“What happened on this occasion was – and this is the only occasion it has happened in this way to me – having had a day trip to Saudi Arabia I was taking my family for a very nice walk in my constituency. I had Florence [his youngest daughter] on my back to add to the exercise regime that I am undertaking.
“My Blackberry went in my pocket, I answered it and it claimed to be a conference call established, which I do very frequently, between the head of GCHQ and some of the staff in my office. A voice came through, a voice I didn’t recognise. The voice said that he was sorry to wake me up which I thought was strange as it was 11am.
“So I quite rapidly asked who is this, to which the answer came it is a hoax call and so I pressed the red button on the Blackberry which ended the call. That is what happened. So no harm was done, no national security was breached. But it is important, when these things happen, to make sure we do everything we can to put in place in systems to weed out hoax calls. But every now and again I suspect these things will happen.”
The prime minister’s light-hearted remarks suggest that he was not unduly worried about the episode because national security was not breached. In a separate incident, the hoaxer managed to obtain Hannigan’s mobile phone number after telephoning GCHQ.
