Hague: GCHQ modified my phone to stop bugging

William Hague has revealed that GCHQ, the British intelligence gathering operation in Cheltenham, has modified his telephone to stop people bugging it – the Chinese especially.

The foreign secretary made his remarks during a dinner of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservatives held in Shepherd’s Bush last week.

While William Hague was touring the tables before making a speech one of the guests, the journalist Miles Goslett mentioned the recent story that the US government have been bugging Angela Merkel’s calls.  Was Hague worried that they might be listening in to his phone conversations as well?

Miles Goslett tells me that Hague replied: “I think my phone has been modified by GCHQ enough that it’d be difficult [to bug], but I’m sure the Chinese have had a good go [at bugging].”

Strangely, the Foreign Office tried to deny at the weekend that William Hague made such remarks. “The account of what the foreign secretary is alleged to have said is inaccurate,” a spokesman told the Mail on Sunday on Saturday.

That was very strange, for Miles assures me the exchanges were also witnessed by three of his friends.  And tonight the Foreign Office are taking a rather different line.

“The foreign secretary was making a light-hearted comment, as is clear from the context,” a Foreign Office spokesman told me.  “We are not going to go into any more detail than that.”

In a another aside at the dinner, incidentally, William Hague provoked cheers from his audience when he described being in coalition as “utterly tiresome”.  And yet Hague was part of the Conservative team which negotiated the coalition agreement back in 2010.

Follow @michaellcrick on Twitter