To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what his Department's policy is on updating the (a) Defence News and (b) Defence News Blog section of the Ministry of Defence Website during off-duty hours and at weekends.

The Defence News section of the MOD website and the Defence News Blog aim to provide the latest news and information about UK armed forces and MOD activity to the defence community and the public. Both can be updated outside of office hours and at weekends through a "duty officer" system.

Out-of-hours updates are generally confined to (i) important, unplanned developments such as operational fatalities and (ii) coverage of significant, pre-planned events and announcements which occur outside of office hours, such as Remembrance Sunday.

Although closely interlinked, the Defence News section of the MOD website and the Defence News Blog are separate websites, and hosted separately. If one site is unavailable for any reason, any necessary updates can be added to the other, giving a capability which is robust to technical outages, planned or unplanned.