Isle of Wight Conservative MP Bob Seely wonders if he is "the most hacked MP in Britain" following a British armed forces payroll data breach.

Mr Seely’s statement follows the personal information of an unknown number of serving UK military personnel being accessed in a ‘significant data breach’.

It is understood that the hack targeted a payroll system used by the Ministry of Defence, which includes names and bank details of both current and some past armed forces members.

Mr Seely, who served in the British Army in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and during the ISIS campaigns, said in the House of Commons: “It is a little frustrating to be told that one’s bank account details and National Insurance number are winging their way to Beijing or wherever they’ve gone.

“And considering I was also caught up in the Ipac breach, I’m wondering if I’m currently in the running to be the most hacked MP in Britain.”

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps responded: “I want to thank him [Mr Seely] for his service, and I’m sorry he had to receive that phone call about what’s happened.

“I want to stress, actually, that we do not believe the data has necessarily been stolen, so there’s a danger here of just running a couple of steps ahead.

“What we’ve done is to respond with the eight-point plan as if it has been stolen, because we think that that is the best position to put everybody, himself included, in given the seriousness of this potential breach.”

Intervening, Mr Seely said: “Do we actually know what war is nowadays?

“Because clearly, there’s conventional war, which we recognise, but what he’s talking about is proxy war, and we were discussing earlier the cyber-attacks and China’s role and Russia’s role in this sort of hybrid war and the integration of military and non-military.

"Are we joined up enough in this country to be able to fight these modern conflicts, which are part military and part non-military? And do we actually understand what conflict is in this century?”

It is currently unknown who is behind the hack, but Mr Shapps told MPs that the government had reason to believe the hack ‘was the suspected work of a malign actor’, with ministers pointing the finger at China. 

China describes the suggestion as "fabricated and malicious slander."