British trade minister Chris Bryant said the government had been hacked in October, partly confirming a report in the Sun newspaper, which said a Chinese group had breached systems to access foreign office data.

"There certainly has been a hack," Bryant told Times Radio on Friday.

"I'm not able to say whether it is directly related to Chinese operatives, or indeed, the Chinese state," he added.

The Sun named Storm 1849 as the Chinese cyber gang responsible for the breach, which it said was understood to possibly include tens of thousands of visa details.

The group has been accused of targeting politicians and groups critical of the Chinese government, the newspaper said.

Bryant said that some of the reporting was speculation, and that the government was "on top of" the incident.

"We're fairly confident that there's a low risk of any individual actually being affected by this," he told Sky News.

A government spokesperson said that it had been working to investigate a cyber incident.

"We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously," the spokesperson said.