If you want to extend the logic applied here, you need security checks of everyone who works in the building including those who come in to maintenance work, as they can plant recording devices wherever they work, whether in bathrooms, offices or meeting rooms. Then there’s all of those involved in the ICT systems, volunteer guides and visitors wandering about the building.

How far are we prepared to go in funding this and dealing with the time required to do this for every new person? Perhaps we should just have Chinese like surveillance? Is that the country we want to live in? Or do we just set up secure spaces that are accessed only by those who’ve been cleared? That would be simpler.

Security vetting (clearance level) is based on the persons need to access classified information.
The higher the level of classification – the higher the clearance level and more thorough the security clearance process.
It has always been this way – it has nothing to do with “senior ranks”.
Allowing people to access classified material (or join a classified conversation), without
confirming first that the person holds the proper clearance and has a ‘need to know’, is a different issue entirely.
Suggesting everyone needs a clearance ‘just because’ is poor policy and lazy.
It’s not feasible (without exorbitant cost) and completely undermines proper security practice and procedures.
Everyone who enters Parl. (except tourists/visitors in public spaces), requires a ‘police check’ at minimum to walk around unescorted (at least it was that way 20yrs ago).
This is at odds with “…are not security vetted or cleared in any way”.
I could go on – but I wish people knew what they were talking about.