Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for enabling this debate because it gives us an opportunity to puncture the hysteria and moral panic that seem to have overwhelmed most of the British political class in recent years about disinformation, misinformation, foreign interference and all that. The noble Lord said something like, “I hope we all agree we have a problem”. It depends what he means by that. I agree that there is certainly a problem in disdain for politics and politicians. I do not agree that foreign interference, disinformation and all those sort of things are at the root of it. For after all, there has always been disinformation and foreign interference. It is not new; only the panic is new. There have always been people who want to harm us in this country.
Many of your Lordships, like me, lived through at least the end of the Cold War. Have we forgotten that the Soviet Union spent 40 years trying to undermine British politics and British society? Then, there really was a real threat, and it even recruited a few Labour MPs to help it, if I remember correctly, but we did not clamp down on free speech to deal with that. Free speech was much freer then than it is now. We allowed people to advocate all sorts of terrible ideologies because we had confidence in the British people’s ability not to take them seriously. Now, seemingly, all that has changed.
I expect a few noble Lords are familiar with Google Ngram, which allows you to track when words suddenly started to be used in public debate. These words all took off in around the middle of the last decade: misinformation suddenly shoots up from the middle of 2015; disinformation, even though many of us think of it as a Cold War concept, was hardly used, but now it has shot up as a concept and a usage; nobody had heard of “fake news” until it shot up as an idea in the middle of the last decade.
Was there some new external threat in the middle of the last decade—something new and dramatic that we had never faced before? I do not think there was. What we had was the election of President Trump and the Brexit referendum. A tide of hysteria was unleashed on the back of that—a fear of voters and a belief that they could not be trusted to make good decisions. There was endless worrying about malign actors, foreign agents, bot farms, weaponised Facebook and all that sort of thing. Politicians were forced to confront that many people did not agree with them. Rather than deal with that, they decided to blame the voters and take the view that, in the social media world, the ill-informed populace was easy prey to false beliefs, conspiracies, malign state interference and all the rest of it. Too many people, I am afraid, seem to believe that ordinary voters are too stupid to make their minds up about things or to distinguish between the true and the false. They think it is the Government’s job to do it for them instead.
We have a case in point in the absurd and dangerous Rycroft review, referred to earlier, which was written not to identify problems but to justify unnecessary and authoritarian solutions. Mr Rycroft worries about the
“coarsening of the political debate in a toxic online environment”
and that
“even marginal impacts could have a disproportionate bearing on … democratic discourse … confidence in our democracy”
and so on. He then uses this to justify an entirely illiberal clampdown on political party financing. Unfortunately, the Government seem to be taking this seriously. If implemented, this approach will do much more harm to our ability to run a democracy than any number of distasteful posts on X or Bluesky.
The problem with all this is that the worst and most difficult to correct disinformation and misinformation comes not from the general public but from the Government. That is the problem with government-based solutions. The list is long: the 45-minute dossier; the hoax around supposed collusion with Russia; the prediction that an economic crash was inevitable if we left the EU; the Hunter Biden laptop; the refusal to countenance the lab leak theory about Covid; the belief that wearing a flimsy mask could protect you from the disease; the reluctance, for a long time, to drop the belief that the Covid vaccine stopped the transmission of the virus; and, most recently, the reluctance to acknowledge the background of Axel Rudakubana and the fact that he was in possession of an al-Qaeda manual and tried to make ricin.
Governments are not to be trusted on this stuff. They promote contested issues as facts all the time and expect people simply to fall in line. This is why their seeming plans to require social media to promote only trusted sources are so dangerous. The BBC may, for some reason, still be the most trusted news provider in the country, but look at its record—the fabrications on Israel/Gaza, its obsession with trans issues and its fabrications of elements of the famous Trump documentary. No single organisation is to be trusted.
If there is a lack of confidence in our democracy and institutions, and I am sure there is, it is because they do not deserve it. Governments do not listen to voters’ clear messages. They block clear votes. Your Lordships’ House—dare I say it—and many others might have had a role to play during the Brexit era in undermining that confidence. Politicians and Governments have not delivered. The responsibility for the problem rests with politicians and institutions. It will not be made better by concealing things from voters and clamping down on social media.
The only solution to the problem we have is taking people seriously, allowing debate, being honest about things, letting voters make their own minds up and having confidence that they will be able to sift true from false, as they always have done. Freedom, free speech, a free society—those are the tools. Say no to the platonic guardians—it is the only sound basis. Trust the people.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I am here today because my noble friend Lady Anderson had a minor accident and has been incapacitated for a couple of days. That is why noble Lords have me instead of her, I am afraid. I am sure the House would want me to wish her well and a speedy recovery from her injury.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for securing this very important and—as the noble Lord, Lord Pack, said—timely debate, and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part this afternoon for the excellent quality of the debate. It has been an incredibly valuable discussion to listen to.
I hope I speak on behalf of the whole of your Lordships’ House when I say that these matters require us to put the protection of our precious democracy at the front of our minds. Parliamentary debates on these issues offer a unique opportunity to raise awareness of the threats to the public and signal our unyielding resolve across the nation to confront foreign threat actors.
This Government’s first duty, as is the duty of all Governments, is to keep our country safe. We are absolutely committed to taking all measures necessary to expose and disrupt attempts to interfere with our sovereign affairs. That is why the Government’s counter political interference and espionage action plan was announced in November to ensure that our national politics will remain a significant challenge for any foreign actors who try to target us.
This plan is structured around three core pillars: delivering an enduring campaign to strengthen awareness of the threat; strengthening our legislative levers to increase transparency and impose costs on threat actors; and making it harder for foreign states to operate through proxies. Through this plan we are equipping everyone, such as brilliant local councillors, MPs and hard-working parliamentary staff, with the tools they need to help recognise, report and resist foreign espionage activity wherever they find it.
The guidance that the National Protective Security Authority published in October last year specifically highlighted the full range of vectors and tactics that foreign states, including Russia and China, are using to target people involved in our politics. Since then, we have brought together the director-general of MI5 and the CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre to brief the chief executives of UK political parties on the developing threat picture.
We continue to expose the evolving tradecraft that foreign states are using, and we are strengthening UK resilience: earlier this month, MI5, alongside our Five Eyes allies, issued an intelligence bulletin to warn about the ways in which China’s military intelligence is targeting Five Eyes Governments and military personnel to gain access to sensitive or privileged information.
The next stage of the counter political interference and espionage action plan is focused on developing a programme of work to make it harder for foreign actors to use think tanks and lobby groups as channels to interfere with policy-making and our political discourse. We intend to work with them to strengthen their resilience, ensuring that their hard-won reputations and networks are not exploited by our adversaries. I thank my noble friend Lord Moraes for his insights into this from his EU experience.
We are committed to ensuring that we have robust systems in place to defend the UK from foreign interference in UK democratic processes. The Government have renewed the mandate of the Defending Democracy Taskforce, which brings together Ministers, representatives from law enforcement and the intelligence community to co-ordinate work to protect UK political parties, elected officials and electoral infrastructure from threats, including foreign interference. The taskforce is focused on ensuring the safety and security of electoral processes and ensuring that democratic institutions are safe and secure by combating interference and building resilience to threats. I was pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Walney, about the APPG that is associated with this taskforce.
Recent progress to protect our democratic institutions and those working in our democracy includes new legislation restricting protests outside the private homes of public office holders, the delivery of personal cyber security advice in devolved nations for Members and staff in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the rollout of the new National Protective Security Authority security guidance to protect democratic institutions from espionage and foreign interference.
In the light of the deeply concerning evidence of Russia’s attempts to interfere in UK democracy, the Government commissioned Philip Rycroft to lead an independent review into foreign financial interference in UK politics. It examined recent cases of attempted interference by a range of foreign actors, including events surrounding the conviction of Reform UK’s former Wales leader, Nathan Gill, for accepting bribes to promote pro-Russian views. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that it was a very specific review for a very specific purpose, and it was definitely evidence-led. The review rigorously tested the financial safeguards we currently have in place and recommended areas for improving mitigations. Ministers were presented with the findings in March and will provide a comprehensive line-by-line response to its recommendations—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Pack, who asked about the rest of the Rycroft recommendations—ahead of the Commons Report stage of the Representation of the People Bill. That will provide a further opportunity for scrutiny and debate. We are already taking immediate steps to implement the review’s recommendations for a cap on donations made by overseas electors and for a moratorium on donations made via cryptocurrency, which we will make into law through the Representation of the People Bill.
This Government’s clear commitments to upholding and restoring trust, standards and integrity in public life are not merely pledges to be made in your Lordships’ House but a vital line of defence. We will do what it takes to ensure that our country is not a permissive environment for foreign interference and to safeguard our democracy. The Prime Minister has been clear from day one that public service is a privilege, and this Government are committed to showing how politics can be a force for good. The Prime Minister has strengthened the Ministerial Code, putting the importance of public service at its heart and strengthening the role of the independent adviser on ministerial standards, as we promised in our manifesto. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, that processes have already been tightened up in relation to proposed entrance to your Lordships’ House, and the Ministerial Code will be looked at to see whether there is anything more that needs to be done.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Finn and Lady Featherstone, referred to the scandals around the Post Office, infected blood and Hillsborough, and to the Nottingham maternity scandal—a horrific tale that we heard just yesterday. The Public Office (Accountability) Bill will place a new legal duty on public servants to act truthfully and to assist fully in investigations and inquiries. We must also speed up our response to such issues. Ten years on from Grenfell, those affected still feel that too little has been done.
While I maintain that this Government have taken steps to improve standards, I truly believe that if we are to rebuild the faith that politics can be a force for good, we need to work together. This work must transcend differences in political parties and will require us all to come together. I will actively seek to work with Members of your Lordships’ House on where we believe the gaps are, what we can realistically fix and how we can rebuild trust.
Language and tone in political debate are important too. It does not help to have a political leader in the other place making comparisons between a United Kingdom Secretary of State and the Gestapo just because she disagrees with her policies. I think the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, referred to this. We need to change.
I am afraid that, in local government too, we are seeing a deterioration in the tone of debate that is actively discouraging able local community representatives from standing for councils. In the debate led by my noble friend Lord Forbes of Newcastle and the debate on the Jo Cox Civility Commission that was led by my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon, we heard hair-raising examples of violence and intimidation experienced by councillors, and just last week there was another excruciating example of incivility in the council chamber in Basildon. I thank the Local Government Association for its survey work on this. Worryingly, it shows that 70% of councillors report experiencing abuse or intimidation in the previous year, and that rises to 84% for women and ethnic minority councillors. We have an urgent job to do as a Government to get some legislative weight behind codes of conduct and their enforcement.
Noble Lords have also rightly focused on the severe threat of online disinformation, which threatens democracies around the world and poses clear risks to our national security. The Government continue to work tirelessly alongside our allies to expose Russian cyber threats and information operations targeting democracy in the UK and worldwide. For example, since October 2024 the Government have exposed and sanctioned 38 organisations and individuals responsible for delivering Russia’s information warfare to undermine global democracies.
The Government are implementing the National Security Act and the Online Safety Act to ensure that foreign information operations face the strongest possible safeguards that our country is capable of. The foreign interference offence under the Online Safety Act 2023 compels platforms to take action to prevent users from encountering state-sponsored disinformation and interference online and to minimise how long any such content is present on their services. Countering disinformation is not about stopping individuals from expressing their views; it is about preventing foreign states from misleading people through deception and deceit. Ofcom has robust enforcement powers against platforms that fail to comply, including fines of up to £80 million or 10% of their global revenue. From the comprehensive powers of the National Security Act to the protective work of the Defending Democracy Taskforce, we are deploying a whole of government approach to make the UK a harder target.
I will try to get through some of the individual points made by noble Lords, but if I do not get to them all, I will respond in writing. Nearly all noble Lords spoke about the issues about trust in politics. The noble Lords, Lord Wallace, Lord Risby, Lord Norton, Lord Gascoigne and Lord Walney, the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell, Lady Featherstone and Lady Bennett, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and my noble friends Lady Gill and Lord Cryer—probably nearly everyone who spoke in the debate—referred to this. We need to restore trust in politics, and that starts at school. A number of noble Lords have reflected on the breakdown of key institutions that dominated the last century. To quote the former Defence Minister, we have to fight on the territory that exists now, not the territory that existed in the last century. That is really important, and it involves education. That restoring of trust in politics starts at school. The Government recognise the role that citizenship education can play in supporting young people to understand how to engage positively with politicians and the political system. That is fundamental to the successful implementation of the Government’s manifesto commitment to extend the right to vote to 16 and 17 year-olds.
The importance of political literacy was highlighted in the Jo Cox Foundation report. That is why the Government are committed to looking for the earliest opportunity to make citizenship a new requirement for key stages 1 and 2, focused on the most essential content. That includes democracy and government as well as media literacy, law and rights, financial literacy and climate education. The points made about the funding of that education were well made. I am afraid I am going to have to refer those to my noble friend the Education Minister, and I will respond in due course.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, made some key points about the overcentralisation of things leading to a lack of trust. That is why I am such a strong believer in the devolution agenda. Listening to voters and putting decision-making and funding close to those who are affected by the decisions, and in the hands of those who have skin in the game, is really important. I understand that the new MP for Makerfield has quite a strong take on devolution, so—having first said that I congratulate him on winning his election—I look forward to working with him.
Many noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Doyle, Lord Norton, Lord Howell, Lord Frost and Lord Gascoigne, the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell, Lady Gill and Lady Fox, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville—have raised the issue of tackling misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation and disinformation pose an ongoing challenge to our democracy. New technologies, such as artificially generated video and audio content, pose a specific risk. Protecting our democratic process is and always will be an absolute priority for the Government. The current legal framework to tackle electoral mis- and disinformation means that in-scope services must also tackle illegal content where it amounts to existing election offences. This includes incitement to violence, undue influence, foreign interference and false statements about a candidate’s character.
The Government continue to identify and take action against Russian information operations that threaten the UK’s security and democracy. That includes ongoing campaigns with our allies to dismantle the online ecosystem of networks that are being used by Russia to manipulate the global public discourse. As I said earlier, the Government are implementing the Online Safety Act and the foreign interference offence under that Act compels platforms to take action.
In this context, a number of noble Lords have rightly talked about freedom of speech. It is very important that we are conscious of that as we go through this process. The noble Lords, Lord Frost, Lord Risby, Lord Jackson and Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, all referred to this. Freedom of expression and the right to protest are fundamental parts of a healthy democracy, and these are protected under law. Although we are determined to ensure that people are not put off from campaigning and standing for public office, we continue to safeguard strong legal protections on freedom of speech. Strengthening participation through informed discussion and open debate helps to build confidence in democratic institutions, supporting long-term trust and resilience in our democracy. That is why we have launched the democratic engagement fund to help more people to participate in our democracy.
There was much discussion during the debate about foreign interference, through both funding and think tanks. We recognise the risk posed by malign actors who seek to interfere with and undermine our democratic processes. That is why we are strengthening the rules around donations to political parties. These changes will mean greater transparency in political funding, strong protections against foreign or illicit influence and increased public confidence in the integrity of our democratic institutions.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, mentioned the foreign influence registration scheme. It requires those being directed by the Russian state to register with the scheme if they carry out, or arrange for others to carry out, any activities in the UK, including political influence activities. The specification of Russia on the enhanced tier of FIRS is about protecting UK domestic security and demonstrates how seriously we take the threat of its interference. If the noble Baroness will allow me, I will come to China in a moment. Officials are also focused on developing a programme of work to make it harder for state threat actors to use think tanks and lobby groups as channels through which to interfere with UK policy-making. We intend to work with them to strengthen their resilience.
My noble friend Lord Cryer raised Iran, and the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, also referred to Iran. We know that it poses an increasing threat to the UK, both through its destabilising actions in the region but also through its direct actions against organisations and individuals in the UK. The Iranian regime has become increasingly emboldened, asserting itself more aggressively to advance its objectives and undermine ours. This is evidenced by the fact that direct action against UK targets has substantially increased over the years. There is a long-standing pattern of targeting Jewish and Israeli people internationally by the Iranian intelligence service, and it is clear that these plots are a conscious strategy to stifle criticism through intimidation and fear. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to disrupt and degrade Iran’s malign activity on UK soil.
We recognise the strength of feeling on the question of proscription and fully understand the malign threat posed by the IRGC. Noble Lords will be aware, however, that we do not comment on whether organisations or entities are being considered for proscription. This is a long-standing precedent.
In relation to China, the Government fully recognise that China poses a series of threats to UK national security, from cyber attacks, foreign interference and espionage targeting our democratic institutions to the transnational repression of Hong Kongers. Yet we are also alive to the fact that China presents the UK with opportunities as the world’s second largest economy and the UK’s third largest trading partner. Not engaging is not a choice at all. That is why the Prime Minister discussed a series of the UK’s national security concerns with President Xi during his recent visit and agreed a new joint law enforcement pact to disrupt the supply of equipment used by people-smuggling gangs operating in the English Channel. We continue to develop a consistent and pragmatic approach to economic engagement without compromising our national security.
Many noble Lords have raised media literacy and the social media ban. Media literacy is central to helping young people critically engage with online information and the media literacy action plan sets out how the Government are strengthening these skills so that young people can continue to access reliable political information from a wide range of trusted online sources beyond social media and participate safely in democratic life alongside the wider protections for under-16s.
I realise I am running out of time, but I want to briefly cover some more information on the Rycroft review. We have taken immediate steps to implement the cap on donations and the moratorium on cryptocurrencies. The review sits against wider cross-government efforts to deliver counter political interference and the espionage action plan, which is being co-ordinated through the Defending Democracy Taskforce. I realise I have not covered everybody’s points, but I will write on those I have not reached.
On this Government’s watch, we will continue to do whatever is required to disrupt and degrade foreign interference, protect our democratic institutions and keep the British public safe. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for such an important debate.