Lord Pickles
Main Page: Lord Pickles (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Pickles's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Goldie
I reassure the right reverend Prelate that all defence personnel and their household members who are symptomatic are eligible for testing as part of the national testing programme. The safety of our personnel is paramount.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, can we return to the question of fake news? Some of it is quite sophisticated and obviously malicious in intent. It gives false and misleading information about the medicine, and seeks to create scapegoats in our Muslim, Jewish and Chinese population. This is designed to undermine society from within. These various attempts have been well established since March of this year. What concrete things have the Government done to combat this?
Baroness Goldie
In relation to NATO in particular, we are a principal contributor of funding to support efforts against misinformation by using cyber intelligence to counter it. On the specific question of what the Government are doing, it crosses a range of activity beyond the MoD. My noble friend will be aware that there has been leadership from the Prime Minister downwards, seeking to call out disinformation and misinformation for what it is, and we all have a role to play in doing that.