Foreign Interference in UK Democratic Processes

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I know how excited the noble Lord will be about the legislation that will be in front of your Lordships’ House, which he will be able to scrutinise, and I am sure that my ministerial colleagues will enjoy the inevitable debate. The noble Lord is right: we obviously responded immediately to some of the biggest areas of immediate concern that we could legislate for, and our full response to the report will follow very soon. But several reports, including from the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the other place, have looked at this space. We need to make sure that we respond to everything in the round and take some time, but also act quickly, given the potential impact that we see every day.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the report that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, referred to was by a French government agency about the apparent operations of an Israeli company in exerting influence over campaigns in France, Britain and a number of African countries. The report mentions co-operation between the French government agency and the Swedish, British and Dutch Governments, as well as others. But would it not have been appropriate to alert our own population to what was going on? Now that we know that we have this sort of foreign influence through social media, coming from a number of different countries—not just from state actors but from private actors, such as the Israeli company and private actors in the United States, which exert considerable influence—should the British Government not have reported to their own public to tell us what was going on?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises an important point. Obviously, France is one of our key allies—we have seen images only today of the President with the Prime Minister at the G7. I reassure your Lordships’ House that our position is that it is dangerous to jump to any conclusions on the basis of a single report. The UK Government will draw on our own analysis and draw our own conclusions.