Business of the House

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am sure that my hon. Friend heard the Prime Minister say yesterday that we will continue to protect the green belt. He raises an important point. It is vital that local councillors, like everyone in public life, behave in a way that inspires the confidence and trust of the electorate. My hon. Friend is right to raise his constituents’ concerns. There are some options that he might want to consider if he feels that councillors have breached their responsibilities. There is a code of conduct, required by all local authorities, that applies to local authority members, and there are procedures for considering complaints where members have breached that code of conduct.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

We have seen various reports on the growth of fake news, and growing evidence of Russian involvement in the EU referendum and in our politics. Is it not time that we regulated the social media platforms? The chief executive and the chair of Ofcom both say that Facebook and Google are media companies and should be regulated as such. May we have a Government debate on bringing these companies under UK law on this issue to ensure that their content can be trusted?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this very concerning issue. The Government recognise the need to protect the reliability and objectivity of information—it is an essential component of our democracy. We are working with industry to ensure that high-quality online news media have a sustainable future and, at the same time, that low-quality and fake news is not commercially incentivised. To date, we have not seen evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes, but, naturally, we would take robust action should there be evidence that this has happened in the United Kingdom.