Combating Disinformation: Freedom of Expression

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

The unit comprises civil servants who sit within DSIT, and it occasionally makes use of external consulting services. It adjusts its size and membership from within the DSIT team according to the nature of the threat at any given moment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, on transparency: we would not know about the Counter Disinformation Unit if it was not for Big Brother Watch, which we owe great thanks for its service on that. The Minister seems to know what disinformation is. Can the Government tell us how they identify what is to be labelled as disinformation? Who checks the fact checkers? For example, BBC Verify seems keen to expose everybody else’s disinformation but seems blind to its own egregious examples of inaccurate information.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Well, the Government are clear, as is NSOIT, that disinformation refers to the deliberate attempt to mislead by placing falsehoods into the information environment. As part of the Civil Service, NSOIT would have robust internal measures to verify and check its own work, and indeed it reports regularly across government and to Ministers.