Online Material: Identification of Promoters

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the noble Lord’s first point, he may have seen that Facebook will now require political advertisements to disclose who has paid for them, and such advertisements will be labelled as political. But the consultation I referred to in response to his noble friend directly addresses the issue of what appears on Facebook and other social media and, whether, if it is relevant to an election, there should be the appropriate imprint. So, irrespective of what happens in the review of electoral law, if we make progress on that, it can be done by statutory instruments in advance of any broader change in electoral law.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, what can be done about instances such as those during recent council elections when I had malicious texts put through my door listed as information for local elections? No one in the area has any idea who did it or knows anything about it, yet it could have been very damaging to the candidate. I wonder whether there is any way of handling that so that people know whether a communication is real or whether the whole thing is simply fake.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am sorry that my noble friend was distressed by some communications during the recent local government elections, but the Law Commission is reviewing online abusive communication, and analysis of that will be published by the end of the year, with recommendations to follow. There are also other initiatives on online safety, with the Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper last year and a White Paper to come later this year. If my noble friend’s communication was on paper and related to the recently held elections, I think that the Electoral Commission would be interested to see a copy of it.