Russia’s Attack on Ukraine

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I hear my hon. Friend’s points. The situation in which we find ourselves in the Department is that we are re-evaluating many policies that have been long standing for many years, not having ever believed that we would be in the situation we are in today. I have heard what he said and I can only reassure him that we are having a number of discussions on a number of fronts.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I join the Secretary of State in praising our BBC and the other free independent British journalists who have been proudly providing the finest objective independent journalism and putting their lives at risk, as she noted. That is in direct contrast to the squalid work of Putin’s misinformation organ, Russia Today. I note what she said about the Government not closing down free speech, but my constituents are asking why, in these exceptional circumstances, we could not stop Russia Today being on our TV sets straightaway rather than waiting for the EU to act.

[Ms Dorries]

Because the infrastructure, the individual companies, the satellite that streamed Russia Today and the framework in which it operated were all sat in the EU, not the UK. The British television screens were in the UK, but the companies that operated Russia Today were in the EU.

As the right hon. Lady will know, the first thing that I tried to do, almost immediately, was to stop Russia Today streaming into UK homes. I was slightly frustrated by the fact that, of course, politicians have absolutely no influence over the free press, and nor should they. That is the responsibility of the regulator Ofcom, so the first thing I did was write to Ofcom and urge it to review the output of Russia Today. It announced that it was launching 17 investigations, which then increased to 27 investigations, but I was equally frustrated to discover that that would take some time.

In the meantime, events took over. The EU provided its own sanctions on those organisations based in the EU and on the satellite above Luxembourg. It ceased the transmission and shortly after that, transmission to Freesat, Freeview and Sky ceased. As I have said, apart from Meta and TikTok, people cannot see Russia Today on their television screens. It was purely due to the fact that those were EU-based companies, not UK-based companies.