Russian Interference in UK Politics

Julian Knight Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

As I said earlier, I only have 15 minutes in which to contribute to the debate. Although I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we could go back a lot further, perhaps he could do so in his speech, if he makes one. I am focusing only on recent activity.

Information emerged just last month about hundreds of fake Twitter accounts, probably run from St Petersburg. Research at the University of Edinburgh in relation to the EU referendum showed that at least 419 fake accounts tweeted about Brexit a total of just under 3,500 times, although that was mostly after the referendum had taken place, rather than before. Meanwhile, research by City, University of London from October showed that there was a

“13,500-strong Twitter bot army”

present on the social media site around the time of the referendum, and in the four weeks before the vote, those accounts posted no fewer than 65,000 tweets about the referendum, showing a “clear slant” towards the leave campaign. However, there was no mention in that report of any specific Russian involvement.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on leading this debate. Does he agree that part of the reason that most of the hard evidence seems to come only from Twitter is that Facebook does not co-operate as it should in order to get to the root of these problems?

[Tom Brake]

As the hon. Gentleman probably expects, I will discuss Facebook shortly, including some negative and positive things about its activities.

I should say that I am not attacking the Russians here; I am attacking the Russian Government. Of course, some things that the Russian Government or people associated with them might have been involved with may, indeed, be also activities that other state actors are conducting, so this is not just about Russia, although that is clearly the subject of the debate.

The United States has a gaping vulnerability to disinformation operations carried out by Russia and other malicious actors across the social media environment. In the USA, just one account from the troll factory in St Petersburg managed to amass more than 120,000 followers, interacted with the Trump campaign leaders, and was quoted in newspapers such as the Washington Post as a voice of the American right. Is the Minister happy that the UK has adequate defences against such interference here?

The simple truth is that although Arron Banks and Nigel Farage may be Putin fans, President Putin is certainly not a friend of this country. Russia would only have interfered in the EU referendum or any other elections here in order to damage the security of the UK and, indeed, the EU.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I concur with many of the speeches we have heard today. I believe this is a major threat to our democracy, to western democracy and to our way of life. It is probably the biggest threat I have experienced since the fall of the Berlin wall. At that time, there was a book written by an academic called Fukuyama about the end of history and suggesting that liberal democracy was effectively the final form of government. That now looks quite arrogant and hubristic as, over the years, Russia’s transformation has crept up on us.

There is, effectively, a type of war going on. It may not involve guns, armies and conventional threats, but it does involve bots and St Petersburg. In Russia, the state means society and society means the state. It feeds through many strata of Russian society. In many respects, Russia has been quite open about this. In 2013 and 2014, there were many public utterances from Russian generals who talked about information and the future being hybrid war. That is precisely what we have seen.

Russia is not the only country involved. As I understand it, about 25 to 28 countries are developing this type of global capability. If we all—even what we consider to be friendly nations—turn on one another and adopt these sorts of tactics, all could be lost. So we need to think about how we tackle this. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee is currently investigating fake news, but perhaps a bigger issue is the use of algorithms, which allow access to target those who will internalise fake news.

During the US elections, swing states were targeted, especially individuals who were particularly susceptible to this type of fake news. There is currently a major debate about whether Facebook and other social media platforms are publishers, but we need to concentrate on the algorithms and on how we can get into those black boxes that tell us precisely how they work. We need to understand them and to introduce regulation with proper oversight. The danger of making Facebook a publisher is that with responsibility can come enormous power. It decides what goes online and it can dictate the discourse. That is too much power to put into its hands.

Social media companies need to co-operate more with the Select Committee and with international bodies. They, too, are invested in our society and our western ways. Unless they come to the party in this respect, there could be some real problems down the line.

On Brexit, I do not think the evidence is quite there at the moment in terms of the level of interference seen in the French elections, but it seeped in almost by osmosis. In Germany, a lot of fake stories appeared in relation to immigration. They affected people’s outlook and had an impact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

In a political process, success would potentially involve changing the result of that political process, and we have not seen evidence of successful attempts.

[Julian Knight]

Part of the reason we are finding it so difficult to establish the impact is the lack of information coming from the social media companies. Will my right hon. Friend therefore join me in calling on Facebook in particular to co-operate thoroughly with the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee inquiry?

[Matt Hancock]

Absolutely, and I will come on to express that in some pretty firm terms later in my speech. The point is that we have not yet seen evidence of successful attempts, but we remain vigilant none the less. I can assure the House that the whole of Government are alert to the threat and that we are working across Government on it.