European Union Referendum: Alleged Russian Interference

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Tyler]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will conduct an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the European Union referendum, including the Leave.EU campaign.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, the Electoral Commission is the independent regulatory body responsible for ensuring that elections and referendums are run effectively and in accordance with the law. The Government are committed to defending the UK from all forms of malign foreign state interference, whether from Russia or from any other state. To date, however, we have not seen evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes by any foreign Government, but we remain vigilant.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, do the Government not recognise that this piecemeal approach is potentially quite dangerous? Given that it is the considered judgment of the chairman of the DCMS Select Committee—the Minister’s Conservative colleague—that the leaders of the Leave.EU campaign have been lying, and given that there is ever-rising evidence of illegality, with even Mr Banks admitting that there was Russian collusion in the leave campaign, is it not now urgent that the Government should authorise a comprehensive investigation into what exactly happened? After all, this calls into question the very marginal outcome of the referendum, where for every 17 people who voted leave, 16 voted to remain. Does that not, in turn, raise real questions about the whole Brexit process?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the first question, the noble Lord will know that it is for the Electoral Commission to investigate any alleged irregularities concerning the referendum. It has already published a decision on Leave.EU and fined that body £70,000. Investigations continue into allegations that Vote Leave avoided the cap on election expenditure on the referendum by channelling resources into another, linked organisation, and that is a matter for the Electoral Commission to resolve. As far as the outcome is concerned, 1.3 million more people voted to leave than to remain, and I am not sure that one can attribute that fairly substantial margin to the activities of the Russian bots or, indeed, any other outside agencies.