Institute for Statecraft: Integrity Initiative

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

It is a rare moment of early festive good cheer that I can find myself wholly in agreement with the hon. Gentleman, which is not something that always happens across the Floor of the House. He is absolutely right about the extent to which Russia Today is an obvious mouthpiece for the Kremlin. It distorts information; it spreads disinformation; and it has quite a few useful idiots who it puts in front of the camera, and we should identify those so-called useful idiots and make sure that none of them is ever in our midst.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary that we should scrutinise all instances of public bodies in receipt of public funds, yet the fact remains that the integrity initiative has criticised all political parties, including my own, when they have fallen foul—inadvertently or not— of the Russian disinformation narrative trap. I am a wee bit concerned that we fall into a trap where we are exposing the plethora of, some would say, Putin-Verstehers in grey suits in all political parties. I understand that the origin of much of the information discussed today emerged as a result of a hack perpetrated by actors of a dubious origin. Will the Minister enlighten the House further on the circumstances of that hack, and will he bring a report back to the Floor of the House?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Obviously, when I referred to my “Today” programme interview, it was on Monday, rather than yesterday. Let me just say to the hon. Gentleman that we are having an investigation into the hacking. It is continuing. We cannot attribute it with certainty to an absolutely specific source, but it does fit in with the wider pattern that I mentioned earlier, and therefore, of course, we have our well-founded suspicions.