Russian Interference in UK Politics

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is unfortunate that the Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has left us. I served on the Committee and I believe that it would have been very helpful if he had informed the House about the organisation, in which he had a leading role during the referendum, that is under investigation by the Electoral Commission. I have served on the Committee for three Parliaments and I am ashamed that we are neglecting the most prominent issue before us.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) need not be shy about being premature in raising the issue. We had a debate on it in the Committee, and produced our report at the end of the last Parliament. We said that the Electoral Commission had told us that it was powerless to control information from abroad.

The role of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has been taken up by other Committees, and we are grateful to them for what they have done. A House of Lords Committee took it up the other day, when the Electoral Commission’s chief executive said that, as a UK-based regulator applying UK-based laws, the commission could do nothing about activity on the internet that was taking place outside the UK.

A year after the threat to us was flagged up, we are told that the Electoral Commission has no powers and that an investigation is taking place. The chief executive told us last year that the only organisation that could act was GCHQ, and nothing seems to have happened there. We are trying to control our elections with the tools of the steam age rather than those of the digital age. I raised the issue in my final point of order of the last Parliament, and Mr Speaker’s reaction was kind as always, but his main problem was that he did not know what an algorithm was.

Having been warned about these matters, we must realise that our elections and referendums are up for sale. People can spend large amounts of money—not just in Russia but in America—to obtain a certain end in our campaigns here. We are in a worse position than we have been at any time since 1880. There has also been the degradation of our political debate. It is possible to put forward a preposterous lie, which, if repeated enough, is believed and allowed with no censure.

The Office for National Statistics is the arbiter on these matters and the keeper of the truth, but it was the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority who complained that the Foreign Secretary and the present Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had made a claim that was demonstrably untrue, using a gross figure about the money that might be coming to the health service. Those two MPs were not summoned to the Committee to account for themselves, because the Committee refused to summon them, but it did summon David Norgrove, the man who had pointed out the error. As a result of that degradation, big lies have been told in other campaigns as well, such as the campaign for the alternative vote.

We no longer respect objective truths. People can lie with impunity and get away with it. We know that a great many people were interested in distorting the referendum and election issues, and we have no defences against that.