Russian Interference in UK Politics

Tom Brake Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Russian interference in UK politics and society.

I will indeed seek to stay within your limit, Mr Speaker, and hope to gain some credit for it at some point in the near future.

This is a very welcome opportunity to debate this subject, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making the time available and the colleagues who supported the bid. I am pleased that we have a very good representation of senior Members here who have a long-standing interest in Russia.

The premise of this debate is that the UK is at risk of neglecting the threat that Russia poses. I argue that Russia is a clear and present danger and presents a threat to our democracy. Some may consider that to be an alarmist statement, but I hope to explain why, in my view, it is not. I will not be able to cover, in the 15 minutes available, all areas of concern, such as the impact of dirty Russian money in the UK and the UK Government’s apparent unwillingness to hunt it down, in relation to Magnitsky in particular; the extent to which the energy industry is vulnerable to Russian takeovers or leverage; or the appropriateness of the London Stock Exchange floating the EN+ Group. I suspect that other Members will pick up on those issues.

Why do I make this alarmist statement about Russia? First, clearly, there have been attempts by the Russians to influence the outcome of a number of elections. According to the Henry Jackson Society, there is not one smoking gun, but it is a case of joining up the dots, and Russia has a history of interference. The threat is not new; it has been around for a decade, especially, for instance, in the Estonian and Georgian elections in 2008 and 2009. Of course there was the well-publicised Russian interference mainly in the period post the Scottish independence referendum, when they tried to discredit the result of the election.

In the US, we have seen the most famous example of cyber-interference through the activities of the Internet Research Agency, which has spent more than $2 million on activity in America alone over the past two years, and that funding was directly authorised from the Kremlin. This pattern of behaviour suggests that Russia will also have interfered in the EU referendum.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman referred to this interference as having taken place over the last decade. Has this not been the pattern of behaviour ever since the Bolshevik coup 100 years ago?

[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.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a brilliant point, but has he noticed that the American national security strategy—published this week—explicitly recognises this threat, whereas our national security strategy does not?

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[Tom Brake]

That is a very good point, which I will come back to. The Minister now has advance notice that he needs to be prepared to answer that question, because it is clearly a source of concern.

There is no soft power in Putin’s eyes and, as far as he is concerned, the use of social media to interfere in foreign states is a vital, weaponised tool. The covert interference I referred to is supplemented by more overt attempts to create a media counter-narrative. I am now talking about RT. The RT chief editor, Margarita Simonyan, is on the record comparing RT to the Ministry of Defence, saying in 2008:

“We were fighting the information war against the whole of the Western world”.

She referred to “the information weapon”, which is used in “critical moments”, and said that RT’s task in peacetime is to build an audience, so they can fight the information war better next time. Not surprisingly, therefore, Chatham House and the Henry Jackson Society see RT as a tool of destabilisation from the Kremlin.

Members will know that RT was found in breach by Ofcom in September 2015 for stories about Assad and chemical weapons. However, as I understand it, Ofcom has not always enforced sanctions as and when appropriate. According to the Library, Sputnik has never been found in breach by Ofcom. Ofcom imposed 84 sanctions against 57 broadcasters in the 10 years up to March 2017—RT was not the subject of a sanction during that time—and found broadcasters in breach of the broadcasting code more than 2,500 times

I am certainly not advocating shutting down RT, and I do not think anyone else is. I just want to ensure that it abides by the broadcasting rules and that appropriate action is taken by Ofcom every time it does not. Is the Minister happy with Ofcom’s actions? Does it consistently pursue RT for breaches in the way he would like? As an aside, I would like Ofcom to be much more active in pursuing a number of other TV channels that are broadcast here, in particular when threats are made to the Ahmadi Muslim community on some of those channels.

No British parliamentarian should be taking money from RT. In fact, I would go one step further and say that, frankly, no British parliamentarian should appear on RT. The only exception to that rule might be if they have complete control and are completely unedited—if they can go on the channel and say what they want, knowing that it will not be chopped, edited and cut by RT. Apart from that, no one here or in the House of Lords should ever appear on that channel. The only time that RT ever contacts me is when I have said something critical about the Government. Well, I am happy to say critical things about the Government on the BBC, but RT is trying to create an agenda that is about attacking the Government at every turn, and I will not facilitate that process.

The next issue is the question of whether the Russians are infiltrating or leaking content from political party systems. Well, we know what they did regarding the Democrats. Incidentally, they also hacked the Republicans, but they only released the information on the Democrats. We also know that they attempted to infiltrate Macron’s team by setting up a number of websites with pseudo-official titles that would email Macron’s members of staff, trying to get them to click on links and provide back-door access to their systems. As I understand it, Macron managed to defeat that, mainly by inserting some fake news into the content that the Russians were trying to access so that the story was demolished because of the inconsistencies within it.

As Members will know, Monsieur Macron had a more aggressive and muscular stance towards Russia than any other parties in that French presidential election, and I believe that that is why he was targeted in a way in which the others were not. As I understand it, the other French political parties were targeted, but the Russians were clearly interested in releasing information that related to Macron in particular. Mr Putin has said that these hackers may not be associated with the Government and that they may be “patriotic” hackers. Well, they may be patriotic hackers as far as he is concerned, but one has to suspect that they have the Government’s endorsement, because I am sure that the Russian Government could clamp down on these so-called patriotic hackers if they wanted to do so.

I am trying to make my questions very clear because I know that the officials in the Box can then provide a written answer for the Minister to read out and get on the record straightaway, so I have another easy question for him. Will he consider making UK political parties part of the critical national infrastructure, and what are the implications of taking such a step?

To be able to ascertain the level of threat, we have to assess it accurately, otherwise I risk coming across as a conspiracy theorist. I know that I do already in relation to Brexit, but I do not want to become the person known for conspiracy theories in this place. The difficulty we have is that we do not really know the extent of the activity because, frankly, no one has investigated it properly yet. It is only when that has been done that we will know. I regret that it took so long for the Intelligence and Security Committee to be reconstituted, but I welcome the fact that it has stated that Russia will be a topic that it will focus on. Does the Minister think that the Committee should give priority to the subject? Would he also want the ISC to work effectively with the Electoral Commission so that it can go to places that the Electoral Commission cannot? An ISC inquiry would help us to establish accurately the level of threat.

To pick up on an earlier intervention, we know that Facebook was asked by the Electoral Commission to look at examples of paid ads from Russia, but it was not asked to look at the use of bots or trolls, so the picture we are going to get will, at best, be very incomplete. The response the commission has had—that the Russians apparently spent £7.50 on advertising—does not quite sound right to me.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. We are not talking just about a few Twitter or Facebook accounts with no picture avatar and 10 followers. The David Jones account had more than 100,000 followers and was listed as one of the most influential Twitter accounts during the last general election. It purports to be from Southampton, yet it tweets exclusively in office hours in a Russian time zone. Surely the social media companies have a greater role to play in identifying fake accounts—which are pretending to be something they are not—for the integrity of the debate we should all enjoy online.

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[Tom Brake]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I do not know whether she has, but I have engaged in exchanges with David Jones—clearly, I will not continue to do so—because whoever he or she is was a very prolific tweeter during that campaign. So, yes, we need to be aware of those issues.

According to Facebook, neither the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, nor No. 10, nor the intelligence services have given it any advice about what it should be looking for. If that is correct, it concerns me, and I hope the Minister will respond to that point.

[Liam Byrne]

I think the Americans looked at 47 accounts, which were all provided to the Mueller inquiry by intelligence agencies, but—the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—our agencies have offered, I think, only one. The other risk we have to be careful of, though, is that money was transferred onshore—the Electoral Commission is now investigating that—so some of the illicit money may have come from UK onshore accounts.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. That is another aspect of this issue that I am not going to be able to dwell on at great length in the few minutes that remain.

Facebook is doing work on ad transparency, and I welcome that. Personally, I would be comfortable with having the equivalent of a “printed and published” on the political ads that I place on Facebook. Such measures would help people to understand who was actually promoting themselves. I wonder whether the Minister would support that suggestion.

There is also the issue of authentication. I and, I suspect, every Member here have a blue tick on Twitter, so we have been confirmed as being real people. Maybe Facebook should do something similar to authenticate people with Facebook accounts so that we know that everyone is a genuine person, rather than someone sitting in an office block on the outskirts of Moscow preparing fake accounts. I hope the Minister will agree with that point as well.

We need to resource our response appropriately, and I have concerns—I certainly had concerns when I was a Minister and had dealings with it—that the Electoral Commission does not, in fact, have the resources to deal with this issue. Dealing with activity abroad is clearly not within its remit, and it would not have any expertise to do that, so we need to hear how it can access that expertise. The Minister is nodding, so hopefully he will be able to clarify that issue. I hope he is confident that the Electoral Commission has the necessary resources and expertise, or can at least access them.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I ask him to emphasise the point about the resources that are needed to investigate. There is a danger that we are sidetracked into the social media side of this, when, ultimately, the more important thing is the money. Does he believe that the Electoral Commission is sufficiently equipped, resourced and empowered to properly follow the money and to ascertain where donations come from, whether the original donors really own that money and whether the agencies and the Electoral Commission need more powers to properly track the finance and the politics?

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[Tom Brake]

My short answer is, no, I do not think it is. Clearly, that needs to be acted on. It is not just about political parties; it is also about tracking the money associated with political movements, such as the leave campaign or—this may not be controversial for the right hon. Gentleman—Momentum, so that we actually have some clarity about where the money is coming from and so on. We would all benefit if there was more transparency.

[John Spellar]

Until we get a change in mindset among these bodies, additional resources will not have the necessary impact. These bodies have to have the will and the necessary policy framework, and action on the resources may follow that if they are not sufficient. That applies not just to the Electoral Commission, but right the way across the agencies of Government.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that. Yes, this debate is partly about giving them the will and telling them that they have the backing of Members of Parliament on both sides of the House to take the action that is needed.

I will conclude by reading out the few questions I have left for the Minister—I have been generous in taking interventions. First, as I understand it, the Government have not tasked the intelligence and security services with investigating Russian subversion as a high priority. Russia is a tier 1 threat, but the six-point national security strategy does not mention defence against Russian interference in our political system, so will the Minister press for that to be changed?

On the funding of political movements, does the Minister agree, following the intervention from the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), that financial accountability for political movements must be improved as well? On the Mueller inquiry, will the Minister confirm that the UK Government will proactively seek and supply any relevant information to the inquiry, rather than just sit there and wait to be approached? Finally, social media companies are, on the positive side, keen to work with the Government to try to close some of the loopholes we have referred to today.

We need to make sure that Russia is held publicly to account, whether that is through Ofcom or through Ministers, when they know that this has happened, making it clear that the Russians have been actively hacking some of our systems—as they did in relation to the NHS hacking by North Korea. The ISC also needs to come forward with its report.

I am pleased to have had the opportunity to raise this issue, and I hope the House will give the Minister the oomph he needs to go away and ensure that the respective Departments—one of the problems is that this is an FCO, Cabinet Office and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport issue—will grab this bull by the horns and make sure that Russia, because of the threat it presents to the UK, is dealt with with the degree of seriousness that is required.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Tom Brake]

I thank the Minister for his tough words about the social media companies, but we also need to ensure that the security services provide them with information they may have so that they can follow the leads already obtained by the intelligence services. I hope that the Minister will take it from this debate that the House demands that the UK Government prioritise defending our democracy from Russian interference.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Russian interference in UK politics and society.