Russian Interference in UK Politics

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), and I congratulate him on securing the debate. At the end of his remarks, he rightly raised important issues around the prioritisation of this issue for the intelligence services and the Government’s co-operation with the Mueller inquiry, and I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about those questions later.

This debate feels very timely. On Tuesday, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee held our first oral evidence session on fake news and disinformation, looking in particular at Russian activity in Catalonia around the referendum. My staff tweeted a link from my Twitter account to where people could watch the Committee hearing. According to an article in The Times today, a Russian-language bot account then responded to my tweet sharing the link to the hearings with the threat that we should be careful because we can all be wiped out in a single stroke—I do not know whether that was just the Select Committee or the entire nation, but, nevertheless, it was interesting.

On a previous occasion, when I happened to share a link to a discussion I had had with Hugo Rifkind, based on the facts of the US Senate investigation into Russian activity during the presidential election, the official Twitter account of the Russian embassy in London compared me to Joseph Goebbels in seeking to spread big lies about what Russia is doing. Let us not be under any illusion that Russia is, not just anecdotally but in a systematic way, using information as a weapon of war and seeking to intervene in the democratic processes of other countries. It is doing that to undermine people’s confidence in public institutions and to cause division and hatred, and it is part of its strategy of breaking down multilateralism and co-operation between countries in western Europe. That is what Russia is doing.

In the short time that I have available, I want to focus specifically on the role of the social media companies and the way in which they are responding to the different investigations taking place in the UK. My Select Committee wrote to Facebook asking it not only to give evidence of paid-for advertising through its service during the referendum and the last general election, but to identify activity by fake accounts across the platform. Much of the activity in America was based on pages being set up to promote links to sites where fake news and disinformation were shared and fake events organised. It is important that we understand the breadth of what is being done.

Facebook’s response so far—certainly its charge that a tiny amount of money is being spent in this country—is not based on an analysis of what is going on across its platform; it is based simply on looking at the accounts identified as part of the American investigation. Those accounts were given to Facebook by the US intelligence services. Facebook had never proactively looked on its site for evidence of this activity. At the moment, its position in this country is that it is refusing to conduct that research itself. As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) said, it must be possible for it to look at the geographical location of accounts, the characteristics of the accounts from where information is shared—

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

That is how it makes money.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. It must be able to understand how to target users with information based on what it thinks they are interested in and where that information is coming from. It could conduct its own preliminary research to look for the characteristics of fake accounts and disinformation accounts linked to Russian agencies that are based on its platform. At the moment, it is refusing to do that.

[Damian Collins]

I absolutely agree. I noticed on a recent investor call that Mark Zuckerberg warned Facebook investors that dealing with these issues would have a direct impact on the bottom line. I am glad that he said that, but I would like to see him using that money. I do not see any evidence of the company putting resource into trying to tackle this issue.

At the moment, Facebook’s position in the UK is that it was only responding to questions put to it by the Electoral Commission. That has a much narrower focus because of the Electoral Commission’s exact remit. Facebook is not answering questions put to it by the Select Committee asking for more evidence of Russian-linked activity across the site, including in pages, group accounts and profiles, not just restricted to paid-for advertising. We have a right to receive information from Facebook, and it could conduct such research. It proactively conducted its own research looking at the activity of fake accounts during the French presidential election. That led to the deletion of more than 30,000 accounts, pages and profiles. Facebook did that itself. If it can do it in France, it can do it in the UK too, but currently it will not.

If Facebook’s position is that it will respond only to official intelligence directing it towards fake activity, then we need to be working to do that too. Our intelligence services need to be on the lookout, if that is the only trigger open to us to get Facebook to act.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Sadly, my hon. Friend was not at this week’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, where the national security adviser said that such activity was not the main priority, and, indeed, just spoke generally about security threats. Does my hon. Friend agree that it should be absolutely one of the top priorities?

[Damian Collins]

Absolutely. It must be a major priority. We have to realise that Russia is engaged in a multi-layered strategy to cause instability in the west, and that fake news and disinformation is one of the tools it uses.

It was interesting to hear in the Select Committee this week that during the Catalan referendum, Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik were the fourth largest source of information, all of it supporting the separatist cause.