Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking with social media companies to tackle fake social media profiles that spread misinformation and are operated from hostile states.

We take the issue of dis- and misinformation very seriously and DCMS leads work across Government to tackle it. We engage regularly with social media companies to encourage the introduction of systems and processes that promote authoritative sources of information, and to help them identify and take action to remove dis- and misinformation, in line with their terms and conditions.

It is a Government priority to protect the UK against foreign interference. We know that certain states routinely use disinformation as a foreign policy tool and have seen evidence of this happening in other countries. We monitor for disinformation campaigns so that we can be ready to respond to them quickly and effectively. We work closely with international partners to share information to better understand and then develop approaches to counter the threat from disinformation.

The Government is legislating on these issues. The Counter State Threats Bill will provide the Security Services and Law Enforcement Agencies with the tools they need to tackle the evolving threat from hostile activity by states and actors. The legislation will make the UK a harder environment for states to conduct hostile activity in, and increase the cost to them of doing so.

We have also published the draft Online Safety Bill, which will bring in a legal duty of care and give companies clear legal responsibilities to improve user safety. The new laws will have robust and proportionate measures to deal with disinformation that could cause significant physical or psychological harm to an individual, such as anti-vaccination content and falsehoods about COVID-19.