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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress she has been made on establishing a protocol with social media companies to ensure that they take covert hostile state use of their platforms seriously as recommended by the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on Russia published on 21 July 2020.

It is, and always will be, an absolute priority to protect the UK against foreign interference. That is why the Government has robust systems in place that bring together government, civil society and private sector organisations to monitor and respond to interference in whatever form it takes.

During times of heightened vulnerability such as elections or the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government stands up Counter Disinformation Unit. The Unit provides a comprehensive picture of the extent, scope and reach of mis- and disinformation, and works with social media platforms to ensure appropriate action is taken to address it, in line with their terms and conditions.

We engage regularly with social media companies and welcome the positive steps many of them have taken particularly in response to misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines. Platforms have updated terms of service and made technical changes to their products, but they need to do more. We continue to put pressure on them to respond quickly and effectively to the threat posed by false information and online manipulation.

The Government is developing and seeking input to inform an ambitious set of legislative proposals to counter these threats and strengthen our ability to deter, withstand and respond to such activity. The Home Office’s upcoming Counter State Threats legislation 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.

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.