Shared Rural Network

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that challenge. He is right; improving rail connectivity remains a significant ambition. I have spoken to the Secretary of State for Transport about that. There are some other challenges, but we are working out how we can do that. I am pleased to say that in the latest franchise, there was a greater requirement for on-board connectivity, and I hope that we will be able to see that throughout the network.

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

I welcome this announcement. As my right hon. Friend knows, parts of Kent have worse coverage than Kabul. Will she tell me a bit about her 5G plans? I believe that there will be an announcement tomorrow about China’s possible involvement in our network. Does she agree that that poses a major danger to the Five Eyes community and that US sanctions against Huawei would leave us looking like we had just signed a long-term lease for business space with WeWork?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I am not able to say much about this for very obvious reasons. A decision will be announced in due course. I just want to say two things to the House. The first is that high-risk vendors have never been and never will be in our most sensitive networks. The second is that the security and resilience of the UK’s telecoms network is of paramount importance. We will bear both of those things in our minds when making any decisions.

UK Telecoms: Huawei

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I do not answer for the Australian Government; the hon. Lady would have to ask them. We are all—this applies particularly to Five Eyes partners—wrestling with these complex questions, and we may reach differing conclusions. There is good sense in having those conversations as extensively and often as we can. In fact, the Government will be doing so shortly with security and intelligence partners, and I have no doubt that this subject will be high on the agenda.

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

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that partners—in fact, our closest intelligence partners—have been very clear in their views on this decision? Indeed, the Australian Signals Directorate made a very clear statement only a number of months ago in which it said that there was no such division between core and non-core, because the nature of 5G includes the whole gamut of the technology in one, and therefore the distinction possible in 3G and 4G is no longer feasible.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend also agree that this is not simply a technical issue—arguing about whether we would be vulnerable to espionage in a broad sense or whether Huawei would be able to hoover up the digital exhaust that is in fact the gold mine for so many businesses today—but a diplomatic one, undermining the trust that has built the 70-year relationship we know as the Five Eyes community, which keeps threats away from our shores and ensures the security of our citizens around the world? Does he not therefore see that this is fundamentally a diplomatic and political question, just as much as a technical one, and that respecting our Five Eyes partners is an essential part of the decision?

[Jeremy Wright]

On my hon. Friend’s last point, I entirely agree. It is important that we do not just discuss these matters with our partners, but have rather more complex and detailed technical discussions about the precise restrictions we may all seek to impose, and there is no lack of respect for what they say in this. Of course, many of our Five Eyes partners are operating under some difficulty, as Members of this House are, in that they do not know all of the decision making because some of it is not yet complete.

It is worth recognising that my hon. Friend is right that the concerns our partners have expressed are legitimate concerns. We listen very carefully to what they say, and we listen very carefully too to what our own security and intelligence agencies say. For reasons he will appreciate perhaps better than almost anyone else in this House, I do not intend to go into any detail about that, but I repeat my reassurance that we will act in full consideration of what they say, because it is an important and fundamental part of this review.

Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

It did, yes. I am trying to ensure that we have a debate on these measures that takes into account the fact that, yes, we want a free press that can hold the powerful to account, but also that it is fair. I know—as does everyone in this House—that there has been irresponsible behaviour by the press. Although I want to see a press that is free to report without fear or favour, to uncover wrongdoing and to hold the powerful to account, I also want to see a press that is fair and accurate. I am determined that we have a strengthened system so that people have recourse to justice when things go wrong.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in many ways, there are two forms of media already operating in this country? One is printed, published and broadcast from reputable sources, which have assets in this country that we can take action against, or not, and the other form is websites that have either very low assets or no assets in this country with very different accountability. Bizarrely, could we not find ourselves in a position under this system where the only people who can get justice are those who are rich enough, such as Peter Thiel, to destroy the website Gawker, in this case, because it was acting against him, rather than those of us on more modest means who would have absolutely no recourse against these organisations, but yet all the news would have gone online because these regulations would force out our newspapers?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is completely right about the gap between online and print in terms of standards of regulation. That is because IPSO was brought into force—I was glad to see it being introduced in 2014. He is also right that tackling the problems online is critical. Our internet safety strategy, which will be published in the next couple of weeks, will address that matter directly. I know that there are many Members who have concerns about the impact of content online, of abuse online, and of the ability to get redress online, and we will not let that rest. We will ensure that we take action to tackle the problems online in the same way that IPSO deals with the press and indeed that these new clauses deal with publications in the press.

I am glad that IPSO now has the power to require front page corrections as it did, for instance, just a couple of weeks ago with The Times. As the House knows, I have pushed IPSO to bring in further measures. It recently introduced a system of compulsory low-cost arbitration. This means that ordinary people who do not have large sums of money can take claims to newspapers for as little as £50. Almost all of the major national newspapers have signed up to it. That means that anyone who has been wronged by a national newspaper can, for the first time, ask for arbitration and the newspaper cannot refuse. The scheme applies not just to words, but to images. This must be the start of a tougher regime, and not the conclusion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

2. What steps the Government are taking to reduce the level of victim withdrawal in cases involving domestic abuse.

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

4. What steps the Government are taking to reduce the level of victim withdrawal in cases involving domestic abuse.

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

The Government see the response to domestic abuse as a top priority. We want every victim to have full confidence in the justice system. When cases go to trial, a number of measures are already in place to support victims to give their best evidence. Where possible, we will take prosecutions forward without victims having to give evidence.

[The Solicitor General]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight this important reform that I managed to take through as part of the Serious Crime Act 2015. Between the commencement of the offence in December 2015 and April last year, more than 300 cases have been charged and reached a first hearing. That is progress. The offence also allows the police to intervene in relationships at an earlier stage than they have in the past.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Of course, the importance of the legal change is fundamental, as those of us who followed the story in “The Archers” are particularly aware. However, there is a technological solution to some of this as well. Will the Solicitor General join me in praising Kent police for its work in introducing body-worn cameras? That can mean that victims do not have to give evidence, ending the situation we so often find when they will not do so.

[The Solicitor General]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to mention body-worn cameras, which can, in a moment, capture the aftermath of an incident of domestic abuse, or indeed an ongoing incident. That often spares the victim from having to bear the complete burden of helping the prosecution to prove the case, or from having to give evidence at all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. The creative industries are a real UK success story. They are growing much faster than the rest of the economy, and they make up a significant proportion of our economic value and our power in the world. We have a brilliant film industry in the UK, and I urge all hon. Members, if they have not yet done so, to go and see “Paddington 2” and “Star Wars” this Christmas, as they are both British-made films. I also welcome the initiative in her constituency. I assure her that we are working closely with the creative industries to make sure they are on the same secure footing post-Brexit as they are today.

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

Since we are focusing on “Paddington 2” I should announce an interest because we are going this weekend—please don’t tell my son! “Paddington 1”, which we intend to watch on catch-up the day before, will be problematic because while some people are enjoying fibre lines and some have copper, we in some parts of Kent appear to have a hemp line that connects us to the rest of the internet.

[Matt Hancock]

I am pretty sure that my hon. Friend’s son does not watch Parliament TV, so his secret should be safe—[Interruption.] Well, he certainly does not watch it yet. My hon. Friend makes the point that we need decent connectivity everywhere, and the Government are bringing in the universal service obligation to ensure that decent broadband can be available to everybody, fulfilling our manifesto commitment and delivering that by 2020.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

7. What steps he has taken to promote public legal education in the last 12 months.

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

9. What steps he has taken to promote public legal education in the last 12 months.

[The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)]

In July I launched a public legal education panel to support and drive forward legal education initiatives. Bringing together key organisations will mean a more joined-up approach to PLE, and will ensure that more people can reap the benefits of the good work that is being done. The panel is currently combining its resources to map the provision of, and need for, PLE around the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor General]

As the hon. Lady says, there is a wide range of people with vulnerabilities. I am glad to say that the CPS is doing some excellent work, especially in the field of hate crime. The packs that it produces for schools in particular, dealing with disability, race, religion and LGBT issues, are being downloaded and used by schools in regions throughout the country, including the hon. Lady’s region. They are designed to teach students about the nature, effects and consequences of this type of crime, and have a strong anti-bullying focus which encourages young people to become active citizens.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I welcome the work that my hon. and learned Friend has done on public legal education. I also welcome the work done by Citizens Advice in such places as Edenbridge in Kent. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree, however, that the spread of contract law through every clickable website and every app that is downloaded means that the emphasis must now be on legal education throughout people’s lives, not just in schools but through general services as well?

[The Solicitor General]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who, in the last Parliament, chaired the very first all-party parliamentary group on public legal education. He shares my passionate desire to enable young people in particular to understand that when they buy a mobile phone they sign a contract, and thus enter into legal obligations at a very early age. It is our duty to try to educate, encourage and support them in order to prevent some of the legal problems that they might encounter.

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.