Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

15. What steps his Department is taking with international partners in response to the global cyber-threat posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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

16. What steps his Department is taking with international partners in response to the global cyber-threat posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Steve Barclay)]

The Government are dedicating significant resources to understanding and countering Russia’s cyber-threat, working with our allies. That has included joint advisories with our Five Eyes partners on how to mitigate that threat.

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are spending £2.6 billion over the next three years to counter that threat. That is additional to the significant funding going into the National Cyber Force, which gives us offensive capability as well. Alongside that, we have a whole of society approach as set out in our national cyber strategy. I know that you, Mr Speaker, will take a great interest in particular in the north-west cyber-corridor, which is about leveraging that investment in the National Cyber Force and making it about skills across the north-west as a whole.

[Damian Collins]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that disinformation campaigns from hostile foreign states such as Russia also pose a cyber-security threat and that it is important that tech platforms work closely with the intelligence services and the Cabinet Office to identify proactively those threats and to address them?

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point. It is a deeply emotive point for the families affected. That is why we are committed to getting the terms of reference right. That is why, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office set out, this is shaped by the judge Lord Hallett and comes under the terms of the legislation passed by a previous Labour Administration. I know that Lord Hallett is committed to working with stakeholder bodies as regards reflecting the terms of reference in a way that meets the wider need.

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

T3. Does my right hon. Friend agree that as the House moves after the Easter recess to legislate through the online safety Bill, there must be effective co-ordination on disinformation between the counter-disinformation unit and the RESIST programme at the Cabinet Office, as well as Ofcom, as the online safety regulator, to make sure that social media companies take proactive action against known threats to this country, including the online frauds and scams mentioned earlier?

[Steve Barclay]

That is an extremely important point. Both the Minister for the Cabinet Office and I have chaired a number of Cabinet Sub-Committees looking at our wider domestic resilience and our response in the context of the conflict in Ukraine. It builds on the national cyber strategy launched before Christmas and the Government cyber strategy launched after Christmas. It is about working with relevant stakeholders to have a whole-of-society approach, whether that is in relation to the excellent communication from the Ministry of Defence in recent weeks in de-classifying key documentation around some of the Russian misinformation campaigns, or looking at the wider piece: getting in the right skills, the right training and the right product regulation so that we have that whole-of-society resilient approach, building on work through the situations centre and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Collins Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

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

Q6. More needs to be done to tackle the people trafficking gangs that exploit migrants across Europe, promising to get them to this country. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is totally unacceptable that companies such as Facebook allow those smugglers to offer their services on their platforms—not only routes into the country, but the sale of forged British papers in order to aid their access? Does he agree that when this House passes the Online Safety Bill we will have the power to do more to make companies such as Facebook take down content that promotes illegal activity?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. He is absolutely right to say that too many of these gangs are using social media, which is why the online harms Bill is so important. It will indeed be of assistance to us in taking down that kind of material.

Election Campaign Finances: Regulation

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the regulation of election campaign finances.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. Before I start, I would like to say what a pleasure it is to see the Minister in her place in Westminster Hall this afternoon. The debate has come at a timely moment. The Government published the Elections Bill this week and yesterday the Committee on Standards in Public Life published its report on the regulation of election finance—a lengthy review. I myself was interviewed by the Committee on my work chairing the Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s inquiry on disinformation and fake news. I thank the Minister for giving me the chance to discuss the Elections Bill with her and her officials some months ago, before it was published.

It is very important to have these periodic reviews of election law, because technology changes the way we live our lives and the way in which elections are fought, and regulations have to keep pace with changes to society. At the heart of good election regulation are two simple and fundamental things that have stood us in good stead through the ages, and it is important that they are translated into the modern world: transparency of funding and transparency in campaigning. We all know that when we deliver leaflets in our constituencies during elections, there is an imprint on those leaflets saying who paid for them and who they promote. There is no provision for online campaigning, and given that online campaigning—particularly on Facebook—now plays a much bigger part in everyone’s campaigns, it is increasingly important that there should be. That is why I welcome the fact that the Government are recommending the introduction of electronic imprints as a legal requirement in the Bill. It is a very necessary reform.

One of the big challenges that we face is not campaigning under our party banners. To an extent, we all have a bit of personal jeopardy if we put out leaflets with a party logo or our names on them: there is an assumption that they belong to us. Although, of course, as recent by-elections have shown, it is possible for people to put out leaflets without necessarily saying who they are, so this is not a purely online phenomenon, but it is one that is increasingly important in the online world. When non-party campaign organisations—not official registered party groups—campaign with increasing resources and increasing funding, not just in election periods but throughout the year, it is important that there is some understanding of where their funding comes from when they seek to campaign on a political issue.

The problem does not just affect the UK; it is a problem around the world. In 2019, I attended the International Grand Committee on Disinformation in Ottawa, Canada. That was a meeting of parliamentarians who were mainly interested in digital campaigning, disinformation and the role of elections in the online world. It was the second such meeting. The first was the meeting I chaired here in the Boothroyd Room as part of the DCMS Committee’s inquiry on disinformation and fake news. At that meeting in Ottawa, one of the witnesses we questioned was Ellen Weintraub, the commissioner for the Federal Election Commission in the United States. She set out the problem with online donations as she saw it in America, and I think people would agree that there are a lot of parallels elsewhere in the world, including here. In response to a question that I asked her about the difficulty of tracking money online, she said that

“our entire system of regulation is based on the assumption that large sums of money are what we need to worry about and that this is where we should focus our regulatory activity. On the Internet, however, sometimes very small amounts of money can be used to have vast impact, and that doesn’t even get into the possibility of Bitcoin and other technologies being used to entirely mask where the money is coming from…The problem with dark money is that you never really know who is behind it. There has been about a billion dollars in dark money spent on our elections in the last 10 years, and I cannot tell you who is behind it. That’s the nature of the darkness…We have a constant stream of complaints about dark money. The case I just described to you is one of the foremost examples we’ve seen recently. It can be money that comes in through LLCs…In this case, it came in through the domestic subsidiary of a foreign corporation.”

She sets out the nature of the problem. It is easy to transfer money in small amounts anywhere in the world, but it is very difficult to trace. If that money is being donated to political campaigns, of whatever nature, it is difficult to know the original source of the funding. We need to be very mindful of that in the digital age.

Just before the last general election, I chaired a DCMS Committee session with PayPal. Interestingly, PayPal gave an answer similar to that which we often get from technology companies about the things that happen on their systems. Its view was that it was not its responsibility to know the source of funding, or indeed whether funding was permissible, when someone made a political donation through its systems. If someone overseas makes a political donation to a political party in the UK, the platform facilitating the transaction says it has no obligation to know or check, even though it is being used to facilitate what would be an offence. The liability rests entirely with the party receiving the funding, but I do not think that payment platforms should have no role in supervising what goes on. They could at least change their settings so that the country of origin of a donation is clearer. Again, I know that this is something that the Government have looked at in their Elections Bill to try to ensure that there is greater transparency on foreign donations, which is very important.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life has made some specific recommendations that merit consideration. One is that company donations should not exceed net profits after tax generated in the UK within the two preceding years, which is very helpful. Businesses make donations to political campaigns—I have had businesspeople in my constituency in Kent make donations to my political campaigns. It is a perfectly proper form of donation, but it is clear which companies are involved, as they have to declare it, just as an individual would have to declare it. We should guard against shell companies being used to make large donations when they are not turning any profit, because the question will rightly be asked whether the money was transferred to that company so that it could make a donation but not generated by it. In that case, where did it really come from? The Committee on Standards in Public Life was right to make that recommendation and it is worthy of consideration and debate.

Recommendation 10 in the Committee’s report was that all donations over £500 be donated through the banking system, which would allow greater transparency on the source of funds. People would have the option of making smaller donations through electronic payments and systems such as PayPal. Paying money through the banking system is not a guarantee of transparency, but it is a more transparent method. Again, it is worth considering what the threshold should be in that circumstance.

As I have already said, I welcome the fact that the Minister proposes in the Bill to have electronic imprints on electronic campaign materials, but there should also be common standards on the role that technology companies perform in this regard. Some companies have ad libraries where they keep a store of all the ads that a campaign has placed. Facebook does that. It also requires that anyone placing an advert has a Facebook page, and they have to demonstrate to the company that they are a real person. However, I know the Information Commissioner has spoken about the difficulty sometimes in tracking down the real source of campaign ads, particularly when that source is not a political party but a new organisation that has just been set up. We need to make sure we have high standards there, so that people placing political ads are known and are known to be permissible advertisers.

Ad libraries for political campaigns should not be based on the platform policies of the companies. It would be good practice to ask anyone advertising through online platforms, and for those platforms to require a record of ads to be kept. Ads on social media can be placed as dark ads, where they target individuals and not everyone else can see them. It is useful to the democratic process for everyone to be able see and check what a campaign organisation is saying to its voters, even if it is not targeting those adverts at anyone.

In the same way, it is important for people to know why they are being targeted. There are systems, particularly on social media, whereby people can look at why they are receiving an advert—why it has been targeted at them—but they are not necessarily standardised. It would be a good thing for people to be able to see why they were receiving a political message. Is it because they have declared an affiliation for that party and therefore they are being targeted, or is it for other reasons? People should have the right to check and there should be standardised tools in that space.

There is also the question of ads that are fraudulent, wrong or misleading during elections. This is not just about policy debate; I think it is very difficult to regulate political opinions. As we all know, politicians can give two totally different arguments on the same subject, based on different interpretations of the same facts. We cannot seem to regulate that, nor do we try in this country. The fact that we have imprints on ads creates personal jeopardy for what we say—we have to put our name to it and it can be traced back to us. However, in the near future, technology will take us to a place where deepfake films could be made of a politician saying something inflammatory on the eve of an election. In fact, it would be a synthetic creation of them on film, saying something that they had never said. If that ad was being placed online on social media, and it could be demonstrated and proven that it was fake—that it was not based on real footage—what action would be required? Would it be a required action of take-down by the social media companies? Would the content be considered illegal for electoral purposes? Would it be stopped? In the very near future, new technology will make that sort of campaigning very cheap and easy, and we have to consider our response to that.

There is also the question of foreign placement of advertising, such as the much talked about case in America during the 2016 presidential election of the Russians buying ads on Facebook to target voters. It was an offence there, and indeed, foreign buying of ads to target voters in the UK would be an offence too. There are different countries around the world—not just the Russians, but the Iranian Government and other Governments—that engage in the process of electoral interference in other countries. We should regard that as an offence having been committed. If it is an offence that has been committed, and those ads have been identified as being run to target British voters, then it is legitimate to ask whether that activity is illegal. If it is illegal, there are two things we should consider: it is not just an offence committed by the person who has placed the ads, but an offence committed by the platform for running those ads in breach of the law.

The Government’s draft Online Safety Bill will require social media and other technology companies to have policies in place to remove illegal content. We need to consider whether an illegal ad, placed on social media by a foreign agent, targeting UK voters, would require the social media company to remove it as a form of illegal content, as it will be required to do under the Bill. In that situation, should that be a requirement of the regulator? The Bill recommends that Ofcom be the regulator—we can question whether for political ads it should be Ofcom or the Electoral Commission, whichever is most appropriate. If we regard such ads as being illegal, should the regulator’s task under the Bill be to say to the social media company that they must demonstrate to us that they would not only remove those ads when identified, but have systems in place to try and stop this happening—to check when someone places an ad whether it is illegal, to identify it and to stop it? Good practice should be that social media companies take an interest in where in the world people are buying ads from, and, when they do it, whether they are doing so in breach of electoral law.

I labour that point because I think it is important. I remember questioning Facebook about the case in 2016; about whether they had identified Russian ads that had run in America, and whether they had ever identified anything like that in previous elections in the UK. They said that if we had intelligence that that had happened, we could give it to them and they would check. However, there was no obligation for them to have those systems in place to pre-emptively stop it. If this was another form of fraud, such as banking fraud, banks are required to proactively look for, and identify, likely sources of fraud, and to notify the authorities of something suspicious. That does not exist in law around the placements of ads during elections. The combination of the Elections Bill and the draft Online Safety Bill that the Government are bringing in poses this natural question as to whether some forms of campaigning are illegal and, in that case, whether the regulator should take a view on not just acting against them, but ensuring that the companies have policies in place to make sure that this sort of campaigning does not happen in the first place.

These are all incredibly serious and important issues. I have spoken to the Electoral Commission about this, and it finds it quite frustrating, when dealing with technology companies to pursue lines of inquiry about suspicious activity, that unless it has launched a formal investigation, the company will not co-operate, because it is under no obligation to do so. Again, we need to consider the powers of the Electoral Commission in this regard both to make preliminary inquiries of a technology company about likely offences relating to digital adverts and to share information that it has discovered that could be relevant to the work of the police or the Information Commissioner. It is important that we consider those points.

These are important issues, and this debate is timely given the welcome introduction of the Government’s Elections Bill, the soon-to-start parliamentary scrutiny of the draft Online Safety Bill, and the report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. That report is the first of its kind for 20 years, which shows that these things come along only periodically, so it is important that we get this right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins]

I thank the Minister for her response. I agree that it is good that the Elections Bill has been published: as she said, there has been a very lengthy period of consultation of many of the aspects of that Bill, so it is good to see it published. I am sure that Members will have the opportunity to consider the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life alongside the Bill as it goes through its stages in both Houses of Parliament.

I thank the Members who have taken part in the debate: the hon. Members for Airdrie and Shotts (Anum Qaisar-Javed), for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), and for Putney (Fleur Anderson). I think it says something about the Putney constituency that someone tried to claim they had won a Nobel prize to impress its voters in an election—high standards are expected by the electorate there! I also say to the hon. Member for Aberavon that we seemed to struggle in the debate with different variations on the pronunciation of “Aberavon”, which I think is a consequence of “Grandstand” no longer broadcasting the Welsh rugby results live on Saturdays. Every other week, Aberavon would be the first name out of the hat.

We have had a very good debate on a very important set of issues. The Minister is right to say that the principles that underpin our system are well known, and they are based on transparency and fairness. The important challenge we face now is to make sure that those principles can be translated into the digital world, which is a harder challenge than we have faced before, because in the system as we knew it before digital campaigning many safety brakes were built into the system.

Editors of newspapers are liable for the adverts that they publish; in some cases, the printers of leaflets have a liability for the leaflets that they publish; and so on. There is not the same level of transparency in the way that digital systems work, which is why the law requires reform and change. I am grateful for the debate we have had, and for the opportunity to discuss some of those points this afternoon.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Damian Collins Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome this Budget, which has sought to strike the right balance between helping businesses and individuals that have been badly affected by the coronavirus, providing support as we transition this year through the lifting of the covid social contact restrictions, and setting out a plan for how the burden will be shared as the Treasury seeks to reduce the Government’s annual borrowing requirement. I know that many retail, leisure and hospitality businesses in my Folkestone and Hythe constituency will welcome the extension of their tax reliefs and the announcement of the restart grant scheme. It is also right for the Chancellor to extend the uplift in universal credit and working tax credit that was introduced last year.

In looking to reform business taxes, it is important that any increases over the next few years are borne fairly and that those who can most afford them pay their fair share. However, we know today that that is not always the case, and the lever of increasing corporation tax, which may have worked in the past, may not work quite so well when we have major companies, particularly in the technology sector, which avoid paying a level of taxes commensurate with the value of the business that they do.

In this year of coronavirus, some of the biggest winners have been the major online retailers—companies that pay relatively little in corporation tax and in business rates compared with the high street businesses that increasingly they compete against. I welcome the super deduction for business investment, but we may see that some of these companies were already planning to make big investments—companies such as Amazon investing in new warehouses and facilities—and will do so now and recoup even more off their tax bills. We need to think about how we can effectively tax businesses that operate online and through multiple jurisdictions, so that they pay a level of tax that is relatively fair for the business that they do and is on more of a level playing field with the businesses in our communities with which they increasingly compete.

We also need to reform the way business rates work, taking into consideration that the size of premises in a town centre is not always a good indication of the value of the business that is done. We need to look in the future to reform workers’ rights, particularly following the ruling by the Supreme Court about Uber, so that businesses that are in effect employing people are also paying the sort of employer contributions, taxes and employer national insurance that other businesses are asked to make.

As this year the Competition and Markets Authority establishes its digital markets unit, we need to make sure that big companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon are not abusing their market power, and therefore creating inbuilt costs for consumers through charging advertisers too much. We also need to ensure that workers get their fair share. Fair competition for British businesses looking to compete in the tech sector is important, and we need to reform our competition law to make sure that is possible. That will be an important part of making sure that we can build back better after the year of covid.

Covid-19: Winter Plan

Damian Collins Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The tiered system that has been set out by the Prime Minister today is calibrated very carefully, learning all the lessons from the lockdowns that have been in place and from the previous tiered system, as well as from evidence from around the world and, indeed, from the devolved nations. It has to be calibrated to be able to bring infections down, but to do so in a way that also protects the other things that matter in life as much as possible. It is necessary that tier 3, in particular, is tougher than before, not least because of the experience of Huddersfield, Kirklees and other places that were in tier 3 for quite a long time, but saw a flattening rather than a reduction in their rates. That is why we have brought in a tougher tier 3. It nevertheless allows for the reopening of religious settings and non-essential retail, which are so important to many.

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

Millions of people will be delighted to hear that grassroots sports will return from 3 December. Will the Secretary of State confirm that that will be the case in all three tiers? With regard to the tiers, will consideration be given to variances across big counties and regions? For example, the conditions in the Thames estuary can seem very different and distant from those on the south Kent coast.

[Matt Hancock]

I am delighted that outdoor sports are able to reopen. Like the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, I have had significant representations from people who want to exercise, which of course is good for their health, so I am glad that we have been able to do that.

When it comes to the geography of the application of the tiers, of course we have to look at the areas in which people live and travel. Where it is clear that there is a genuine difference that is not represented by administrative boundaries, we will look at it and make a decision on that basis, as we did previously. For instance, with the previous tiers, we even split a borough in two in one example. Nevertheless, we do have to look at where people live and travel to get these decisions right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Collins Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I understand that the case is now under urgent review and a decision will be made shortly.

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

It is fantastic that we will very soon have the covid vaccine, but extremely concerning that in a recent survey, one in five people say they will not take it. Does the Prime Minister agree that social media companies should be doing more to remove anti-vaccine disinformation and conspiracy theories? Will he consider including requirements to do that within the scope of the Government’s forthcoming online harms Bill?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I am very pleased that Facebook, Twitter and Google have committed that no company should profit from or promote vaccine disinformation and that companies should respond to that kind of content very quickly. We are going to publish our response shortly to the online harms White Paper consultation and will be setting out our plans for legislation.

EU Exit: End of Transition Period

Damian Collins Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It was published in July. It outlines the IT systems with which business will interact, but of course we are augmenting and updating it, so it will be published later this month.

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

Does the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster accept that although the worst-case scenario situation of 7,000 queuing lorries would be intolerable for people in Kent and my constituency, even only half that number would require the closure of the coast-bound M20? Will he assure us that he will do all he can to ensure that that is not the reality that people are confronted with next year?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is precisely because we want to avoid that scenario that we are sharing it today in order that Government can be held to account for doing everything possible to avoid it, and so that we can work with business in order to avoid it. We have to be ready for the worst, which is why we have taken appropriate contingency plans. In order to avert that scenario, we want to work with him and those in his constituency, and businesses everywhere, to ensure that we can be ready. Eurotunnel, in his constituency, has been brilliant in the support that it has been giving to the business sector as well.