Russian Interference in UK Politics

Debate between Damian Collins and Edward Leigh

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am not seeking to defend the Putin regime. There is much in Russia that is not perfect. I was a member of the Council of Europe delegation to the presidential elections, and I know it is not a perfect democracy, but let us keep a sense of proportion. So much progress has been made, and Russia is an infinitely freer and better place than it was under the Soviet Union. It is not perfect, it is not pleasant and it is not our sort of democracy, so I do not defend the Putin regime, but I want to get a sense of proportion in this debate.

Let us look at the evidence from the Oxford Internet Institute, which is part of Oxford University. It investigated more than 100 Russian-linked Twitter accounts and their activity in the run-up to our EU referendum. The results of the investigation are worth noting. It found that

“(1) Russian Twitter accounts shared to the public, contributed relatively little to the overall Brexit conversation, (2) Russian news content was not widely shared among Twitter users, and (3) only a tiny portion of the YouTube content was of a clear Russian origin.”

The fact is that the majority of the UK population—to a significant extent—is not on Twitter.

[Damian Collins]

I am familiar with the study that my hon. Friend is referring to, but I would just say that it is very narrowly focused. There is also evidence of more than 13,000 bot accounts on Twitter that were believed to be linked to Russia and were deleted very shortly after the referendum. There is a lot that we do not know about this matter, and we need the tech companies to co-operate with us fully so that we understand the scale of it.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee, and of course we must keep a sense of proportion. I am quoting from a well-established institute and I want to give another point of view in this debate, which I think is fair enough.

I mentioned that the majority of the UK population is not on Twitter. Of the Twitter users, the majority do not even log in daily. Facebook did an investigation into the notorious Russian “troll factory” called the Internet Research Agency and found that its advertisements reached fewer than 200 people in Britain during the referendum campaign. If that is the best Russia can do to overturn our long-established parliamentary democracy, I think we can probably rest at ease.