Online Filter Bubbles: Misinformation and Disinformation

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

It is most unusual for me to called so early in a Westminster Hall debate, Sir Mark, so I am grateful to you.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing this debate. There is no question that preventing misinformation and disinformation is one of the great challenges of our time, and it will only become more and more challenging, as he has adumbrated in his remarks to the House this afternoon.

Unfortunately, we have many active theatres of conflict around the world at the moment, so I will begin by thanking all of those who take to social media to counter so much of the disinformation that exists. Whether it is about the war in Ukraine or about the situation in the Red Sea, Gaza and Israel, so much disinformation is doing the rounds. Some of it is clearly state-sponsored; some of it less so.

Indeed, there is also misinformation or disinformation about elections, so no doubt we will see more of that as the elections in this country and elsewhere in the west draw closer. Also, last week there were elections in Taiwan, when the Taiwanese political parties said it was the harshest election yet in terms of Chinese-sponsored disinformation against a democratic people. However, a great many people invest time, effort, energy, money and resources online to counter such disinformation and they do a public service.

I will mention the negative part first, if I may; there is no point in my going over all the various examples of disinformation that exist. I recall being in a conference a few years ago with the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) where one of the complaints that we had—it is so often a complaint—was that when there are conferences and workshops and think-tank events about disinformation, everybody wants to talk about examples of disinformation but few people want to talk about how we arm ourselves against it.

So, as I say, let me start with the negative part first. I do not mean any of what I say today to be against the Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, the hon. Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti)—who, I will confess, I do not think I have faced on this issue before. Nevertheless, the Government do not have a coherent strategy on this issue. There are a great many officials across Government and across Whitehall who are doing some sterling work on it; no question about that. At a political level, however, this issue has not been given the serious consideration that it deserves; although it may be uncharitable of me to say so, that was evidenced most of all by the fact that Nadine Dorries was put in charge of it. [Laughter.] Having said that, I will come on to a central problem that is less about personalities and more about the policy framework and the institutions that are required.

As I understand it, and the Minister may correct me in his remarks, misinformation is the responsibility of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport; some disinformation is also that Department’s responsibility. Foreign disinformation falls with a mixture of the Foreign Office, the intelligence services and the Home Office. Other parts of disinformation are the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence and defence intelligence. I spent five and a half years as my party’s spokesperson for defence and the type of question that I wanted to ask depended on whether or not the Ministry of Defence could answer it. Who does this madness—a madness of responsibility and lines of accountability lying all over Whitehall—benefit? Certainly not our constituents.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making a very important point. I have tried repeatedly to find answers from the Government’s Counter Disinformation Unit. That specialist unit, set up in Whitehall to counteract some of this disinformation, is meant to be cross-departmental, but sadly it has been quite dormant. We have had very little information and transparency. Does the hon. Member agree that, if we had more transparency, we could see what Departments were working on across Government and seek to tackle the problem?

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[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Indeed. The hon. Lady is entirely correct. The fact that so much of this has spread like a great blob—some might say—around Whitehall benefits only our adversaries and those who wish to pursue disinformation in this country. That is before we get to the growing problem of the things the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare mentioned—deep fakes and AI-generated disinformation—all of which is going to get worse and worse. As long as responsibility and lines of accountability and policy formation are a bit all over the place, when in my mind the obvious place for them to lie would be with the Cabinet Office, that will be of benefit only to those who want to sow disinformation.

In June 2021, in the spirit of trying to be a helpful Scottish nationalist, which might be an oxymoron to some people, I published a report that made nine recommendations on how, in fairness to the UK Government and Scottish Government, they can better counter disinformation in public life. I want to go through a couple of those. First, we need a proper national strategy that is a whole-society national strategy, imitating the excellent work done in countries such as Finland and Latvia, where countering disinformation and hybrid threats is not the job of the Department of Defence or even the Government but involves public institutions, other public bodies, the private sector, non-governmental organisations, civil society and private citizens. There is much that can be done. Surely we saw that in the generosity people showed during the pandemic. There is so much good will out there among the population to counter hybrid threats when they arise.

Although we have the counter disinformation unit, I would suggest a commissioner, perhaps similar to the Information Commissioner, with statutory powers on implementing the national strategy and countering disinformation. There is a job for our friends in the media, too. The media need to open up to explain to the public how stories are made. There is a job to be done in newspapers and broadcast media. It would be to the benefit of mainstream media—that phrase is often used in a derisory way, although I like my media to be mainstream—as the more the media explain to the public how they make news, the better that would be for those of us who consume it.

There should also be an audit of the ecosystem. One thing I suggested in the report is an annual update to Parliament of a threat assessment of hostile foreign disinformation to this country. The better we understand the information ecosystem, the better we can equip ourselves to counter hostile foreign disinformation. I also suggest literacy programmes across all public institutions, especially for public servants, whether elected or unelected. My goodness, some of them could do with that in this House.

I also suggest we look to host an annual clean information summit. There is so much good work that goes on, especially in Taiwan, and right on our own doorstep in Europe. So much good work goes on that we could learn from, and hopefully implement here. If we do not have a whole-society approach, involving public bodies, faith groups, trade unions, private enterprise and even political parties, fundamentally any strategy will fail.

I will end on this: political parties need to get their acts together, and not just on some of the stuff that gets put out. I am not going into things that individual parties have put out. But at either this election or the next—I would argue that the upcoming election is already at risk of a hostile foreign disinformation attack—what will happen when that disinformation gets more sophisticated, better funded and better resourced than anything we have to see it off? I come back to the conference I attended with the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe, where we took part in a war game: it was a presidential election, and our candidate was subject to a hostile foreign disinformation attack to spread smears and lies about them. We need to get used to this now. Political parties need to set their arms to one side and work together so that we can preserve that thing we call democracy. I think it is worth fighting for. I look forward to the other suggestions we will hear in the rest of the debate.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

I note the number of people present, and ask Members to keep their contributions to around seven minutes so that we can get everybody in.