My Lords, I put my name to this very important amendment—all the more important because of the previous discussions we have had about the difficulties around misinformation or potential government interference in decisions about what is online and what is not online. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is right to indicate that this is a very modest and moderate amendment; it addresses the problems of government influence or government moderation, or at least allows those of us who are concerned about it to keep our eye on it and make sure that the country and Parliament know what is going on.
The original idea of disinformation came from an absolutely rightful concern about foreign disinformation between states. People were rightly concerned about security; we all should be and nobody wants to be taken in, in that way. But there has been a worry when agencies designed to combat those threats increasingly turn inward against the public, in a wide range of countries. Although that might not be exactly what has happened in the UK, we should note that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted that the US Government asked Facebook to suppress true information. In a recent interview, he said that the scientific establishment
“asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true”.
We should all be concerned about this. It is not just a matter for those of us who are worried about free speech or raise the issue. If we are genuinely worried about misinformation or fake news, we have to make sure that we are equally concerned if it comes from other sources, not just from malign players.
The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, mentioned the American court case Missouri v Biden. In his 155-page ruling, Judge Doughty depicted quite a dystopian scene when he said that, during the pandemic, the US Government seem
“to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’”.
I do not think we want to emulate the worst of what is happening in the US here.
The judge there outlined a huge complex of government agencies and officials connected with big tech and an army of bureaucrats hired to monitor websites and flag and remove problematic posts. It is not like that in the UK, but some of us were quite taken aback to discover that the Government ran a counter-disinformation policy forum during the lockdown, which brought tech giants together to discuss how to deal with Covid misinformation, as it was said. There was a worry about political interference then.
I do not think that this is just paranoia. Since then, Big Brother Watch and its investigative work have shown that the UK Government had a secret unit that worked with social media companies to monitor and prevent speech critical of Covid lockdown policies, in the shape of the Counter Disinformation Unit, which was set up by Ministers to deal with groups and individuals who criticised policies such as lockdowns, school closures, vaccine mandates or what have you.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I do not want to get stuck on what happened during lockdown. That was an exceptional, extreme situation. None the less, the Counter Disinformation Unit—which works out of the Minister’s own department, the DCMS—is still operating. It seems to be able to get content fast-tracked for possible moderation by social media firms such as Facebook and Twitter. It used an AI firm to search social media posts—we need to know the details of that.
I think, therefore, that to have the transparency which the Government and the Minister have constantly stressed is hugely important for the credibility of the Bill, it is important that there is transparency about the likes of the Counter Disinformation Unit and any government attempts at interfering in what we are allowed to see, read or have access to online.