Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Timothy Francis Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. I am sure that we all wish her well in her lawsuit, which is clearly being taken for all the right reasons. I thank the Minister for her response, particularly her invitation to discuss this further, but the actual response she gave today did not score that many runs as far as I was concerned If you look at the intent behind all these amendments —prohibiting foreign interference, greater transparency over digital advertising, expenditure and content, preventing misinformation and disinformation—these are all things we should be striving for to make sure that we have a more vibrant democracy and to prevent damage to it. The Government have pushed back on them, and I am afraid that this is really not acceptable in this day and age. If I could respond to what the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said about digital, there is a difference. We have seen the power of the algorithm to amplify in a really unhelpful, dangerous and sometimes harmful way as far as individual harms are concerned, and it is true of democracy at large as well I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Mann. He is clearly an extremely creative campaigner, and walks around with an electronic sweater that advertises—or used to advertise—his electoral qualities. We have to be alert to new forms of campaigning, but we are where we are; this Bill purports to be a way of dealing with digital campaigning, but it does not do the full job. That is exactly the point that we really need to be aware of I heard what the Minister had to say about "reasonably practicable" and so on, but the Electoral Commission guidance itself was not that clear for the Scottish parliamentary campaign. It was quite permissive, so as a result, the imprint appeared mostly either in the social media bio or on the website. It did not appear on the actual material itself, so the intent there was not achieved, and I doubt very much, if the guidance is the same—based on the same wording—that that will not be the case in the implementation of this particular provision. The leeway is too great, so it is not comprehensive As far as the other aspects go, I will look very carefully at what the Minister said, but, as far as advert libraries are concerned, she is repeating what the Government have said on a number of occasions: "Oh, fine, social media are already doing this." The whole purpose of regulation in this area, however, is to specify what needs to be contained in those advert libraries. It is not enough to say, "Oh, yes, Facebook is doing it here and Twitter is doing it there"—although Twitter is no longer doing political adverts, there are other platforms such as Instagram As far as foreign actors are concerned, the Minister has simply repeated my own words back to me about the £700 limit, so I do not think we advanced the argument very far. As for false information, misinformation, or disinformation, the example I gave in Amendment 212C was simply, in a sense, designed to elicit a response from the Government about their intentions. Clearly, they do not seem to have any particular intention, despite the fact that their White Paper on online harms actually dealt with the subject fairly comprehensively. The question comes back to the Government about misinformation and disinformation. Their response to a whole range of committees—the CSPL, the ISC, and the Electoral Commission itself—seems to be pretty blithe. The question increasingly is: if they are not prepared to regulate misinformation or disinformation, which are threats to our democracy, what are they going to wait for: until we have a clear electoral travesty? If not now, when? No doubt, we will return to this at some later stage, but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.