As I said earlier, I only have 15 minutes in which to contribute to the debate. Although I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we could go back a lot further, perhaps he could do so in his speech, if he makes one. I am focusing only on recent activity.
Information emerged just last month about hundreds of fake Twitter accounts, probably run from St Petersburg. Research at the University of Edinburgh in relation to the EU referendum showed that at least 419 fake accounts tweeted about Brexit a total of just under 3,500 times, although that was mostly after the referendum had taken place, rather than before. Meanwhile, research by City, University of London from October showed that there was a
“13,500-strong Twitter bot army”
present on the social media site around the time of the referendum, and in the four weeks before the vote, those accounts posted no less than 65,000 tweets about the referendum, showing a “clear slant” towards the leave campaign. However, there was no mention in that report of any specific Russian involvement.