UK Parliament / Open data

National Security Bill

Proceeding contribution from Liam Byrne (Labour) in the House of Commons on Monday, 6 June 2022. It occurred during Debate on bills on National Security Bill.

I leave that to the judgment of the House in the debates that we have, but we must make the framework coherent, because, frankly, it is not coherent today.

My second point is about the defence of our democracy. The Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), was absolutely right to flag the fact that we have needed a defence of the integrity of our democracy at the core of our strategy for a long time. I called for it back in 2018, but right now, neither the Electoral Commission, nor the Advertising Standards Authority nor Ofcom has the power to regulate adverts placed on social media. People can therefore get away with ads on social media that could never be placed on television. Facebook, as all of us know, is like a wild west. There are also no constraints on what parties can spend in between elections, which allows people to surge investments in politics between elections, and there is no control to stop unlimited donations to political parties from abroad if they are laundered through the bank account of a British citizen.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

715 c623 

Session

2022-23

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
Back to top