MPs denounce 'corrosive and conspicuous' antisemitism
Here’s a separate summary of what we’ve heard from MPs during the Commons debate on antisemitism:
-
Jewish Labour MPs, including Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth and Margaret Hodge, have been applauded for speaking out against antisemitism in their own party, as well as in society as a whole. In emotional speeches, MPs read out examples of antisemitic abuse they have been subjected to.
-
Berger also demanded the expulsion of Ken Livingstone from the Labour party over antisemitism allegations and attacked her party’s record on the issue. “One antisemitic member of the Labour party is one member too many,” she told MPs.
-
They were supported by political colleagues and opponents alike, including the influential Tory backbencher, Graham Brady. He said people were sensing a “change in the climate” and a “greater willingness” to tolerate antisemitism. Theresa Villiers said she was moved by the debate.
-
Labour’s John Mann, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on antisemitism, was one of those to speak in support of Berger. In an impassioned speech, he said he is often stopped in the street now by Jewish people who tell him: “I am scared.”
-
On behalf of the party’s frontbench, Labour’s Diane Abbott acknowledged Labour had not always dealt with antisemitism allegations sufficiently and outlined steps it was taking to improve. She insisted the vast majority of Labour members were not antisemitic. But she drew criticism from MPs for declining to directly condemn abuse directed at a Jewish colleague.
For a full write-up of the debate, see this article by my colleagues, Pippa Crerar and Anne Perkins.
And you can read a summary of the day’s earlier political news here.
Updated
The home secretary, Amber Rudd, rounded off the debate by saying Corbyn had an “obligation to take action”, telling MPs:
I believe that we have delivered, the whole house has delivered, a strong message to the leader of the Labour party: Take action.
The leader’s words have been strong and they have been heard again and again and again, but we have not seen the action that we would hope that would follow.
Abbott said that, as someone who had been the victim of a large quantity of online abuse, she hoped Tory MPs were “willing to take this issue seriously”.
She called for social media companies to take down abusive content more quickly and that, while people should be allowed to post online anonymously, those firms should consider holding people’s actual names and addresses.
On the issue of antisemitism, she said:
I cannot look into the souls of [Conservative] members ... But I would like to think that nobody has intervened on this debate with a view for party political advantage. We, in this party, take antisemitism very seriously.
Abbott said “nothing is gained” by accusing Jeremy Corbyn of being an antisemite, and told MPs:
The vast majority of Labour party members are not antisemites, as [Conservative MPs] seem to claim. We know what has gone wrong in the past, we realise there is an issue, we are dealing with that issue and I believe that the public understand that we are serious about fighting racism and antisemitism.
Abbott faced anger from MPs for initially refusing to give way to the Labour backbencher, Alex Sobel. When called, he said: “Maybe she wasn’t aware that I was the only Jewish parliamentarian in the debate who wasn’t called to speak.”
He challenged Abbott to address the antisemitic abuse he has been subjected to, telling the Commons that, after the Holocaust memorial debate, a man he named as “Mr Leonard” wrote online: “Why is this Jewish Zio-Nazi speaking in the English parliament?”
He asked the shadow home secretary if she agreed on the need to tackle it “right across the political spectrum in our own party”.
Abbott responded by summarising the steps taken by the Labour party to tackle antisemitism.
We are looking at introducing a programme of education – quite possibly delivered by organisations like the Jewish Labour Movement. And we are emphasising that members have an absolute right to rise the issue of antisemitism, including going on demonstrations.
We acknowledge that dealing with some of these complaints has been too slow, so we are reviewing and speeding up our disciplinary process, we are looking at the working of the disciplinary committee, we are recruiting an in-house lawyer and we are also going to recruit a further three temporary lawyers to help clear the backlog.
Labour’s shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, responding to the debate on behalf of the party’s frontbench, has told MPs that she had entered politics to “fight racism”.
For me, it has always been the case that racism includes antisemitism. Jew-hatred is race-hatred and one anti-Semite in the Labour party is one too many.
Abbott said she has found the debate emotional and congratulated her colleagues for their “very powerful speeches”.
Seeking to frame the debate, she quoted Rabbi Herschel Gluck, the leader of the Shomrim neighbourhood watch group operating in an area of north-east London in which many Jews live, as saying: “Minorities, and especially the Jewish community in Europe, are the weathervane of discontent and a wider feeling of insecurity in society as people look for easy and quick answers to their problems.”
Abbott said she wanted to put forward the concerns of the Haredi Jewish community in her constituency, who she said were worried about the rising level of hate crime and what is happening with the community’s maintained schools, which she suggested were being targeted by Ofsted. Abbott urged the home secretary to meet the community’s leaders.
Dame Margaret Hodge, a senior Labour MP, was also applauded after she gave a highly personal speech about how her family had been caught up in the Holocaust. She said:
I have never felt as nervous and frightened as I feel today at being a Jew. It feels that my party has given permission for antisemitism to go unchallenged. Antisemitism is making me an outsider in my Labour party. To that, I simply say enough is enough.
Labour’s former minister, Ian Austin, directly challenged the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, over his comments on an antisemitic mural, for which he was heavily criticised.
I’m pleased the leader of the Labour party has returned because the current crisis was triggered by the shocking discovery that he had defended a grotesque racist caricature and for three days he offered excuses, only on the fourth day with that unprecedented protest planned did he manage actually to say sorry.
Labour party members, all of us, have got to ask ourselves what would we be saying, what would he be saying, if a senior member of the Conservative party had defended a racist caricature about anybody else?
Austin criticised Corbyn for “defending Hamas”, adding: “The problem on the hard left is that some of them believe they’re so virtuous, they fought racism all their lives how can they possibly be guilty?” The Dudley North MP told Corbyn to “take this much more seriously”.
Labour’s Ruth Smeeth, who is Jewish, was the second MP to receive applause during the debate, after sharing the antisemitic abuse she has faced. Reading a small sample of it, she said:
My fanbase has shown scant regard for appropriate parliamentary language, so I apologise in advance. ‘Hang yourself you vile treacherous Zionist Tory filth, you’re a cancer of humanity’. ‘Ruth Smeeth is a Zionist, she has no shame and trades on the murder of Jews by Hitler, who the Zionists betrayed’. ‘Ruth Smeeth must surely be travelling first class to Tel Aviv with all that slush. After all, she’s complicit in trying to bring Corbyn down’.
The Stoke-on-Trent North MP said it was “truly heartbreaking” she had to stand in Parliament Square to protest against the antisemitism “engulfing” parts of the Labour party.
Smeeth said her selection was just a glimpse into the abuse that was now “par for the course for any Jew that has the audacity to participate in this political world”.
What is so heartbreaking is the concerted effort in some quarters to downplay the problem. For every comment like those you’ve just heard, you can find 10 people ready to dismiss it, to cry smear, to say that we are weaponising antisemitism.
Weaponising antisemitism, my family came to this country in the pogroms in the 19th century. Of our relatives who stayed in Europe, none survived.
We know what antisemitism is, we know where it leads, how dare these people suggest that?
She added:
I stand here today to say that we will not be bullied out of political engagement, we are going nowhere and we stand and will keep fighting until the evils of antisemitism have been removed from our society.
Luciana Berger appeared close to tears as the Conservative former minister, Theresa Villiers, referred to her speech – and that of John Mann – as some of the “most powerful speeches I’ve ever heard in this chamber”.
Villiers said the day’s debate showed the UK was “very far from achieving [the] goal” of confining antisemitism to history.
Villiers is also a member of the group Mann chairs.
Updated
Mann said explicit antisemitism was “constant”, while there was a bigger group of “excusers” who said the issue was being used to challenge the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
What Jewish people say to me now is different to what they said 13 years ago, to the growth in antisemitism.
Five years ago, Jewish people would come up to me and they’d say we’re concerned that there’s a rise in antisemitism. I’m stopped in the street everywhere I go now by Jewish people saying to me, very discreetly: ‘I am scared’.
Young people, old people: ‘I am scared’. You see what’s happened in France and you see what’s happened in Belgium and you see what happened in Copenhagen, and then you understand why people are scared.
People who are scared, young Jewish members, to go to a Labour party meeting with me, because they’re fearful of how they will be intimidated, threatened, how their identity will be challenged.
Mann said antisemitic abuse would end in one way: with the murders of Jewish people because they are Jewish.
The Labour MP, John Mann, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on antisemitism, has said Jewish members of the parliamentary Labour party have been targeted “because they are Jewish”.
He told MPs:
That is what is going on at the moment. I didn’t expect when I took on this voluntary cross-party role for my wife to be sent by a Labour Marxist antisemite a dead bird through the post.
I didn’t expect my son after an Islamist death threat to open the door in the house on his own as a schoolboy to the bomb squad.
I didn’t expect my wife, in the last few weeks from a leftist antisemite in response to the demonstration, to be threatened with rape. I didn’t expect my daughter similarly, and have to be rung up in the last few weeks by special branch to check out her movements in this country.
No, I didn’t expect any of that.
The antisemitism debate in the Commons continues, but my colleagues, Pippa Crerar and Anne Perkins, have written a detailed piece on what we’ve heard so far.
Updated
Berger demands Labour kick out Livingstone
Luciana Berger has concluded her address by calling for Ken Livingstone to be expelled from the Labour party. The former mayor of London is suspended over antisemitism allegations.
Livingstone was first suspended by the party for suggesting the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, was “supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”. His suspension was extended in early March over fresh antisemitism allegations.
Berger told the Commons:
My party urgently needs to address [antisemitism] publicly and consistently. And we need to expel those people from our ranks that hold these views – including Ken Livingstone.
Madam deputy speaker, we have a duty to the next generation. Denial is not an option, prevarication is not an option, being a bystander who turns the other way is not an option.
The time for action is now. Enough really is enough.
And I just want to conclude with the very eloquent words of the former Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, and he said: ‘An assault upon Jews is an assault upon difference and a world that has no room for difference has no room for humanity itself’.
Updated
Berger added that she has been accused of “having two masters”, of being “Tel Aviv’s servant” and of being a “paid-up Israeli operative” – all recognised antisemitic tropes.
Essentially, it is antisemitism of the worst kind; suggesting that I’m a traitor to our country, they have called me ‘Judas’, a ‘Zio-Nazi’, an ‘absolute parasite’, telling me to ‘get out of this country and to go back to Israel’.
She says the authorities have worked hard to keep her safe, but they should not have to do so.
The hurt and anguish of the Jewish community must be understood and must be taken seriously. This is not the time for games or divisive engagement.
She said the government is making it a priority to “better protect everyone in this country online”, adding that there were already abusive comments being made on Twitter in response to the holding of the debate in the Commons – “it’s a cesspit”, replied one MP.
Berger attacks own party's record on antisemitism
Luciana Berger has attacked supporters and members of her own party over the “conspicuous” and “corrosive” antisemitism she sees within Labour. She has told the Commons:
I make no apology for holding my own party to a higher standard. Anti-racism is one of our central values and there was a time not long ago when the left actively confronted antisemitism. The work that the previous Labour government did to move the equality goalposts in this country was one of the reasons I joined the Labour party.
One antisemitic member of the Labour party is one member too many.
And yet, as I said outside this place in Parliament Square – and it pains me to say this madam deputy speaker, proudly as the chair of the Jewish Labour movement – in 2018, within the Labour party, antisemitism is now more commonplace, it is more conspicuous and it is more corrosive.
And that’s why I have no words for the people that purport to be both members and supporters of our party, who use that hashtag #JC4PM (Jeremy Corbyn for prime minister) ... who attacked me for speaking at that rally against antisemitism, who have questioned my comments where I questioned the comments endorsing that antisemitic mural, who have called for me to be deselected or have called it a smear.
But the Liverpool Wavertree MP referred to victim impact statements read out in court cases that make clear not everyone is able to speak out for themselves. She said people have been left unable to work or maintain relationships and have seen their health impacted as a result of the abuse they were subjected to.
Just one instance of racism can have a devastating impact on an individual’s life.
Berger said she has spoken out on the issue of antisemitism because she is resilient, but is concerned that her mental health will not always bear the strain.
Berger told MPs she had never seen antisemitism as a child, but was aware of it through her own family history. In a 1938 Commons debate, for example, an MP told her great uncle to ‘go back to Poland’, she said. And more than 100 members of one side of her family alone were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
I was 19 when I received my first piece of hate mail. It described me as a ‘dirty Zionist pig’. And here starts my 18-year experience of contending with antisemitism.
As a university student activist, I was attacked by all quarters – from the far-right, to the far-left.
She said four people had been convicted since 2013 over the antisemitic abuse they have directed at her.
Updated
MPs applaud Berger during antisemitism debate
The Jewish Labour MP, Luciana Berger, has received an ovation from MPs in the Commons after delivering a speech on the anti-semitic abuse she has received in the past.
Applause for @lucianaberger as she describes the torrent of anti-semitic abuse she has endured as a campaigner and as an MP. It is an absolute stain on this country that it has endured.
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) April 17, 2018
Sustained applause across Commons for brilliant, brave & moving speech by @lucianaberger in #Antisemitism debate.
— Liz Kendall (@leicesterliz) April 17, 2018
The reception is particularly impactful because clapping in the chamber is somewhat against parliamentary convention – but went without censure from the deputy speaker, Rosie Winterton, on this occasion.
We’ll bring you more of Berger’s speech as soon as possible.
Updated
Afternoon summary
- Theresa May has comfortably won a vote on the Syrian airstrikes. In an unusual move, prompted by the refusal of the government to schedule a conventional debate on a substantive motion, Jeremy Corbyn and opposition MPs voted against a procedural motion tabled by Corbyn himself as a means of expressing opposition. But the government won by a majority of 61. Almost all Conservative MPs backed the government, but a fifth of Labour MPs did not vote with the Labour whip.
-
May used the debate to effectively argue that asking parliament to give prior approval to military action was only really appropriate in the event of a long-planned war. (See 2.49pm.)
- Sajid Javid, the housing and communities secretary, used the opening of a debate on antisemitism to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of not showing leadership on the issue. Javid said:
I thank the leader of the opposition for attending this debate. It won’t perhaps be the most comfortable three hours of debate that he has sat in on, but he makes the most of it and his effort is appreciated for attending. There has, frankly, been a deeply worrying lack of leadership and moral clarity on this issue from him.
Being here to listen to what is being said by his concerned colleagues and others is an important step in showing the community that this issue is being taken seriously and I sincerely hope that he takes the opportunity to once and for all clarify his position on antisemitism.
Responding on behalf of Labour, Andrew Gwynne, the shadow housing and communities secretary, said: “Anyone who [says] that antisemitism doesn’t exist on the left isn’t living in the real world.” He also said that anyone who said antisemitism was not a problem for the Labour party did not speak for the party or represent its view.
- The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties. As Amelia Gentleman reports, a former Home Office employee said the records, stored in the basement of a government tower block, were a vital resource for case workers when they were asked to find information about someone’s arrival date in the UK from the West Indies – usually when the individual was struggling to resolve immigration status problems.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
This, from the Press Association’s Ian Jones, shows how MPs voted in the Syria division earlier.
There are currently 316 Conservative MPs and 307 of them voted with the government - 97%.
But only 205 of the 259 Labour MPs - 79% - voted with the Labour whip. It looks as if there were a lot of deliberate abstentions.
How the parties divided in this afternoon's vote on Syria. Although Labour tabled the motion, Jeremy Corbyn asked Labour MPs to vote *against*, in protest at how he believes the govt has treated parliament. pic.twitter.com/ozWSXcoBFv
— Ian Jones (@ian_a_jones) April 17, 2018
Government wins Syria vote by majority of 61
The government has won the vote easily, by 317 votes to 256 - a majority of 61.
Leave.EU has issued this response to the evidence given by Brittany Kaiser to the Commons culture committee earlier. (See 12.55pm.)
Having listened to the confused litany of lies and allegations by Brittany Kaiser we refute categorically all of her statements to Damian Collins’ vanity enquiry, an investigation into fake news generating ... more fake news.
No data has been sent to Mississippi. The unit is still in the planning stage, it employs no-one and is not operational. Kaiser’s testimony clearly shows she has just made this up to fit the anti-Brexit narrative. The unit will be working on insurance pricing using artificial intelligence in the future.
Eldon shared NO data with anyone and to suggest they did is again another lie to attack Arron Banks and Leave.EU directly.
The fabrications are astonishing. The fact that Collins and his committee are still refusing to summon Arron Banks demonstrates that they are not interested in the truth. All they care about is spinning fibs to undermine Brexit and the Leave campaign.
Collins and his fake news enquiry should call Arron Banks to appear before the committee so he has a fair chance to refute these ludicrous lies.
He appears scared to do so.
The Welsh government has threatened legal action to stop a debate trying to force the publication of a report into leaks about a reshuffle before the death of Carl Sargeant, the Press Association reports. The PA story goes on:
Assembly members are due to take part in the debate, which has been tabled by the Welsh Conservatives and calls for the report to be published, on Wednesday.
First minister Carwyn Jones wrote to the Welsh assembly’s presiding officer Elin Jones stating that she had “acted unlawfully” by accepting the motion and “continues to act unlawfully” by not withdrawing it.
But in a response, the presiding officer said she was “not persuaded” of his case and the debate would go ahead.
Alyn & Deeside AM Sargeant, 49, was found dead at his home in November, four days after being removed from his role as cabinet secretary for communities and children.
In the five-page letter to the presiding officer on Monday, the first minister wrote: “We are concerned that the assembly has acted, and threatens to continue acting, unlawfully.
“We therefore write at this early opportunity so that you may take the necessary steps to withdraw the motion.
“This would bring the matter to an end without the need for court proceedings, which may otherwise need to be brought as a matter of urgency.”
The letter states that the motion is in breach of the assembly’s powers under section 37 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 and “brings into question the proper conduct of assembly business”.
It claims there is a “clear risk” that publishing reports into leak investigations could deter people from coming forward with information, or co-operating.
Nigel Farage has told a US conspiracy theory website that the chemical weapons attack in Douma could have been created by “the deep state” as part of attempts to provoke and anti-Russian war and abolish nation states.
In comments which highlight how far the former Ukip leader is now embedded into the US alt-right, Farage also told the US internet radio show host Alex Jones that leftwingers want to ally with Islamists “because they hate Christianity”, and that the EU is “the prototype for the new world order”.
Jones is himself a hugely controversial figure, having used his Infowars site to previously claim the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax, and that anti-gun survivors of the Florida school shooting were actors.
Interviewed by Jones inside a studio belonging to LBC radio, for whom he presents a show, Farage said it could not be know whether the Assad regime carried out the Douma attack, saying “the deep state” could gave carried it out, or Isis, “hoping the world would blame Assad and the Russians”.
The interview – headlined “Nigel Farage exposes plan to destroy Christianity” – saw Jones ask whether the Douma incident was being used as a pretext for a wider war. Farage said:
The globalists have wanted to have some form of conflict with Russia as an argument for us all to surrender our national sovereignty and give it up to a higher global level. They’ve wanted it for years and now they see their opportunity, and we must resist.
Farage, who is primarily a radio host and talk show pundit since giving up politics, but has generally tried to tailor his message differently to the US and UK audiences.
But his association with a figure as controversial as Jones, and his embracing of Jones’s sort of wild conspiracy theories, raises the question of whether UK outlets can continue to treat him as a mainstream political figure – and what LBC think about their studio being used for such views.
Jeremy Corbyn is now wrapping up the Syria debate. He says it was a debate about the rights of parliament and the role of parliament.
Referring to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s speech, he said Rees-Mogg went back to 1688. But it is possible for the Commons to move forward from 1688, Corbyn says.
He says he will be asking Labour MPs to vote against the motion (his own one) “to express our dissatisfaction with the government’s response and assert the rights of parliament”.
MPs are now voting on the motion.
And, in his speech in the debate, the Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said Donald Trump saw the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as less of a problem then Stormy Daniels. Cable said:
I think we all have problems with a president who is erratic, capricious, is regarded with open contempt by the public officials who’ve worked with him, and who even now in the middle of this crisis seems to regard President Assad and President Putin as less of a problem than Stormy Daniels and Robert Mueller.
Now the question is, in our continuing dealings with the major power of the western world, where do we go?
In the Syria debate Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative backbencher, said that Jeremy Corbyn should have called a no confidence vote in the government, instead of just asking for an emergency debate on parliament’s right to approve military interventions. Rees-Mogg explained:
It would have been open to the opposition instead of going for an SO24 [standing order 24] debate, to ask for a vote of confidence in Her Majesty’s government, and I think that would have been the right thing to do having listened carefully to the leader of the opposition’s speech.
The opposition fundamentally does not have confidence, or its leadership does not, to have made this decision and then we would have seen whether this House had confidence in the executive to make the decisions that are the legitimate business of the executive.
That it has not chosen to go down this route actually shows that the opposition is of a pacifist tone, and that may be honourable and it may be noble, but it is different from upsetting our constitution merely to entrench inaction.
According to Isabel Hardman at the Spectator, there has been some confusion in Labour as to how they should be voting this afternoon. And the Tories have had their problems too, she argues. Here’s an extract from her blog.
Unsurprisingly, the decision to vote against its own motion has left Labour in quite some confusion. I understand that initially some of the party’s whips misunderstood what was going on, and instructed MPs to vote for the motion. Now, a few dozen backbenchers have told their whips that given they were instructed to abstain last night on the grounds the SNP had forced a vote that was meaningless and Labour wouldn’t be playing games, they will be abstaining again this afternoon.
That’s not to say that the Tories are doing brilliantly in this debate either. A number of their MPs are deeply uncomfortable with the tone set in the debate by Conservative whips. Backbenchers were, the words of one member, ‘revved up’ beforehand, which explains the number of excitable interventions, heckles and noisy interruptions during Corbyn’s speech. The Speaker had to call the House to order repeatedly, and even issued an ultimatum to Alec Shelbrooke to behave or leave the chamber for the rest of the afternoon.
According to my colleague Jessica Elgot, Corbyn will have the Lib Dems on his side this afternoon - but no dissident Tories.
Tory MPs saying no appetite at all - even among those most concerned about parliamentary process - to support Corbyn's Syria motion.
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) April 17, 2018
Understand Lib Dems are planning to support Corbyn call for parliamentary vote on military action - when it comes to a vote after this debate.
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) April 17, 2018
Opening of the Syria debate - Summary and analysis
MPs are not debating a substantive motion about the Syrian airstrikes, and any vote that takes place later will be symbolic and to a large extent pointless, but that does not mean this debate has served no purpose. It has. In fact, it has been surprisingly revealing. The convention that in principle MPs should be asked to approve military interventions before they take place has effectively been abandoned.
Theresa May did not put it quite like this. But that is the clear implication of what she said. The cabinet manual says military interventions should have prior parliamentary approval “except when there [is] an emergency and such action would not be appropriate”. May’s speech made it clear that, at least as long as she is prime minister, such action will “not be appropriate” in most circumstances.
Here are the main points.
- May effectively argued that asking parliament to give prior approval to military action was only really appropriate in the event of a long-planned war. She said that the government supported what the cabinet manual says about the convention that MPs being consulted on military intervention. (See 1.32pm.) But she then gave four reasons why it would have been wrong to recall parliament before the airstrikes last week and three of the reasons amounted to the same thing - that anything said in the debate might have helped the enemy. She said having a debate would have increased the chances of British missiles being shot down. Uncertainty was crucial, she argued, because if the Syrian regime knew what was coming, they could have concentrated their air defences, or dispersed their chemical weapons stocks. She went on:
Our ability to exploit uncertainty was a critical part of the operation, and that uncertainty was also a critical part of its success. We know the Syrian regime was not aware in advance of our detailed plans.
And yet if I had come here to this House to make the case for action in advance, I could not have concealed our plans and retained that uncertainty. I would quite understandably have faced questions about the legality of our action. The only way I could have reassured the House would have been to set out in advance, as I did yesterday after the event, the limited, targeted and proportionate nature of our proposed action.
I would have faced questions about what aircraft and weapons we were planning to use, when the operation was going to take place, how long it was going to last and what we were going to do. All of this would have provided invaluable information that would have put our armed forces at greater risk and greatly increased the likelihood of the regime being able to shoot down our missiles and get their chemical weapons away from our targets. I was not prepared to compromise their safety and the efficacy of the mission.
This argument would apply to almost any military intervention of the kind launched by the government last week, and May more or less admitted this towards the end when she said the Labour plan for a war powers act would make small scale military interventions unviable. She said:
Let me be absolutely clear what such a war powers act would mean. It would mean many smaller scale, timely and targeted interventions, like the action we have taken to alleviate further humanitarian suffering by degrading Syria’s chemical weapons capability and deterring their use, would become unviable - unviable because it would significantly reduce the effectiveness of any operations and endanger the safety of our servicemen and women.
- She accepted that asking parliament to approve military action in advance would be appropriate in the case of a long-planned war. She said:
There are situations, not least major deployments like the Iraq War, where the scale of the military build-up requires the movement of military assets over weeks and where it is absolutely right and appropriate for parliament to debate military action in advance.
But that does not mean it is always appropriate. It therefore cannot and should not be codified into parliamentary right to debate every possible overseas mission in advance.
- She said it would not be possible to draft a war powers act containing enough flexibility. She said:
It was right for me as prime minister with the full support of the cabinet and in drawing on the advice of security and military officials to take the decision on this military strike last weekend and for Parliament to be able to hold me to account for it.
By contrast, a war powers act would remove that capability from a prime minister and remove the vital flexibility from the convention that has been established, for it would not be possible to enshrine a convention in a way that is strong and meaningful but nonetheless flexible enough to deal with what are by definition unpredictable circumstances.
- She firmly rejected a Labour claim that she ordered military intervention at the behest of President Trump. When Labour’s Karen Lee suggested Trump had more say over British policy than MPs, May replied:
Let no one in this House be in any doubt that neither I, nor this government, take instructions from any president or any other national government. When we act, we act in what we believe to be the national interest, that is our only concern.
The prime minister may well have a point. There are some reports in the US that Trump could not even persuade the Pentagon to back what he originally wanted.
- Jeremy Corbyn claimed that the convention saying in principle parliament should be consulted about military interventions had been abandoned. He said:
It seems the convention established in 2003 and in the Cabinet manual is being tossed aside as simply being inconvenient. I believe it is necessary and urgent that this House has the opportunity to discuss its rights and responsibilities in decisions on UK military intervention, which is not currently codified by law and which, as we’ve discovered in recent days, cannot be guaranteed by conventions alone. The prime minister’s actions are a clear demonstration of why Parliament must assert its authority on this subject.
For the reasons explained above, Corbyn’s analysis seems correct.
- He restated his demand for a war powers act to codify the convention. He told MPs:
There’s no more serious issue in decisions made by parliament on matters of war and peace, and the government taking planned military action. That convention was established in 2003, it was enshrined in Cabinet in 2011, and the then foreign secretary gave every indication that he supported the principle of parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary approval of such a major step.
I’ve outlined the caveats that are there in a case of overriding emergency, but I do think it is very important that the House of Commons, as one of the oldest parliaments in the world, holds the government to account. Not just on the immediate decision, but on the longer term strategy and the implications of the actions that are taken.
- May dismissed claims that the government had been giving intelligence briefings selectively to MPs who backed the Syrian airstrikes. The claim was made by the SNP MP Stewart McDonald who said:
It’s been brought to my attention by several sources that the government has been selectively offering intelligence and security briefings by the prime minister’s national security adviser on the current situation in Syria and the UK military response to it.
These briefings appear to have been offered to members of the Labour opposition not on the basis of privy counsellor status but on the basis of those opposition members who are sympathetic to the government’s position. That leads to concerns that the government is using intelligence briefings to manipulate parliament and to bolster its own case for its behaviour on the opposition benches - not on security terms, but on politics.
May said all MPs had been offered briefings on the airstrikes after they happened. Before they took place, only party leaders were briefed, she said.
Updated
May says Corbyn’s proposed war powers act would make small-scale military interventions unviable
May says a war powers act would mean many small-scale operations would become unviable.
- May says Corbyn’s proposed war powers act would make small-scale military interventions unviable.
She says as long as she is prime minister that will not be possible.
Before winding up, May apologise to MPs for the fact that she cannot stay for the rest of the debate. She has to go to meet Cyril Ramaphosa, the new South African president, she says.
She says MPs may disagree about the Syrian airstrikes. But she hopes that they will recognise her commitment to being held to account, she says.
May says it would not be possible to draft a war powers act that would be flexible enough to allow the government to respond properly to any threat.
May says there is a tradition of support for military intervention on humanitarian grounds in both parties.
May says the UK was intervening with allies.
The attacks against Syria needed to be much larger than when the US launched airstrikes alone last year.
If she had come to parliament, she would have had to share information about what was being planned by allies.
That would have constrained what they were planning, she says.
May says she saw a lot of confidential intelligence about the Douma attack.
In the post-Iraq area, it is natural for people to ask questions about intelligence, she says.
But the government has an obligation to protect the sources of this intelligence.
The government has access to all this information. Parliament does not and cannot.
The issue is not about taking parliament into the government’s confidence. It is about whether our adversaries get taken into the government’s confidence.
She says she was about to share intelligence information with MPs after the attack than she would have been before.
May says debate last week would have increased chances of British missiles being shot down
The SNP’s Neil Gray says there was no need for surprise in this case. President Trump had tweeted his intention to take military action. Isn’t it the case that May was avoiding a vote because she was afraid of losing?
May says she will address this.
She says Syria has one of the most sophisticated air defence systems.
If the Syrians had known even the nature of the possible targets, it would have been able to prepare, or move weapons.
So the element of surprise was as crucial part of the mission’s success, she says.
She says if she had come to the Commons next week, she would have faced a range of questions about that was being planned.
That would have increased the chances of missiles being shot down.
She claims that Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary (who has been heckling), says it is “nonsense” to worry about British troops. She is wrong, May says.
- May says a Commons debate before the airstrikes would have increased the chances of British missiles being shot down.
The Labour MP Karen Lee asks why President Trump had more say over this military intervention than MPs.
May says she addressed this in the Commons yesterday. She goes on:
Neither I nor this government take intructions from any president or any other national government.
She acted in the national interest, she says.
The Tory Andrew Bridgen, in a reference to Corbyn, says some MPs would not favour military action even if the Isle of Wight were invaded.
May says Bridgen makes a good point.
Simon Hoare, a Conservative, asks May to confirm that the targets of last week’s attack were moveable. Doesn’t that show why surprise was necessary?
May says she will address this later in her speech.
Theresa May is responding now, on behalf of the government.
She refers to what the cabinet manual (pdf) says about the convention that parliament should be consulted over military action. It says:
In 2011, the government acknowledged36 that a convention had developed in parliament that before troops were committed the House of Commons should have an opportunity to debate the matter and said that it proposed to observe that convention except when there was an emergency and such action would not be appropriate.
The government backs that, she says.
The Labour MP Kevin Brennan asks if Penny Mordaunt was reflecting the government’s view when she said yesterday parliament was not in a good position to take these decisions.
May ducks the question, and again says the convention does not require parliament to be consulted in all circumstances.
The SNP’s Stewart McDonald asks about claims that security briefings have been offered to MPs how are not privy counsellors who are sympathetic to the government’s position.
May says, before the airstrikes, security briefings were offered to party leaders. Since then, they have been offered to all MPs, she says.
Updated
The Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg raises a point of order and asks if it would be acceptable for Labour to vote against its own motion. He is referring to reports that Labour plans to vote against the motion, as a way of registering a protest. This is from ITV’s Robert Peston.
Labour MPs are being whipped to vote against their own motion, to demonstrate that there has not been enough parliamentary consideration of the Syria strike. “It’s all meaningless, mad” one told me. “Whatever we do the government will take no notice. We are down the rabbit hole”
— Robert Peston (@Peston) April 17, 2018
Bercow says it would be in order for Labour to vote against its motion.
Corbyn says he hopes all MPs will back the motion.
The debate is unusually rowdy. John Bercow has had to intervene several times to stop the barracking of Corbyn.
For a flavour of what has been going here is a tweet from the Conservative MP Alec Shelbooke, who was reprimanded by Bercow a few minutes ago for shouting.
This emergency debate is a farce. It's merely a lecture from Corbyn. People were gassed and he makes it clear he wouldn't have intervened
— Alec Shelbrooke MP (@AlecShelbrooke) April 17, 2018
And this is from the shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner.
The conservative backbenchers have just debased parliamentary debate by their orchestrated barracking of @jeremycorbyn who is trying to uphold parliament’s sovereign right to be consulted prior to a government engaging in military action.
— Barry Gardiner (@BarryGardiner) April 17, 2018
Shame on them!
Corbyn concludes by urging MPs to back democracy, accountability and serious decision making.
The Conservative MP Chris Philp intervenes. He says Corbyn’s proposal could lead to decisions to go to war being challenged in the courts.
Corbyn says he does not know where Philp got that idea from.
Another Tory uses a point of order to clarify. He says if parliament were to legislate on this matter, a decision about going to war could be subject to judicial review.
Corbyn says parliament should have the right as a minimum to ask questions before the government commits to military action.
The key questions would be: is it necessary? Is it legal? What would it achieve? What is the long-term strategy?
This is what Labour said in a press release on Sunday about the need for a war powers act.
In the most serious matters of peace and security, the prime minister of Britain should be accountable to parliament, not to the whims of any other governments.
Labour has called for a ‘war powers act’ for the UK, which would enshrine in law that the government must seek parliamentary approval before committing to planned military action.
In 2011, the coalition government suggested a convention that the House of Commons should have a chance to debate before troops were committed to military operations, however Theresa May ordered air strikes on Syria without observing this convention. Labour’s proposal will codify this into law.
In the Commons the Labour MP Chris Leslie asks if Corbyn thinks parliament should have to approve any military action involving British forces embedded with troops from another country.
Corbyn says he does not have that level of detail, because his proposed war powers act has not been drafted yesterday.
But there would be a caveat in the legislation saying in some circumstances, such as an over-riding emergency, parliament would not have to be consulted, he says.
HuffPost’s Paul Waugh has tweeted a picture of the Robin Cook gravestone that Corbyn referred to a moment ago.
Here's Robin Cook's tombstone that Jeremy Corbyn just referred to.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) April 17, 2018
Cook's legacy cited differently yesterday by Corbyn's Lab critics. Mike Gapes pointed to Cook's strong backing for humanitarian intervention -without UN backing - in Iraq and Kosovo. pic.twitter.com/F7GfUMy1fF
David Clark, who was Cook’s special adviser when Cook was foreign secretary, has repeatedly used his Twitter account in recent days to argue that Cook would not back Corbyn’s stance on Syria. For example, he tweeted this yesterday.
Strange. Last month the Labour front bench was citing Robin Cook's ethical foreign policy as its inspiration. Today it is touting legal advice that effectively declares Cook and anyone else responsible for the Kosovo intervention a war criminal. Which is it @EmilyThornberry? https://t.co/h2qfKvHRYz
— David Clark (@David_K_Clark) April 16, 2018
Corbyn says Theresa May’s decision not to recall parliament last week showed a “flagrant disregard” for the current convention.
And he quotes what Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, said yesterday about it being wrong to insist that MPs should get a vote on military intervention. Her words suggest the convention is being tossed aside, he says.
Updated
Corbyn says there is an established parliamentary convention saying MPs should be consulted. But he thinks the government is trying to breach that convention, he says.
A Tory MP asks Corbyn how he would have voted if there has been a vote last week.
Corbyn says this is a debate about process. But he says that he expressed his doubts about the legality and the wisdom of military action, and so it should be obvious, he says.
Jeremy Corbyn is opening the debate.
He says an MP in the debate yesterday argued that, in a hung parliament, power over military interventions should pass from the executive to parliament.
He says he does not quite agree with that, but he does think having a hung parliament is a factor.
He says it was the Labour government that established the principle that MPs should vote on military action, when Tony Blair staged a debate before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And he quotes from the inscription on the gravestone of Robin Cook, who resigned as leader of the Commons ahead of that vote. It quotes Cook saying he may not have been able to stop the war, but he did succeed in ensuring that parliament would have a vote.
MPs hold emergency debate on Syria
MPs are now starting the emergency debate on Syria.
It was called by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader.
MPs are debating the motion “that this House has considered parliament’s rights in relation to the approval of military action by British forces overseas.”
Brittany Kaiser's evidence to Commons culture committee - Summary
In a moment the Commons debate on Syria will be starting.
Here are the main points from Brittany Kaiser’s evidence to the Commons culture committee.
- Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica director, told MPs that she was concerned that Leave.EU may have broken the law in three areas. Cambridge Analytica did some detailed work as it was pitching for a contract with Leave.EU and she attended various meetings with its founder, Arron Banks, and others. She identified three possible areas where the law may have been broken. (See 11.51am.) Electoral law may have been broken, because work was done that was not paid for, she said. Data protection law may have been broken, because Leave.EU seemed to be using data from Banks’ insurance companies, she said. And she said she thought data from UK citizens may have been processed abroad, contrary to UK law.
- She claimed that the misuse of data between Banks’s businesses and Leave.EU was “rife”. (See 11.14am.) Asked directly whether Eldon Insurance data was used by Leave.EU, Kaiser replied: “That’s what I saw with my own eyes.”
- She said that the target audience techniques developed by Cambridge Analytica were so powerful that they used to be considered “weapons-grade” by the government. When she joined the company in 2014, the firm had to tell the government if it was deploying these tactics abroad, she said.
The methodology was considered a weapon, weapons-grade communications tactics, which means that we had to tell the British government if it was going to be deployed in another country outside the United Kingdom.
Damian Collins, the committee chair, said in response:
So what you are saying is that the proposal to Leave.EU [was] to use what you call weapons-grade communications techniques against the UK population?
Kaiers said that by 2015 target audience analysis no longer had an export designation, meaning the firm no longer had to tell the government if it was used abroad.
- She claimed that the true number of individuals whose Facebook data may have been misused could be far higher than the 87 million the social media giant has so far acknowledged.
- She said she did not believe some of the claims made by Alexander Nix, who was chief executive of Cambridge Analytica until he was suspended, when he was filmed under cover by Channel 4 News. Nix suggested the firm’s employees were “ghosting” in and out of countries to influence elections. Asked if this was true, Kaiser said:
It’s incredibly shocking how far sometimes a sales pitch could go through to suggesting things that I believe are illegal or at least quite shadowy. I have never heard most of what was uttered on those videos ever before in any meeting that I have been a part of, nor was I aware or had any inkling that that might have been suggested when I wasn’t present.
Kaiser also said a claim on the Cambridge Analytica website that it had worked on three UK elections over the last 15 years was not true. Asked about this, she said:
I don’t believe any of that is true. It was likely put on there as sales material to back up the fact that we were worthy of being hired by the Leave.Eu campaign.
It is important to point out that Banks has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and he has explicitly rejected the claims made about the misuse of commercial data. See 11.14am.
Cambridge Analytica, which admits that it made a pitch to Leave.EU but says it did no work at all on the EU referendum campaign, has also denied some of Kaiser’s claims. See 12.18pm.
Kaiser says Alexander Nix, who is currently suspended from his post as head of Cambridge Analytica, told her that he wanted access to the US market “while the data laws were still the wild west”.
Cambridge Analytica has been tweeting responses to some of the claims Kaiser has been making.
In 2014 and 2015 Cambridge Analytica subcontracted some digital marketing and software development to AggregateIQ. The suggestion that Cambridge Analytica was somehow involved in any work done by Aggregate IQ in the 2016 EU referendum is entirely false.
— Cambridge Analytica (@CamAnalytica) April 17, 2018
There are no joint investors between Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ and there never have been.
— Cambridge Analytica (@CamAnalytica) April 17, 2018
That is a reference to the claim at 11.26am.
Cambridge Analytica has never received data from any Arron Banks company
— Cambridge Analytica (@CamAnalytica) April 17, 2018
And that is a reference to what was said at 12.03pm.
Q: Did Eldon Insurance and GoSkippy give you all their customer data?
Kaiser says the firms did not hand over any data. But Kaiser was told what data they were using.
Latest revelations 'call into question fairness of referendum', says Caroline Lucas
Caroline Lucas, the Green party co-leader and a supporter of the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain, says the latest revelations from Kaiser are “damning”. In a statement released by Best for Britain she said:
This latest revelation is damning. For a former Cambridge Analytica director to say that the misuse of date was ‘rife’ [see 11.14am] adds further weight to our calls for an inquiry into campaign and electoral spending.
There is an increasingly dark cloud of suspicion hanging over the actions of the Leave campaign - and the blurred lines between campaigns and organisations that really should have been separate.
Indeed the potential wrongdoing we’re seeing here appears so widespread that it calls into question the fairness of the referendum, and makes the case for a people’s vote on the EU deal even stronger.
Updated
The Labour MP Jo Stevens is asking questions now.
Q: So Arron Banks was using customer data for his own purposes?
Kaiser says that is what she was with her own eyes. (See 11.14am.)
When she visited Banks’ HQ, it was clear the staff in the call centre did not know about political campaigning. They worked for an insurance company.
But they were working for the leave campaign, she says.
She says she saw the call centre staff calling customers. They were asking them to take part in a survey about Brexit.
But she says she told them the data they were collecting was not detailed enough for Cambridge Analytica’s analytical purpose.
She says she was there in November 2015. But the call centre had already been operating for a month or so, she says.
She says there were about 20 staff in it.
Andy Wigmore, who was communications director for Leave.EU, has said that he and Arron Banks should be allowed to give evidence to the culture committee to give their side of the story.
@DamianCollins @BBCRadio4 @Arron_banks Damian you are an absolute liar - you should now call both Arron and I to your #FakeNews @CommonsCMS or do you not want to be shown up for the complete anti-Brexit fool you are.
— Andy Wigmore (@andywigmore) April 17, 2018
Kaiser says, before 2015, Cambridge Analytica’s data expertise was treated as a “weapons-grade” asset by the UK government. That meant the firm had to tell the government if it was going to use it abroad.
Damian Collins goes next.
Q: So you had to inform the authorities if you were using this?
Kaiser says that is what she was told.
Kaiser says she has concerns about three possible breaches of the law.
She says there could have been breaches of electoral law. Cambridge Analytica did work for Leave.EU that was not paid for.
She says there were possible breaches of the Data Protection Act. She refers to the concerns about the use of commercial data set out in her written statement. (See 11.14am.)
And she says there were concerns that data from British citizens was sent abroad, for processing in Mississippi, contrary to UK law. She also writes about this in the written statement (pdf), where she says:
I was recently made aware of a data company set up by Arron Banks called “Big Data Dolphins”, soon after he ceased negotiations with Cambridge Analytica and declined to pay our phase 1 bill.
This company has reportedly worked with a data science team at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). If the Mississippi team has held or processed UK citizens’ data in the US, I believe that is likely to be a criminal offence; although it is for the empowered authorities to pursue any such question and secure the associated evidence.
Matthew Richardson, a lawyer, co-wrote the legal opinion (pdf) about what Ukip could and could not do with its data. Kaiser says it is unusual for someone involved in an organisation (Richardson was Ukip’s party secretary) to be providing legal advice to it.
Q: Were you pitching to Ukip or Leave.EU?
Kaiser says she was pitching to Leave.EU, although Matthew Richardson, the Ukip party secretary, attended most meetings. Ukip were backing Leave.EU.
Updated
Simon Hart, a Conservative, goes next.
Q: How much work did you do for Leave.EU?
Kaiser says she pitched for work with Leave.EU.
She is now covering some of the points made in the written statement. (See 11.14am.)
She says Cambridge Analyica took Ukip membership data and survey data.
The firm found five different personal types.
That analysis was used to produce insights for messaging.
At the same time Philip Coppel QC was giving Cambridge Analytica advice on what the firm could and could not do with this data. (That is one of the three documents published this morning by the committee - here [pdf]).
Kaiser says this work cost £41,500. That work should have been paid for, she says.
Q: What was your contract with Leave.EU?
Kaiser says Cambridge Analystica never had a contract with Leave.EU. It had a contract with Ukip, and Leave.EU were due to benefit.
She says she submitted an invoice for £41,500.
Turning back to Kaiser’s written statement (pdf), she also says Cambridge Analytica had a special relationship with Breitbart, the rightwing website. She says:
In reviewing the events around the Brexit campaign, I was recently reminded of the fact that the Breitbart media platform had a UK channel, “Breitbart London”, in which UKIP-linked figures played key roles. One of Cambridge Analytica’s competitive advantages in the US marketplace in 2016, and a key part of our pitch to Republican clients, was that we had secured exclusive rights to resell Breitbart engagement data. This meant that we had at least some access to what tens of millions of Americans were reading on Breitbart, and could feed this data into our campaign models to help predict resonant issues - and to influence behaviour. Breitbart became one of the biggest media platforms in the US in 2016, and its stories often went viral on Facebook.
I am not aware of any such agreement or data sharing in relation to Breitbart London, but it would be interesting to know if our US data tracking tags were in place on that UK channel, and whether any data about what stories British people were reading on Breitbart or other websites ever made their way to Leave campaigns.
The Labour MP Paul Farrelly is asking the questions now.
Q: What was the link between Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ?
Kaiser says AggregateIQ were the company’s exclusive data and engineering partners. They build internet platforms.
But the relationship between the two companies became strained, she says. AIQ did not deliver material on time.
She says subsequently she was told that some board members has ownership of AIQ.
Q: During the EU referendum campaign did you know AIQ were doing work for Vote Leave?
Kaiser says she was due to have a meeting with Vote Leave. But that meeting got cancelled after they found out she was doing some work for Leave.EU.
At the time she did not know AIQ were doing work for Vote Leave, she says.
This morning, commenting on a Tweet including a link to a Daily Mirror story about the Nazi propaganda material released by the culture committee yesterday, Arron Banks posted this on Twitter.
Bollocks , more fake news from whining losers. https://t.co/wSb0HKCpk5
— Arron Banks (@Arron_banks) April 17, 2018
In her written evidence (pdf) Kaiser suggests that Arron Banks, the Ukip donor and Leave.EU founder, used data from his insurance company for political purposes. She says:
Cambridge Analytica was initially engaged with Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore and Matthew Richardson to design parallel proposals for Leave.EU, GoSkippy/Eldon Insurance and the UK Independence Party. I was asked by Nix and Wheatland to take the lead on contract negotiations. I believe this is because, as upper class Brits, they did not want to front up the deal with him themselves. Banks was excited to discover my background with the Obama campaign.
Over a period of five months, we undertook both meetings and work at the Bristol headquarters of Eldon Insurance, the SCL Group offices in Mayfair, and the Leave.EU London offices in Millbank Tower, as well as a press launch and media engagements. Our work for UKIP/Leave.EU was never reported to the Electoral Commission by the party, the campaign, or our company.
At the time, I didn’t see anything wrong in what was being proposed. I am not a data lawyer or an expert in UK elections law; and we included caveats in our proposals about requiring legal advice before proceeding with some elements of the project. Arron Banks said, “It’s my data” – it seemed natural that he would use it across his initiatives. I was also reassured by a legal opinion arranged by former UKIP party secretary Matthew Richardson from Philip Coppel QC to UKIP and Cambridge Analytica, an opinion which Richardson co-signed in a manner which seems somewhat unorthodox in retrospect. I am providing this document now to Parliament.
In hindsight, I now think that there is reason to believe that misuse of data was rife amongst the businesses and campaigns of Arron Banks. If the personal data of UK citizens who just wanted to buy car insurance was used by GoSkippy and Eldon Insurance for political purposes, as may have been the case, people clearly did not opt in for their data to be used in this way by Leave.EU. I have similar concerns about whether UKIP members consented to the use of their data.
For example, I went to Bristol with a senior data scientist to spend the day with the Leave.Eu team. We started the work day by presenting to the heads of every department (social media, call center, IT/data, creative, events) to show them how Cambridge Analytica uses data and would be supporting the Leave.Eu campaign. After the general presentation we went to work with each department to assess which kinds of data they had, how they were being used and what kinds of capacity the team possessed. When we were with the call center team, we enquired on the databases being used for the calls, which I was told were from the insurance company. It seemed to me that the datasets and the staff were being used for Eldon/GoSkippy Insurance as well as Leave.eu in parallel.
The culture committee has not taken evidence from Arron Banks. But, after similar suggestions were made at a culture committee hearing, Banks strongly denied misusing customer data. He said:
Our position on this is that no customer data was used and nobody has provided any no evidence to the contrary on this.
All this is is political bad blood on the side of the remain campaign. We are happy to work with anyone that wants to look into this and have done so, but no evidence has ever been brought forward.
There is no way this could happen to what is a highly regulated entity run by a whole board of directors. This is just political sour grapes.
Q: Could you explain how Cambridge Analytica and SCL work? Some people have told us that everything is really part of SCL?
She says most staff were shared between the companies. She does not know that anyone was employed directly by Cambridge Analytica.
Here is an extract from the conclusion to Kaiser’s written statement (pdf) to the committee.
Governments, private companies and wealthy individuals have long had the opportunity to buy, license and collect our datasets. The past decade has seen a rampant rise of this data collection and modelling, targeting individuals to sell products, services and political ideology. I know this all too well, as a data rights campaigner and former employee of Cambridge Analytica.
Privacy has become a myth, and tracking people’s behavior has become an essential part of using social media and the internet itself; tools that were meant to free our minds and make us more connected, with faster access to information than ever before. Instead of connecting us, these tools have divided us. It’s time to expose their abuses, so we can have an honest conversation about how we build a better way forward.
I appreciate the opportunity to have given this testimony to Parliament. These are little-known areas which people are only just beginning to understand. I believe that shining a light on historic abuses, whether illegal or illegitimate, can help us forge a new social contract in which we use our wealth of data for good, instead of exploitation.
That’s why I am calling through the #OwnYourData campaign for individual data to be protected as property, where we each have sensible permission structures, the right to make our data portable, and to monetize it for our own basic needs and freedoms.
Brittany Kaiser opens by saying she is giving evidence because she believes in truth and democracy.
She says she was born in the US, but studied at Edinburgh University. She worked on Barack Obama’s campaign team. Then worked for human rights causes, she says.
Damian Collins, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, opens the hearing by referring to the material published this morning on the committee’s website.
He says Brittany Kaiser has also given the committee some emails. The committee will release them once it has redacted personal material, he says.
The Commons culture committee has just published on its website three pieces of written evidence from Brittany Kaiser.
I will post more from them when I’ve had a look.
We are still waiting for the committee hearing to start.
Culture committee takes evidence from former Cambridge Analytica executive
Brittany Kaiser, the former director of programme development at Cambridge Analytica, is about to give evidence to the Commons culture committee.
As my colleague Matthew Weaver reports, Kaiser told the Today programme this morning that the firm pitched “a very detailed strategy” to Leave.EU on how it could use data and psychological profiling to microtarget people likely to back Brexit in the referendum.
In a major interview with the Guardian last month, Kaiser said that Cambridge Analytica conducted data research for one of the leading Brexit campaign groups and then misled the public and MPs over the work the company had undertaken.
David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, told the Today programme this morning that the government is still not certain whether any Windrush-era citizens in the UK have been wrongly deported, my colleagues Peter Walker and Amelia Gentleman report.
UK government to challenge Scottish and Welsh governments Brexit bills in court
The UK Government is to challenge Brexit legislation passed by the Scottish and Welsh devolved administrations, the Press Association reports. Bills passed in the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly last month have been referred to the supreme court.
The decision has been taken by the attorney general and the advocate general for Scotland, the government’s senior law officers. The court is being asked to rule on whether the legislation is constitutional and within the powers of the devolved legislatures.
Jeremy Wright, the attorney general, said:
This legislation risks creating serious legal uncertainty for individuals and businesses as we leave the EU. This reference is a protective measure which we are taking in the public interest. The government very much hopes this issue will be resolved without the need to continue with this litigation.
Unemployment at 4.2% hits lowest level since 1975
The number of people in work has reached a record high, while earnings have grown slightly above inflation for the first time in almost a year, new figures showed. As the Press Association reports, employment increased by 55,000 in the quarter to February to 32.2m, the highest figure since records began in 1971, giving a record rate of 75.4%. Unemployment fell by 16,000 to 1.42m, the lowest in more than a decade, giving a jobless rate of 4.2%, the lowest since 1975, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Average earnings increased by 2.8% in the year to February, unchanged on the previous month and the highest since September 2015. As PA reports, the latest CPI inflation figure is 2.7% and is expected to remain unchanged when new figures are published on Wednesday.
Matt Hughes, senior ONS statistician, said:
The labour market continues to be strong and, for the first time in almost a year, earnings have grown slightly after inflation has been taken into account.
Emma Briant, the lecturer who interviewed Nigel Oakes and Andy Wigmore and who supplied transcripts to the culture committee (see 9.42am), told the Today programme that she had not prompted Oakes or Wigmore to talk about the Nazis. She said:
I don’t bring up the Nazis in my interviews. That was completely off the cuff from them. I was really shocked that this came up in two of my interviews separately. It honestly, in the interview situation, hit me like a brick wall. And I found it quite hard to continue. I think the power of those words is conveyed by themselves ... I honestly felt that I had a moral obligation, and also obligation to the public interest as an academic [to reveal what was said]. I can’t sit on evidence like this when such important revelations are coming out across the media.
The transcripts published by the Commons culture committee yesterday were from interviews conducted by Emma Briant, a lecturer at the University of Essex specialising in propaganda. The transcripts are here. And there are three essays Briant has submitted to the committee explaining the context.
Here are the key quotes.
From Nigel Oakes, the SCL founder (who was talking about the Trump campaign)
Often, as you rightly say, it’s the things that resonate, sometimes to attack the other group and know that you are going to lose them is going to reinforce and resonate your group. Which is why, you know, Hitler, got to be very careful about saying so, must never probably say this, off the record, but of course Hitler attacked the Jews, because ... He didn’t have a problem with the Jews at all, but the people didn’t like the Jews. So if the people … He could just use them to say … So he just leverage an artificial enemy. Well that’s exactly what Trump did. He leveraged a Muslim- I mean, you know, it’s - It was a real enemy. ISIS is a real, but how big a threat is ISIS really to America? Really, I mean, we are still talking about 9/11, well 9/11 is a long time ago.
From Andy Wigmore, communications director of Leave.EU during the EU referendum campaign
The propaganda machine of the Nazis, for instance – you take away all the hideous horror and that kind of stuff – it was very clever, the way they managed to do what they did. In its pure marketing sense, you can see the logic of what they were saying, why they were saying it, and how they presented things, and the imagery. And that is propaganda. ISIS interestingly ... And you know this, course you do. And looking at that now, in hindsight, having been on the sharp end of this campaign, you think: crikey, this is not new, and it’s just - it’s using the tools that you have at the time. I think 2016 was unique: I don’t think you could ever repeat it, and I don’t think you could ever repeat the techniques that people had used in 2016. It was of its time. And Twitter, and Facebook, were of its time for political campaigning. You could never repeat that.
According to the BBC, Wigmore has said that his comments were in a historical context around the remain campaign’s “Project Fear”, and that he was having a conversation, not making a statement of fact or endorsing these techniques.
And Cambridge Analytica told the Press Association that Oakes had never worked for Cambridge Analytica, did not work on the Trump campaign and was speaking in a personal capacity about the historical use of propaganda.
People 'very frightened' to learn of Nazi-style propaganda online, says culture committee chair
Yesterday MPs spent almost seven hours debating Syria, if you take into account Theresa May’s Commons statement, the emergency debate and the short business statement. Today there will be another three-hour emergency debate, called by Jeremy Corbyn, on the subject of parliament approving military action. But the motion just says “that this House has considered parliament’s rights in relation to the approval of military action by British forces overseas” and so, even if someone does force a division, it will be a pointless, symbolic one. By the end of today MPs will have spent more than an hour in debate for every single missile fired at Syria by the RAF last week (there were eight). But, to adopt a phrase from another patch of our political landscape, there won’t have been a single meaningful vote - a vote on a substantive motion approving the airstrikes.
Before then, the Cambridge Analytica story is back in the Commons, because the culture committee it taking evidence from another Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Brittany Kaiser, its former director of programme development.
Yesterday the committee released excerpts of interviews with individuals connected to Leave.EU and SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, making positive comments about Nazi propaganda techniques. Our overnight story about the revelations is here.
On the Today programme this morning Damian Collins, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, said people would be “very frightened” by the thought that modern campaigners are using these techniques. He told the programme:
I’ve seen the transcripts that those extracts came from and it [the Nazi comparison] was volunteered by Nigel Oakes [SCL’s founder] and Andy Wigmore [Leave.EU’s communications director]. And I think the reference they are making is very clear; that they are saying what the Nazis did was create bogeymen for people to be frightened of, and then actively go out and make people frightened of them, and aggressively target people that are likely to be most susceptible to that message to influence the way in which they behave.
And our concern, as a committee, is, were these tactics being used in the referendum campaign? And does modern technology allow data profiles to be built up of people that makes it much easier to target people in this way? And maybe organisations have got hold their data to facilitate this process and the individual user has never consented for that organisation to have that data.
I think people listening to this programme will be very frightened to think that people like Nigel Oakes and Andy Wigmore would have access to their data and could therefore target them in this way.
Cambridge Analytica have repeatedly said that they did not work on the Brexit referendum.
I will be covering that hearing in detail.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.05am: Theresa May gives a speech to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, announcing £212m to help girls in Commonwealth countries stay in education for longer.
10.30am: Brittany Kaiser, the former director of programme development at Cambridge Analytica, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee.
11.30am: Philip Hammond, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.
Around 12.45pm: MPs begin a three-hour emergency debate on parliamentary approval for military action overseas.
Around 4pm: MPs begin a debate on antisemitism.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at the end of the day.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’ top 10 must reads.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.
Updated
