High Peak Liberal Democrats

MPs call for probe into claim that social media data breach helped sway Brexit result

Ministers were urged today to make a Commons statement on claims that millions of people's private data was hijacked to sway the Brexit referendum.

Ed DAvey

Former Cabinet minister Sir Ed Davey asked Speaker John Bercow to grant an urgent question to MPs over claims the data was used to bombard individuals with propaganda.

"We need to know how many people may have had their data breached, and whether it was used in any referendum or election campaign without their knowledge," said Mr Davey, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman.

One of the leaders of the 2016 campaign to stay in the EU today backed calls for a probe. Lord Cooper, who directed polling for the Remain side, said: "There are fundamental issues here about how the data which we all casually put out on social media can be used to intrude upon people or to target them as individuals."

Guy Verhofstadt, the Brexit co-ordinator for the European Parliament, called for an investigation into claims that data could have been used by one of the Leave campaign groups to contact key groups of swing voters, potentially affecting the Brexit result. He said the claims "should come as a significant warning for our democracy".

The Electoral Commission said it was already investigating the referendum returns for the Leave.EU campaign group and added: "As part of this investigation we are talking to Cambridge Analytica." Cambridge Analytica is a UK-founded company that carried out work on data acquired from Facebook users, allegedly without explicit consent being given. It denies using such data on a referendum campaign.

The commission said it was looking into whether Leave.EU declared all of its spending and donations-in-kind.

Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, called on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions from MPs. Cambridge Analytica has been suspended by Facebook amid a whistleblower's allegations of a so-called data grab from 50 million users.

Cambridge Analytica denied violating Facebook's terms, saying its "commercial and political divisions use social media platforms for outward marketing, delivering data-led and creative content to targeted audiences."

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