The UK Parliamentary Committee: Fake News and Disinformation

By Pravin Prakash

The Centre of Excellence of National Security (CENS) hosted Mr Damian Noel Thomas Collins as a Visiting Fellow from 7 to 9 November 2018. Mr Collins has served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Folkestone and Hythe since 2010. In October 2016, he was elected by the House of Commons as Chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, having previously served as a member of the committee. In this role he led the committee’s inquiries into fake news and disinformation campaigns.

Mr Collins gave a talk at Marina Mandarin Singapore on “The UK Parliamentary Committee: Fake News and Disinformation”. The seminar discussed the United Kingdom’s experience and challenges in dealing with the spread of fake news and disinformation. Mr Collins noted that the increasing spread of online falsehoods and disinformation is threatening democratic processes and impeding well-informed deliberation in the public sphere. He argued that technology companies must acknowledge their civic responsibilities and proactively verify and monitor content uploaded on their platforms.

During the visit, Mr Collins had meetings with senior officials from several Singapore government agencies and researchers/ staff from RSIS and other think tanks. The highlight of the meetings was a courtesy call on K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law. Mr Collins also attended a lunch meeting with members of the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods, including Senior Ministers of State, Edwin Tong and Dr Janil Puthucheary. Another key meeting was a closed-door discussion between MP Collins and representatives from CENS, the Ministry of Defence, the National Security Coordination Secretariat, Google Jigsaw, and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB). Among the issues discussed were possible measures and strategies to tackle the rise of fake news and disinformation campaigns.