Britain’s intelligence watchdog is facing demands to examine whether Russian “troll factories” interfered in UK politics, amid mounting evidence that thousands of fake accounts may have been used to influence the Brexit vote.

An investigation by parliament’s powerful intelligence and security committee would represent a significant escalation in the UK’s response after encouragement from senior Labour and Conservative MPs.

Labour’s Mary Creagh asked Theresa May at prime minister’s questions if the committee would urgently evaluate “the Kremlin’s attempts to undermine our democracy”. In reply, May said that she expected the committee to be re-formed imminently.

UK academics have already established that at least 419 Twitter accounts operating from the Kremlin-linked Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) tweeted about Brexit and that thousands of other Russia-based Twitter accounts posted more than 45,000 messages about Brexit in just 48 hours during last year’s referendum.

Academics at City University in London estimate more than 13,000 accounts that tweeted about Brexit disappeared after the ballot, suggesting they may have been created for the sole purpose of influencing the vote.



The committee is made up of a mixture of MPs and peers and is re-formed after every general election. It has the power to take evidence from the intelligence agencies, and previously conducted an inquiry into Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance. Its first meeting could come as soon as next week.

The make-up of the committee was tabled by the government late on Wednesday night. Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general who has spearheaded the rebellion against the government’s Brexit bill, is expected to be reappointed as its chair.

Other appointees include Labour MPs Caroline Flint, Kevan Jones and David Hanson, put forward by their party; and the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford. They will be joined by Grieve’s fellow Conservative MPs, Keith Simpson and Richard Benyon. Before the general election, Labour MP Ben Bradshaw had urged the committee to investigate claims of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum.

Damian Collins, the Conservative chairman of the culture select committee’s own fake news inquiry, said a parallel investigation by the intelligence and security committee would be helpful because it could access classified information “analysing what is going on in Russia”.



An inquiry into whether Russia interfered in Brexit is also underway by the Electoral Commission but it has no power to sanction non-UK based individuals or organisations for activity that takes place outside the UK.

The Guardian has meanwhile learned the Russian embassy in London has been “turbo charging” its official propaganda operation in Britain by signing up around 100 loyal Twitter users to automatically repeat its key messages on social media.

The founder of the system, Filip Perkon, said the embassy had now signed up dozens of “superfans” to the “Russian diplomatic online club”, which allows the Kremlin’s diplomats to instantly spread messages to thousands more people than would otherwise be possible.

Perkon, 28, whose parents are from Russia, said his system allows the embassy to effectively take control of the accounts and have them retweet its messages without their owners doing anything.

The Russian embassy’s messages on Twitter are frequently retweeted between 10 and 20 times, but sometimes they are retweeted hundreds of times. Perkon declined to say whether a tweet on Monday retweeted 616 times responding to Theresa May’s comments that Russia is interfering in western democracies, was as a result of the digital boost being applied.

May had said, “We know what you’re doing”. The Russian embassy tweeted back: “We know what YOU are doing as well.”

“It works very well for political organisations,” Perkon said. “We can turbo charge any post through our fan club”.

The embassy describes the digital system as “diplomacy of the future” and invites people who have signed up to discussions at the embassy about topics including “hacking the algorithm: getting your message across through the social media bubble”.

The embassy did not respond to inquiries.

May declined to say on Wednesday that Russia had interfered in Brexit, supporting the foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s position that there was no evidence yet.

She said: “I spoke on Monday about the issue of Russian interference in elections. We have seen that taking place in a number of countries in Europe. … the examples I gave of Russian intervention were not in the UK.”

Vladimir Putin has also denied any role, and said the day after the Brexit poll: “We closely followed the voting but never interfered or sought to influence it.”

However concern is spreading at Westminster. Collins said it was now clear Russian influence via social media was “a big and serious problem” and Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, said he was planning to write to every UK telecoms and utility company to ask them for evidence of Russian hacks.

Liam Byrne, the shadow minister for digital, culture, media and sport has also asked the culture secretary Karen Bradley for details of discussions she had with social media companies about Russian-linked accounts designed to influence both the EU referendum and the 2017 general election.

Ben Bradshaw, the former Labour culture secretary and security minister said: “Now the intelligence and security committee has been established, it is imperative they investigate the whole issue of Russian interference as a matter of urgency.

“We need assurances that the government and all of its agencies are giving the help and information that both the select committee and the Electoral Commission will need to find out what Russian social media interference has been. That will almost certainly include the co-operation of our intelligence and security services.”