Twitter's Nick Pickles said the company would be hoping to report "in the coming weeks", and went on to defend Twitter bots from recent harsh criticism in the media.

"We are currently undertaking investigations into these questions and intend to share our findings in the coming weeks," said Pickles.

"It is important to note that not all automated accounts are bad, whether posting air quality sensor readings or posting details of Wikipedia edits, while not all high activity accounts are bots. Equally, given Twitter’s central control — users choosing to follow or unfollow an account to curate what appears in their timeline — is a robust defence against low-quality automated accounts."

The committee, chaired by Tory MP Damian Collins, wrote to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey last month, asking them to produce whatever evidence existed that Russian-linked groups had tried to interfere in recent British elections.



On Tuesday, Collins said British citizens had a "right" to know how the platforms had been used around the time of Brexit and the 2017 election.

“The British public have a right to understand the extent and scope of Russia’s disinformation campaign in the United Kingdom," Collins said.

"The agreement of both Facebook and Twitter to provide the information that I requested to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee is critical to our understanding of Russian interference in our political process."

It comes less than a week after BuzzFeed News uncovered a new network of Russian-linked troll accounts that had not been previously declared by Twitter to the US Congress.