Burnham launches war on disinformation

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He used his speech to the United Nations general assembly to outline plans for a National Centre for Information Security.

The centre would, Mr Burnham said, “detect, attribute and disrupt these kinds of hostile state information attacks” and “support and defend our democracy.”

He added: “And I know this is a shared challenge. So we are going to use our experience in the UK — and the fact that we have already been through this shock — to help other countries.”

The plan was welcomed by Commons foreign affairs committee chair Emily Thornberry, who said: “For too long, the approach of successive governments to disinformation has been disjointed and without organisation, allowing states like Russia to amplify lies about this country, to sow division and stoke tensions. 

“This new National Centre for Information Security is an opportunity to finally take on this very serious threat.”

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting assured GB News, which was unsurprisingly worried by any measures directed at misinformation, that the centre would not be used for “policing domestic political dissent.”

It would instead help the public “separate fact from fiction,” he insisted.

The think tank Demos urged the government to go still further.

Hannah Perry, director of digital policy, said: “Right now, Britain’s information supply is being written in Moscow and spread by algorithms nobody voted for.

“A new centre to co-ordinate is extremely welcome, but it can’t just mop up the mess.” 

She called for measures including protecting elections from AI manipulation, crisis flashpoint protocols and backing the BBC.