George Freeman

“This is an important Bill, and I support some of the aims and aspirations that the Secretary of State set out at the beginning. I also share many of the concerns raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly). All Members take representing children seriously. In the five times that I have been lucky enough to be elected, my first pledge has been that I will serve everybody in the Mid Norfolk constituency, including and particularly those who do not have a voice and need to be spoken for, and I always reference children. With the gentlest and greatest respect, I say to colleagues who are in danger of suggesting that if we do not pass this Bill, we are signalling that we do not care about young people that that is not the case. I was elected to this House quite a long time ago, and I know that there is the danger that well-intended legislation can have unintended consequences that we later regret. Given that time is short, I will focus my comments on my own experience of having been, I think, the first parliamentary victim of an AI deepfake video attack. I will point out some of the obvious gaps in the law that that has made clear to me, and the danger of political disinformation and serious disruption to our politics. Having consulted widely in the past four or five months, I want to make a particular point about the importance of protecting all people—not just politicians—against having their identity stolen. That is a fundamental issue in a digital age. For colleagues who were doing other things on that day in November, let me say that when I found myself the victim of an AI deepfake attack, my phone went hot and I suddenly found myself being called all manner of names that I could not possibly repeat to this House. It was quite clear that I was suddenly at the heart of a media storm, and I had no idea what had caused it. I then saw the video. It was indeed a video of me in my Westminster office, wearing my customary tank top, waving my hands around and speaking—not dubbed—about my decision that, because the political party that I am proud to represent and serve had let this country down, I was joining Reform. Leave aside for a minute the ridiculousness of that proposal and the insulting suggestion that somebody who prides himself on taking his politics seriously and thinking about the philosophical basis of it would join a rabble based only on pub populism, the more serious issue is that my constituents were deeply confused and democracy in my constituency was disrupted. When I contacted Meta, the platform on which that scurrilous, mischievous and disinforming information had been published, it said to me, “Well, it doesn’t breach any of our guidelines.” I understand the importance of protecting our vulnerable young children from grooming and protecting people from economic fraud, but I put it to the House that seriously misrepresenting an elected Member for the purposes of political misinformation and disruption is an important issue and should not be allowed. It should be a breach of Meta’s guidelines. When I spoke to the police, they admirably did take it seriously. In fact, they encouraged me, with the Crown Prosecution Service, to bring a test case, but I would have had to have made the case compellingly that I was suffering psychological damage. Now, I may well be suffering psychological damage, but I am not going to tell the people of Mid Norfolk that I cannot take a joke. It is really important that we in this House defend humour and satire—they play a really important role in our democracy—but this is different. I support the amendments that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), a fellow member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, is tabling to stop political disinformation, but is it not time that we passed a law to protect all citizens against having their identity stolen? Everybody in this country should go to bed at night not worrying that they may wake up in the morning and find that somebody has stolen their identity, whatever the purpose.”