Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has called for an investigation into a government unit meant to combat disinformation after it emerged it had been singled out for criticizing ministers and government policy on Covid.
Lucas, who filed an access request with campaign group Big Brother Watch for details about her at the CDU, said her inclusion in a series of reports amounted to a “staggering overreach”. by the ministers.
A government spokesman said the work of the CDU and the now-defunct rapid response unit (RRU) media monitoring service, which also cited Lucas, was broader, and that the inclusion did not mean anyone was suspected. to misinform.
Among the examples of information about Lucas held by the CDU was his inclusion in an RRU report on “vaccine hesitancy” based on what it described as a “prominent tweet” from her in 2021 arguing that booster shots should be sent to countries with shortages.
In April 2020, he appeared in a CDU “covid misinformation/misreport” after criticizing the way the government had purchased medical equipment during the pandemic.
She was listed again after a 2020 tweet she sent alleging the government’s poor preparation for a pandemic.
On another occasion in 2020, she was included in an RRU briefing on a tweet she sent about the Prime Minister’s questions, where Dominic Raab replaced Boris Johnson. Lucas called him “arrogant, complacent and condescending.”
In 2021, Lucas’s name appeared in a CDU report on “disinformation/erroneous narratives” ahead of that year’s local election after she was included in a report in The Independent accusing Boris Johnson of being a liar. .
Officials argue that many of the examples come from the RRU, which they said largely acted as a direct media monitoring unit. It was closed last year.
The topic access request states that some of the examples in which Lucas was named were not related to, nor were they “specific” to possible misinformation.
But Lucas, who has said she will step down as an MP in the next election, told The Guardian she was alarmed by the work of the CDU, which was created in 2019 as part of the Culture Department and is now within the Science Department, Innovation and Technology.
“This is simply a staggering overreach from a government that has had, at the very least, a socially distanced relationship with the truth on multiple occasions in recent years,” he said.
“The right of citizens to share fully valid and objective criticism of government ministers without fear of consequences is a cornerstone of our democracy and must be protected.