Ministers had secret unit to curb critics of lockdown

‘Chilling’ tactic monitored discussion of Covid policies including vaccines and open schools

A SECRETIVE government unit worked with social media companies in an attempt to curtail discussion of lockdown policies during the pandemic, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up by ministers to tackle supposed domestic “threats” and was used to target those critical of lockdown and who questioned the mass vaccination of children.

Critics of lockdown had posts removed from social media. There is growing suspicion that social media firms also used technology to stop the posts being promoted, circulated or widely shared after being flagged by the CDU or its counterpart in the Cabinet Office.

Documents revealed under Freedom of Information and data protection requests show that the activities of prominent critics of the Government’s Covid policies were secretly monitored.

An artificial intelligence firm was used by the Government to scour social media sites.

The company flagged discussions opposing vaccine passports. Many of the issues being raised were valid and have since proved to be well founded.

The BBC also took part in secretive meetings of a government policy forum to address the so-called disinformation. Last night, MPs and freedom of speech campaigners condemned the disclosures as “truly chilling” and “a tool for censoring British citizens” akin to those of the Chinese Communist Party.

Much of the Government’s wider work on disinformation is shrouded in secrecy for “national security” reasons and large parts of official documents are still redacted. In the US, Twitter has released similar information showing that the government introduced a secretive programme to curtail discussion of Covid lockdowns.

It can today be revealed that the activities of Prof Carl Heneghan, the Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, and Dr Alex de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), were monitored by government disinformation units.

Molly Kingsley, who set up a campaign to keep schools open during the pandemic, also had her social activity monitored. As well as the CDU, the Government operated a Rapid Response Unit (RRU) in the Cabinet Office that hunted online for content it considered to be disinformation.

The CDU, which is still operating, was embedded in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The department has “trusted flagger” status at social media companies including Facebook and Twitter – which means that requests for content to be removed are fast-tracked for consideration.

In some cases, individuals whose social media posts were recorded by the units have faced sanctions by Twitter and Facebook.

Ministers denied asking for posts by Prof Heneghan, Dr de Figueiredo or Ms Kingsley to be removed.

The Government has said that the CDU “is focused on helping the Government understand online disinformation narratives and understand attempts to artificially manipulate the information

environment”. The Government also ran a Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum, which brought together civil servants from the DCMS, tech giants, including Facebook and Google, and the BBC to discuss how to limit the spread of what was considered Covid disinformation.

This forum and the two units were not the only way the Government tried to apply pressure on social media companies during the pandemic.

The Lockdown Files, published by The Telegraph earlier this year, revealed that Matt Hancock repeatedly lobbied Facebook executive Nick Clegg about vaccine misinformation.

Facebook has been open about its efforts to tackle misinformation about Covid. During the pandemic it removed posts and in April 2020 alone it put warning labels on about 50 million pieces of content.

The CDU was established in 2019 and was focused on the European elections before turning to focus on the pandemic. During Covid, the unit worked closely with the Cabinet Office’s now defunct RRU whose responsibilities include tackling “purported ‘experts’ issuing dangerous misinformation”.

The RRU has admitted in an FOI obtained by Big Brother Watch and passed to The Telegraph that it made requests for social media posts to be taken down.

As part of its work, the Cabinet Office also passed the CDU “media monitoring” reports. Documents reveal the material flagged to the CDU included articles published by The Telegraph.

One of these was a piece by Ms Kingsley published in February 2022, arguing that it was “indefensible” that children’s lives were still not back to

‘The inquiry clearly ought to investigate the oppressive methods used to override dissent’

normal when the rest of society was. She urged ministers to make a clear statement that children’s extracurricular activities should not be subject to additional curbs.

One of Ms Kingsley’s tweets from December 2020, in which she said it would be “unforgivable to close schools”, was also passed to the CDU.

Sir Gavin Williamson, then the education secretary, closed schools days later but has since admitted that the decision was the subject of a major row with Matt Hancock and he had considered resigning. When the dispute was exposed by The Lockdown Files investigation, Sir Gavin said the closure “wasn’t done for the right reasons” and he regretted agreeing to it.

The RRU also logged articles by Prof Heneghan, published in The Telegraph and The Spectator. One of these questioned the science behind the rule of six and discredited the data used by the Government to justify the second lockdown. He had social media posts removed about face masks and the accuracy of Covid death data removed after the tech giants raised concerns about Covid disinformation.

The CDU has also commissioned reports from an external artificial intelligence firm, Logically, which uses AI to trawl the internet.

A Whitehall source said the comparison with China was “just plain wrong”.

Last night, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former Cabinet minister, called for the Covid Inquiry to investigate government disinformation units.

“The inquiry clearly ought to investigate the oppressive methods used to override dissent,” he said.

A government spokesman said: “The unit’s purpose is to track narratives and trends using publicly available information online to protect public health and national security.” A BBC spokesman said that the broadcaster attended the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum in an observer-only capacity.