A secretive Whitehall “spy” unit has been used by the Government to target social media posts criticising migrant hotels and “two-tier policing”.
The Telegraph can reveal that officials working for Peter Kyle, the Technology Secretary, have flagged videos with “concerning narratives” to social media giants including TikTok, warning that they were “exacerbating tensions” on the streets.
Emails recovered by a US congressional committee show that civil servants have complained to tech firms about content mentioning asylum seekers, immigration and two-tier policing.
The dossier has emerged as ministers battle claims that the UK is censoring social media with the Online Safety Act, including from allies of Donald Trump, the US president.
The disclosure reveals that members of the Government’s National Security and Online Information Team (NSOIT) complained about a series of posts that were critical of mass migration and asylum hotels in August last year during the Southport riots.
The team, based in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, was previously known as the Counter Disinformation Unit and was used during the Covid pandemic to monitor anti-lockdown campaigners.
The exchanges are likely to fuel claims that Labour is seeking to silence criticism over its continued use of asylum hotels. Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to end their use by 2029 amid concerns that they are costing taxpayers £4m a day and causing tensions in communities.
The row over the hotels exploded again earlier this month when demonstrations broke out at a hotel in Epping after a migrant tried to kiss a teenager, with further protests on Thursday night.
Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, has told the Cabinet the Government must take concerns about immigration seriously and do more to alleviate them.
However, one post flagged by the government unit with “urgency” included a photograph of a rejected Freedom of Information request about the location of asylum hotels, and a reference to asylum seekers as “undocumented fighting-age males”.
An unnamed civil servant warned there were “significant risks” of protests at asylum hotels becoming violent because of the posts and there was a “definite sense of urgency” about them in Whitehall.
The emails were sent over Aug 3 and 4, 2024, the worst weekend of the riots, when protesters attacked asylum hotels across the UK. The violence spiralled after false claims circulated that the perpetrator of the Southport attack, where three little girls were killed, was a Muslim asylum seeker.
The Government’s private exchange with TikTok came days before Elon Musk, the tech billionaire owner of X and a former ally of Mr Trump, joined the criticism of “two-tier Keir”. The same phrase was echoed by Nigel Farage, who warned police had created a “sense of injustice”.
In another email the same weekend, officials warned TikTok that users were posting about “two-tier” policing at Southport rallies, amid accusations white protesters had been treated more harshly by the police than ethnic minorities.
It said: “I am sure you will not be surprised at the significant volumes of anti-immigrant content directed at Muslim and Jewish communities as well as concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system we are seeing across the online environment.”
Officials requested that TikTok explain “any measures you have taken in response…as soon as you are able to”.
A third example of “concerning content” flagged by the team was a video of Pakistani men celebrating on a street, posted on Aug 5 and captioned: “Looks like Islamabad but it’s Manchester”. The team claimed it had been shared “in order to incite fear of the Muslim community”.
The emails did not ask for the content to be removed, but requested that TikTok explain how it was dealing with it.
However, critics say the emails amount to Government censorship of free speech online.
The emails were revealed by Jim Jordan, chairman of the US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, which issued a subpoena to TikTok to hand over messages “regarding the company’s compliance with foreign censorship laws”.
Mr Jordan said Labour ministers had censored posts that were critical of the Government’s policy on asylum, warning critics of Sir Keir to “watch out”.
He said: “In recent years, UK citizens have become increasingly fed up with the double standard in the UK. Mean tweets get you a longer prison sentence than many violent offences.”
Government sources denied that officials had censored the posts, insisting that the unit’s role is to monitor online “trends” and point out where platforms’ own rules had been broken.
‘Unaccountable and secretive’
However, the emails have prompted fresh scrutiny of the Government’s secretive disinformation team, which was criticised during the pandemic for using the Government’s “trusted flagger” status to report critics of lockdown and child vaccinations.
A spokesman for the campaign group Big Brother Watch called for an immediate investigation into the team, warning that an “unaccountable and secretive government unit is spying on speech that is critical of the police and government policies”.
“Legitimate concerns about racism and violence must not become a blank cheque for the monitoring and censorship of controversial speech, absent of any oversight or scrutiny,” they added.
Labour was recently criticised over the “cover-up” of a secret resettlement programme for Afghans affected by a data leak in 2022. Officials worried that the announcement would create a “risk of disorder”.
Meanwhile, free speech campaigners have already raised concerns about the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months for a post about asylum hotels on the day of the Southport attacks.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “When I called out ‘two-tier Keir’, little did I realise Starmer’s officials were pressurising tech companies to suppress debate about a ‘two-tier’ justice system.
“This Government’s cynical attack on free speech will only further erode public confidence in the criminal justice system.
“The solution is to apply the law evenly to all groups, not to attempt to stifle criticism.”
It is understood that Mr Jordan, a Trump ally, raised the TikTok emails directly with Mr Kyle on Wednesday. It is understood TikTok is one of several companies contacted by officials during the riots.
Their meeting came a day after Mr Kyle said Nigel Farage was “on the side” of Jimmy Savile for opposing the new online safety rules.
Government sources said Mr Jordan’s committee had misunderstood the role of NSOIT, which they said was to find out whether tech companies were taking action on harmful content, not to order them to remove it.
A spokesman said: “Free speech is a cornerstone of our democracy. The Online Safety Act protects it. Platforms have a duty to uphold freedom of expression, and the Act places no curbs whatsoever on what adults can say and see on the internet – unless it is something that would already be illegal, offline.
“The Government has no role in deciding what actions platforms take on legal content for adults – that is a matter for them according to their own rules – however we make no apologies for flagging to platforms content which is contrary to their own terms of service and which can result in violent disorder on our streets, as we saw in the wake of the horrific Southport attack.”
