Speeches by Ballinger.

“Before I start, I should declare that I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling reform. I want to talk about new clauses 8 and 9, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) spoke to earlier. They are thoughtful, well-meaning new clauses that address real concerns. I w…”

“Do you think it is unnecessary?”

“Clause 12 is to do with the service policing protocol. The aim is to improve the working relationship between the Secretary of State, the Defence Council, service police and the Defence Serious Crime Unit. In your view, what should be included in the service policing protocol to make it more effective?”

“What is the timescale between you identifying inauthentic behaviour and taking action on it? Does that change in situations of high importance, such as in an election or in crises like the war in Iran?”

“Some of you have covered the actions you take after identifying, but it might be helpful to go through those. What range of enforcement actions can you take, whether that is content removal, account lockdowns, and so on? Do you preserve evidence of those actions for external scrutiny and for law enforcement and the lik…”

“It is a bit less about my particular feed than it is about the systematic issues that we are talking about here.”

“The shadow Secretary of State laments the state of our Royal Navy, but he will remember that it was his party that cut investment in our Royal Navy over 14 years, cut the number of warships we had by 25% and ordered no new destroyers in that period either. Does the Secretary of State agree that while we should be inves…”

“I do when I am following the pages that I follow, but when I automatically get bumped to the other page, I get a lot of far-right American Christian conservative content forwarded to me. I am happy to see a wide variety of views, but I do not get far-left content, for example.”

“I think the balance is the problem, because you are presenting people with views from one particular direction that they do not agree with, but maybe not views from the other direction. Certainly, in all our experiences, and according to the research—I am sure that this is not just a UK problem; it is an international …”

“There is published research on this, Dr Fernández. A study published in Nature in January on the “For You” page said that it pushes political opinion “in a more conservative direction” and that it was influencing more conservative perceptions of the criminal investigations against Trump and more conservative views on t…”

“I have reported a few accounts myself, as an X user. Often, I get a report two or three days later that my community note has been accepted, and of course millions of people may have seen the misinformation in that time. Indeed, it stays up, even with the community note on; the posts do not seem to be taken down. Do yo…”

“I have the same question about reaction time. With the war going on in Iran at the moment, there have been lots of reports about misinformation being shared on X. There is an FT article talking about lots of fake satellite information, AI-generated videos showing attacks that have not happened and the like. What action…”

“Dr Fernández, same question: what actions do you take when you have identified the behaviour? What information do you preserve for law enforcement and others?”

“I am grateful for the excellent contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), the hon. Member for S…”

“I am sure the Minister will respond, but the hon. Gentleman will know that there are allies of ours in the Mediterranean as well, including a large American flotilla. It is appropriate for us to work closely with other air defence assets. The single ship that we have sent would not have changed the situation entirely; …”

“The hon. Member makes a good point. Our naval capability has sadly diminished; we have fewer destroyers and frigates than we used to, and we are rightly deploying some of those to the Mediterranean and the middle east at the moment. There will have to be hard choices as we approach that timescale. I think those will de…”

“The Foreign Affairs Committee is going to Greenland in a couple of weeks. We hope to meet the Foreign Minister of Denmark, among other leaders of the Greenlanders, and that sounds like the kind of sensible suggestion that we should be talking about. Certainly, there are lots of opportunities for NATO to base troops in …”

“I absolutely agree that the JEF is a vital alliance for our operations in the High North. I met the Estonian ambassador only a couple of weeks ago, and we were pleased to discuss opportunities for co-operation, in addition to the UK forces that are based in Estonia, as part of deterring the Russian threat to that part …”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered Government policy on NATO and the High Arctic. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. There are slightly fewer people here than I was expecting—I think we have a clash with the Ministry of Defence estimates debate—which is a bit of a shame, but I am delight…”

“What more needs to be done, if it is just a start?”