Last weekend we saw the largest number of migrants, in a single day, complete an illegal crossing of the English Channel. One hundred and eighty people arrived on the Kent coast, but a further two hundred were detained by the French police whilst attempting to make the crossing. It is not acceptable for this situation […]
Over the last week we have seen businesses in the hospitality sector re-open their doors, albeit within social distancing guidelines. It's really important that people respect these rules, in order that the coronavirus infection rate doesn’t start to rise again, as it's doing in some parts of the United States of America. This would make […]
Written for the Daily Telegraph - 7 July 2020 The public have had enough of the harms caused by social media companies and they're demanding tough action. Polling released last night by campaigning organisation the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) shows that the majority of the British public support both financial and criminal sanctions against […]
This week Boris Johnson has set out the strategy for getting the economy going again as we emerge from the coronavirus lockdown. Whilst the government has delivered a wide ranging package of support for businesses large and small, and helped people in work through the job protection scheme, there is still more we can do. […]
Article by Arvind Hickman for PR Week UK - published 2 July 2020 The former chair of a parliamentary committee charged with investigating social-media platforms has called for the deliberate spreading of harmful content on social media to be criminalised, with users and social-media companies both legally liable. Damian Collins, MP for Folkestone and Hythe, […]
Article by James Cook for the Daily Telegraph - published 30 June 2020 Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and other members of Facebook's oversight board are under growing pressure to speak out as the social network battles claims of hate speech. The Supreme Court-style board-set up to rule on controversial ethical issues-has so far remained silent […]
This week Boris Johnson has announced a wide-ranging package of measures to ease the coronavirus restrictions and allow many sectors of our economy and society to re-open. Key to this has been the decision to reduce the social distancing guidelines to over one metre, rather than two. This has been possible because of the falling […]
Published in the Press Gazette on 22 June 2020 We are living through the first major public health emergency in the age of social media disinformation. Where the disinformation that is spreading online is not just about politics and elections. It is actually about things that can affect people’s health. And as we have heard from doctors who […]
Published in The Daily Telegraph on 18 June 2020 Nick Clegg has announced that Facebook has made some ‘big changes’ to its policies in order to make political communication more transparent, and prevent foreign interference in elections, as was seen in America in 2016 when a Russian agency targeted voters with fake adverts. However, there […]
The official data published this week on the jobs market indicates the unprecedented scale of the impact of the coronavirus on the economy. In the Folkestone and Hythe constituency area, 11,800 jobs had been furloughed through the Government's Job Retention Scheme, the equivalent to around 17% of the population aged from 16 to 64. Nationally, the […]