THE SNP MP at the heart of the Westminster probe into fake news says he is convinced there was interference in the EU referendum by Cambridge Analytica (CA).
Brendan O'Hara, who sits on the influential Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DMCS) Select Committee, says there is now a “smoking gun” over the company's role in the 2016 referendum after the London-based consultancy said prior to the vote it had “vast amounts of data” that could sway the electorate’s decision on membership of the EU.
The company is accused of using Facebook data on more than 50 million Americans to help Donald Trump’s US Presidential campaign target political adverts on the platform. A document written by CA, headed “Big Data Solutions for the EU Referendum”, claimed it could single out Brexiteers among voters, donors, politicians and the media. The document, in a pitch for business submitted to Leave.EU, one of the main Brexit campaign groups, said: “We use vast amounts of data, including consumer histories, lifestyle information... and 'state-of-the-art psychological analysis'.”
O'Hara said he expected further allegations to surface in the coming days, adding: "The big one is the EU referendum as there are an awful lot of questions to answer. There are concerns around the involvement [of CA] in the EU referendum. At some point there will be an awful lot more accusations about what happened in the EU referendum. You have to think that there are too many smoking guns for there not to be something."
The MP said he did not know whether interference by CA influenced the result in favour of Brexit, however, he said the consultancy's role had to be investigated.
He said the suspended chief of CA, Alexander Nix, had questions to answer about the role of the firm in the EU referendum.
Westminster's DMCS committee said evidence Nix gave to its fake news inquiry last month contained "inconsistencies". Nix has now been asked to appear before MPs again.
O'Hara added: "If you look at the evidence that Alex Nix gave, he was insistent that his company did no work for Leave. It stretched credibility. If I take an educated guess, I'd say somewhere there has been interference. I'm not saying it tipped the result one way or another, but the denial from Cambridge Analytica that it was not involved in the EU referendum campaign stretches credibility."
The Sunday Herald contacted CA for comment but they failed to reply.
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