The UK and Canadian parliaments are joining forces in an attempt to force Mark Zuckerberg to answer their questions over Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The House of Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee has announced its intention to hold a highly unusual joint hearing with its Canadian equivalent in an attempt to pressure the social network’s chief executive into appearing in front of parliament.
The hearing, which the organisers have dubbed the “international grand committee on disinformation and fake news”, will be held in Westminster at the end of this month. Parliamentary select committees from around the world who have also failed to gain access to Zuckerberg are also invited to send representatives.
Zuckerberg has already answered questions from the US Congress and Senate, in addition to taking part in a hearing at the European parliament. But he has steadfastly turned down every opportunity to appear in front of other parliaments, instead sending more junior executives on his behalf.
“We understand that it is not possible to make yourself available to all parliaments,” said the Conservative MP Damian Collins in a letter to Zuckerberg, which was co-signed by the Canadian MP Bob Zimmer.
“However, we believe that your users in other countries need a line of accountability to your organisation – directly, via yourself. We would have thought that this responsibility is something that you would want to take up. We both plan to issue final reports on this issue by the end of this December, 2018. The hearing of your evidence is now overdue, and urgent.”
Zimmer leads Canada’s standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics. It has been investigating the role of AggregateIQ, a data company based in British Columbia which provided online advertising services to Vote Leave during the 2016 EU referendum and has connections to the now defunct Cambridge Analytica.
Zimmer is to fly into the UK for the hearing and could be joined in person by other members of his committee for the evidence-gathering session. A spokesperson said the “grand committee” would go ahead regardless with other witnesses, even if the Facebook chief executive does not turn up.
Collins asked for Facebook to confirm by 7 November whether Zuckerberg would attend. A spokesperson for the social network said: “We’ve received the committee’s letter and will respond to Mr Collins by his deadline.”
The British parliamentary committee has already threatened to issue Zuckerberg with a formal summons and declare him in contempt of parliament if he ever sets foot in Britain again. However, Facebook has so far remained unmoved. The issue is one of the first challenges for Facebook’s new vice president for global affairs and communications – the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.
