Intelligence and Security Committee Russia report


"The Russia report" is the report of the British Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament into allegations of Russian interference in British politics, including alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
The report is notable for its delayed publication, with accusations that the delay was due to political considerations.

Inquiry

The inquiry began in November 2017, and a 50-page report was completed in March 2019. The report thereafter went through a process of redaction by intelligence and security agencies and was sent to Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 17 October 2019.

Expert witnesses

The committee used the following external expert witnesses.
Johnson's government refused to publicly release the report before the general election in December 2019. A number of legal actions are underway to try to force the government to publish it: one brought by the widow of the murdered Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, and another brought by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The Prime Minister approved its release on 13 December 2019, the day after the general election, Johnson pledged in Prime Minister's Questions in February 2020 that the report would be released, but that it could not be released until the Intelligence and Security Committee was reconstituted; a former chair of the committee, Dominic Grieve, said that this was an "entirely bogus" reason for delaying publication. Grieve stated that the time between approval of release and publication was typically 10 days.
By June 2020, the report had still not been released, and the Intelligence and Security Committee had not been convened, the longest gap since the committee's creation in 1994. This prompted a cross-party group of 30 MPs to urge the committee to be reconstituted and the report to be published, writing that serious issues of "transparency and integrity" of the democratic process were raised by the withholding of the report.

Publication and content

The report was published on 21 July 2020. It was not expected to name individual names and parts of the report will be classified and censored. An uncensored report will be available on an Eyes only basis.

Conclusions

According to the report, there is substantial evidence that Russian interference in British politics is commonplace.
The report described the UK as one of Russia's "top targets" as it was "seen as central to the Western anti-Russian lobby".
The committee noted that it was impossible to assess whether Russian interference had affected the Brexit referendum, since the government had not authorized any investigation into that matter.

Reactions

The content of the report was described by the Russian government as "fake-shaped Russophobia".