PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Procurement (23 March 2018)

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many meetings (a) he, (b) Ministers of his Department and (c) officials in his Department have held with representatives of (a) Cambridge Analytica, (b) SCL Group, (c) Global Science Research and (d) Alexander Nix.

Asked by:
Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)

I, the Foreign Secretary, and Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials in London, Washington and New York met representatives, including Alexander Nix, from Cambridge Analytica, in 2016-17. This was part of the government’s work to better understand the 2016 US presidential election, the political environment that followed and to build relationships with the Trump Presidential campaign and transition team. This outreach was part of normal diplomatic business.

In addition the FCO has identified: one former project from 2008-2009 with Strategic Communications Laboratories Group Limited (SCL) involvement; that SCL attended a conference organised by the FCO at Wilton Park on ‘Diplomacy in the Information Age’ in February 2017; and an official dialled into a general briefing of the outcome of a SCL research study on counter extremism campaigns in March 2018. The FCO is not planning any further contact with that organisation or those linked to it.

Answered by:
Sir Alan Duncan (Conservative)
28 March 2018