Russia report: ‘Inexcusable’ government failed to order investigation into alleged Brexit interference, says former top diplomat

Exclusive: Former British ambassador to Moscow’s comments come after publication of damning report by Intelligence and Security Committee

Government failure to investigate alleged Russian interference in the European Union referendum is “inexcusable”, according to the UK’s former top diplomat in Moscow.

The remarks from Sir Anthony Brenton, the ambassador to Russia between 2004 and 2008, come after Boris Johnson dismissed a call from the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) to conduct an assessment of the Kremlin’s activities in the 2016 vote.

In its long-delayed 50-page report, the cross-party committee warned that Russian interference was the “new normal” and accused successive Conservative governments of not wanting to touch the issue surrounding the Brexit referendum “with a 10ft pole”.

Sir Anthony told The Independent it was “obviously very important” the government demonstrated to the British people that “democratic processes that we run – referenda, elections – are run cleanly and as far as possible without external influence”.

“That means that when there are hints that sort of external interference is happening they should investigate it thoroughly,” he said. “They should offer whatever conclusions they can and they should do what they can to prevent any repetition of it and that they plainly failed to do.”

The former top diplomat added that while Russia “undoubtedly does interfere” and has “a whole industry of people enjoying nothing more than making noise in the west”, he suspected it is much less effective and extensive than is often claimed.

“They got lucky once in the 2016 US presidential election where they did manage to hack into the Democratic National Committee’s system and produce dirt on Hillary [Clinton’s] campaign,” he said.

One of his predecessors in the role Sir Rodric Braithwaite – the UK’s representative to the USSR between 1988 and 1991 – was also scathing of the government’s delay in publishing the ISC report, which was only cleared for publication by the prime minister after December’s general election.

“It shows the government were afraid they would be criticised when it came out because of its contents,” he told The Independent. “The excuses for delaying it simply didn’t hold water. It was delayed because the prime minister didn’t want it to come out.”

Asked how ministers should respond to the findings of the damning report, Sir Rodric, who also served as foreign policy adviser to Tory prime minister Sir John Major, added: “I think they are going to need to be very careful if they’re not going to feed suspicions of what they’ve been up to.

“If they risk arousing suspicions by refusing further investigation, but they are afraid further investigation will reveal things they didn’t want revealed, they have a serious problem. It would better for their image if they agreed to an investigation. Maybe they have their own reasons for thinking that will cause them further difficulties, which says something about their posture in general.”

Of the delay, Sir Anthony added: “Now the report has appeared it is actually clear why they were uncomfortable with it seeing the light of day. It seems to be inexcusable that they failed to investigate alleged Russian interference into, well, the 2019 election again of course, but the 2016 referendum and the 2014 Scottish referendum.”

But when pressed on whether the government should now order an investigation, he continued: “It’s a bit past the moment now, I don’t think there would be a lot of benefit. My instincts about Russian interference in processes is that with the exception of their one very lucky hit in the US presidential election, it’s not had a substantial effect on the outcome.”

Speaking about the report, Sir Andrew Wood, the UK’s ambassador to Russia between 1995 and 2000, said he didn’t think there was “anything terrifically revelatory about it”, adding: “It tells you in good, straight, forceful terms what everybody pretty much knows already, I would have thought. I think before the election it would have been even more a way than it is now for politicians to score points at each other. Quite possibly it could have been worse considering who the leader of the Labour Party then was.”

However, he said the report did bring attention to “particular problems”, including the issue of money circulating through a huge range of people in Britain. According to the ISC, governments had “welcomed oligarchs and their money with open arms, providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance through the London ‘laundromat’, and connections at the highest levels with access to UK companies and political figures”.

Unveiling the document on Wednesday, the SNP MP Stewart Hosie, who sits on the cross-party committee, told a press conference the report revealed “no one” in government knew if Russia had interfered, or sought to influence the referendum, as “they did not want to know”.

“The UK government have actively avoided looking for evidence that Russia interfered,” he said. “We were told that they hadn’t seen any evidence, but that is meaningless if they hadn’t looked for it. The committee found it astonishing that no one in government had sought beforehand to protect the referendum from such attempts, or investigate afterwards what attempts to influence it there may have been.

He went on: “There has been no assessment of Russian interference in the EU referendum and this goes back to nobody wanting to touch this issue with a 10ft pole. This is in stark contrast to the US response to reports of interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“No matter how politically awkward or potentially embarrassing, there should have been assessment of Russian interference in the EU referendum and there must now be one. The public must be told the results of that assessment.”

However, immediately after the publication of the report, the government said: “We have seen no evidence of successful inference in the EU referendum. The intelligence and security agencies provide and contribute to regular assessments of the threat posed by hostile state activity, including around potential interference in UK democratic processes.

“We keep such assessments under review and, where necessary, update them in response to new intelligence, including during democratic events such as elections and referendums. When new information emerges, the government will always consider the most appropriate use of any intelligence it develops or receives, including whether it is appropriate to make this public. Given this long-standing approach, a retrospective assessment of the EU referendum is not necessary.”