'We have no objections': Security officials say secret Russia report being blocked by Boris Johnson government can be published immediately

Boris Johnson’s government is under intense pressure over a parliamentary special report on alleged illicit Russian activities in Britain with eminent former security and cabinet officials demanding that it stops blocking publication of the document.

The high-level intervention comes as the security and intelligence agencies confirmed that all measures necessary to protect sensitive information have already been taken and they have no objection to the report being made public.

The inquiry by the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee is believed to have looked at claims of Moscow’s attempts to influence the Brexit campaign and Russian money going into UK institutions including sizeable donations made to the Conservative Party.

No 10 holds that the delay in publication is due to the need for the report to be extensively scrutinised for reasons of national security. This means it is unlikely to be published before Tuesday, when parliament rises, and therefore not until the after election on 12 December.

The government’s arguments have been dismissed by a number of senior former public officials including former cabinet secretary Lord Butler, Lord Ricketts, former national security advisor and chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and Lord Anderson, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.

Security and intelligence service officials say they are in the dark over why the report has not been published.

One told The Independent: “We are as much spectators in this as you are. All the redactions necessary have been done and no last-minute issues have arisen. We have no objections to the report being published now.”

The report cannot be published without the approval of the prime minister.

Dominic Grieve, chair of the ISC said: “I cannot think of a reason why he should wish to prevent this report being published. It’s very demoralising for us when we find we put in months of work and, at the end of it, we’re not getting an adequate response.

“It seems to us that this report is germane because we do know – and I think it is widely accepted – that the Russians have sought to interfere in other countries’ democratic processes in the past. The protocols are quite clear. If the prime minister has a good reason for preventing publication he should explain to the committee what it is, and do it within 10 days of him receiving the report. If not it should be published.”

Lord Ricketts said: “The ISC are a highly professional committee and their reports are always worth reading. Since this has apparently already been redacted by the intelligence agencies there can be no national security reasons to delay publication.”

He later tweeted: “All other Select Committees publish their own reports. The ISC need PM’s agreement before it can publish. So the issue is NOT Govt needing time to respond. Just publish it!...Their response comes later.”

In a Lords question on Monday afternoon Lord Anderson, a crossbencher, asked why there “has been unjustified delay” in getting confirmation of publication from Downing Street, when normal practice is that such confirmation is “always a formality”.

The peer commented that Downing Street’s position raised “suspicion of the government and its motives”. He pointed out that, contrary to what is being claimed by No 10, full redactions have taken place in liaison with the intelligence services and the Cabinet Office. He also stressed that the government does not normally give its response along with such reports, but later, having 60 days to do so.

Lord Butler, also a crossbencher, told the house that the “process of clearing this report started on 28 March, seven months ago, and it was only the final stage, of being cleared by the prime minister which started in October.” He continued: “Surely the whole point of this report is that it is relevant to a general election coming up. The government should make a particular effort to make sure that it is in the public domain.”

The Labour peer, Baroness Hayter asked “ What has the prime minister got to hide?”

Responding for the government, Earl Howe, minister of state at the Ministry of Defence, said “in due course the government will release the report for publication ... But the impact of releasing sensitive information needs to be carefully considered by the prime minister, with advice from civil servants, and this process cannot be rushed.”

In 2017 Swansea University and the University College of California, Berkley, identified around 150,000 accounts with links to Russia that tweeted about Brexit in the run-up to the referendum.

London’s City University charted a network of 13,493 accounts that tweeted about the referendum, “only to disappear from Twitter shortly after the ballot”.

The National Bureau of Economic Research concluded the influence of Twitter bots may have impacted on the result and automated accounts may have been responsible for around 1.76 percentage points of the “Leave” vote share. An analysis by cybersecurity firm F-Secure indicated that “suspicious activity” relating to Brexit-related posts on Twitter has continued after the referendum and continued this year.

Questions have been asked about alleged Russia-related business activities of Arron Banks, the largest donor to the Brexit campaign, and a number meetings he and a colleague, Andy Wigmore, have had with Russian diplomats in London.

Mr Banks and Mr Wigmore have firmly denied any collusion with Russia or Russian-backed enterprises.

Substantial sums have been donated to the Conservative Party by wealthy Russians. These include Lubov Chemukhin, the wife of Vladimir Chernikhin, a former ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who paid £160,000 to the party in return for a game of tennis with Boris Johnson.

In March 2018 the Conservative Party refused appeals by, among others, Marina Litvinenko, the widow of Alexander Litvinenko, allegedly murdered on orders of the Kremlin, to return £820,000 donated by various wealthy Russians.

It pointed out that all who had given the money had been carefully vetted and were, by then, UK citizens.