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Chair of parliament’s technology committee invited Elon Musk in December to give evidence before MPs
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A senior Labour MP has questioned Elon Musk’s apparent “reluctance” to appear before MPs in parliament despite the billionaire’s barrage of interventions on UK politics using his social media site X.
The House of Commons technology committee invited the world’s richest man in December to give evidence in parliament as part of its inquiry into the role of social media and misinformation in fuelling the summer riots that erupted in the wake of the Southport attack.
Although Mr Musk – who is set to assume a key role in Donald Trump’s incoming US administration – is reportedly yet to officially reply to the invitation, he initially responded on X by claiming that MPs would be summoned to the US “to explain their censorship and threats to American citizens”.
Noting that the committee “would be quite open to travelling to talk to him” so long as Mr Musk is willing to pay for their flights, the cross party group’s Labour chair Chi Onwurah questioned his apparent reticence to give evidence to MPs in Westminster.
“He has no qualms about using his platform to say all kinds of things about the British government and British society and yet he seems reluctant to actually come and talk to us where he can have his views explained,” Ms Onwurah told the Sunday Mirror.
Having suggested that the King should dissolve parliament, just months after the general election, the billionaire has launched a series of extraordinary attacks on Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers, while demanding the release of jailed far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
Mr Musk’s recent onslaught of posts have frequently contained conspiratorial and baseless allegations of complicity in the grooming gangs scandal, prompting Sir Keir to use a speech on Monday to condemn the billionaire’s “lies and misinformation”.
Ms Onwurah said she had been “shocked” by the Tesla owner’s “aggressive attacks on British politicians”, adding: “I’m hoping that Elon Musk will bring himself to our committee so that we can understand what his approach is to freedom of speech and misinformation and harms.”
Mr Musk’s campaign against the UK government comes as the flagship online safety bill is set to come into force, which will enable regulator Ofcom to fine social media giants up to 10 per cent of their revenue for failing to comply with stricter new rules.
However, officials hoping to bolster safety on social media platforms appear to be facing an uphill battle in the months and years ahead.
In addition to Mr Musk having relaxed rules around harmful content after purchasing Twitter and renaming it X, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg also announced this week that his platforms such as Facebook would replace fact-checkers with a “community notes” system similar that now used on X.
In a stark change of tone, Mr Zuckerberg accused Europe of “institutionalising censorship”, while his new head of global affairs Joel Kaplan told Fox News that Meta was “going to work with President Trump to push back on that kind of thing around the world.”
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