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Television: Russia

Question for Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

UIN HL6560, tabled on 1 March 2022

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to ban Russian state-backed television channels.

Answered on

7 March 2022

As the Secretary of State set out in her statement to the House of Commons on 3 March 2022, Vladimir Putin must not be allowed to exploit our open and free media to spread poisonous propaganda into British homes.

I am pleased to say that RT has already been removed from Sky, Freeview and Freesat in the UK, meaning that Putin cannot push out his propaganda on UK television. I also welcome Ofcom’s announcement of 27 investigations into RT, and their confirmation that they are considering RT’s UK broadcasting licence.

The Secretary of State has written to the major platforms, asking them to do everything they can to prevent access to RT online in the UK, as they have done in Europe, and we are glad that YouTube and Meta have already done so.