This blog has wrapped up. We’ll have a story on the day’s developments very shortly. Thanks for reading.

Facebook has said it has already investigated claims of Russian activity discussed during today’s hearing and found there was no concerns.

Collins quoted an email seized from software company Six4Three alleging that a Facebook engineer had notified the company in October 2014 that Russian IP addresses were accessing “three billion data points a day” on the network.

“If Russian IP addresses were pulling down a huge amount of data from the platform was that reported or was that just kept, as so often seems to be the case, within the family and not talked about,” he asked.

Facebook’s Richard Allan said the claim was misleading and taken out of context.

Facebook has now issued a statement confirming the issue was looked into and told the Guardian “the engineers who had flagged these initial concerns subsequently looked into this further and found no evidence of specific Russian activity”

And with that, Collins closes the committee, until 3:30, when it will take evidence from the information commissioner.

And finally, Charlie Angus, Canada’s representative, brings up Facebook’s inflated video metrics, overstated for two years. “I would consider that corporate fraud, on a massive scale,” he says, “and the best fix is anti-trust. The simplest form of regulation would be to break facebook up, or treat it as a utility, so that we can all be sure that we’re counting metrics that are accurate or true. To allow you to gobble up all the competition is not good.”

Allan says, “it depends on the problem we’re trying to solve,” and Angus counters that “the problem is Facebook, everything else is just a symptom.”

Allan: “Unless you’re going to turn off the internet, I’m not sure people would be better off in doing without Facebook offering the services it’s spent 15 years perfecting how to offer.”

France’s Morin-Desailly asks how Facebook can restore trust. Is Facebook prepared to re-found its economic model? Allan says that the company really will be sharing information with academics, in an attempt to help them prove that it’s trustworthy.

He adds that, on the business model, it would be nice if the company could just charge people the cost of doing business, but that in practice people like to use things for free, and advertising is the best way to do that.

Latvia’s Inese Lībiņa-Egnere asks how Facebook can help countries like Latvia, that face specific threats from Russia.

Allan says that Facebook is partnering with the Atlantic Council, which monitors that sort of threat; and says that the company is extending its own language capabilities, because currently Facebook’s AIs don’t understand Latvian, and so can’t spot problems as they happen. “We need to move from this being an election issue to this being an all-year-round issue.”

Brazil’s Alessandro Molon makes a brief statement, asking for internet companies and social media companies to work with governments to preserve democracy. He then asks what Facebook is doing to prevent improper manipulation of its algorithms to prevent illegal manipulation of elections.

Allan cites a previous post by Zuckerberg, which says that Facebook is trying to stop its algorithm rewarding sensationalist content; and highlight’s Facebook’s partnership with third-party fact checkers, which sees content suppressed if it’s marked as false.

Molon asks further about how anyone can be sure Facebook has deeper commitment to democracy than to profit, and again brings up WhatsApp, “which was widely used to spread manipulated content”. The service, he says, banned more than 100,000 accounts in Brazil during the election.

Allan says “we are now building WhatsApp into our thinking around election integrity.” The company acquired WhatsApp four years ago.

“There are some novel challenges to look at,” Allan says, but “we don’t think that sort of manipulative behaviour is in anyone’s interest.”

Argentina’s Leopoldo Moreau asks his question in Spanish (and Allan briefly responds fluently, before asking for the translator to continue for the benefit of the committee), and asks why Facebook’s Argentinian office didn’t engage with the country’s parliament.

Allan apologises (in English), and says that the company has a large presence in Argentina and that they should be engaging better.

Moreau asks about WhatsApp campaigning: the company, wholly owned by Facebook, allows for encrypted communications that facebook cannot oversee. Allan says that WhatsApp is “intended as a person to person messaging service; it should not be used for spamming people.”

The Argentinian delegation counters that WhatsApp does have business APIs, that do allow for bulk mailing. Allan says that “if shadowy companies are promising to circulate on WhatsApp information through lists of numbers, that should stop. We will be offering proper business communication, but that we can oversee.”

“Where we were made aware of it, we did take action. We’re building WhatsApp into those election task forces I mentioned.”

Singapore’s Pritam Singh asks if Facebook would be willing to remove a post that could be skewing an election if it were ordered to by the authorities, and Allan says it would be eager to, because it wants to work with authorities.

Lijnen asks about Facebook’s tracking of users.

“It may be that the EU decides to limit that, but it will have profound implications,” Allan says, on the ability of the publishing industry to advertise.

For the data of non-users, Allan again repeats the two categories of data the company stores: log files of non-users, and contact data uploaded by users. Lijnen says that she thinks that’s not GDPR compliant, but Allan disagrees.

Nele Lijnen from Belgium says that “sending your cat” is a Flemish expression meaning not showing up. Making Allan Mark Zuckerberg’s cat?

Lijnen clarifies that Allan is merely sitting next to Zuckerberg’s cat.

Julie Elliott asks how Facebook defines political advertising.

Allan: “This is one of the areas where we would really appreciate a discussion with policymakers. At the moment, in the UK, we say if you’re talking about a party or a candidate, or an issue in front of the legislature.”

Elliott asks how Facebook monitors that. Allan describes the current system, which requires people to register as political advertisers if they’re found running political adverts.

Elliott asks what percentage of Facebook’s budget is being spent on this effort; Allan says it’s a major effort, but that he can’t tell the committee the percentage.

Elliott asks “what other checks and balances” Facebook is applying to the money that is funding the advertising. Facebook gets the money from the person who is paying it, Alan says, but thinks that the best way to explore further up the chain is with regulators like the Electoral Commission.

Singapore’s Edwin Tong asks about Facebook’s policy on hate speech, and quotes from a Mark Zuckerberg statement saying that the company has always taken down such content.

Tong then brings up a post made in Sri Lanka, calling for the murder of Muslims. “It was put up at a time when there were significant tensions between Sri Lankan Muslims… that eventually resulted in a state of emergency.

“In that context, wouldn’t such a post inflame tensions?”

Allan agrees it would.

Tong asks why, then, that post is not down. Allan says it should be, and that there must have been a mistake; Tong quotes from Facebook’s response, which says that no policy has been broken, and Allan repeats that it’s a mistake.

“Would you agree that Facebook cannot be trusted to choose what goes on its platform,” Tong asks. Allan disagrees, and says “the best way to resolve this is a dictionary of hate speech terms in Sinhalese that gets surfaced to a Sinhalese reviewer.”

“We make mistakes; our job is to reduce the number of mistakes. We should be accountable for our mistake to you and your colleagues, to every parliament that’s sat round the table today.”

Sun asks if it’s possible that future elections will be interfered with through methods that will only be discovered after the fact. Allan says it’s possible, because “as long as we have an internet, it’s unreasonable to think that we’ll be able to stop all of this.”

Would more be achieved, Sun asks, if Facebook works with relevant authorities to take down false content? Allan says he thinks its important to work within a judicial process: if someone claims a politician is false, he says, the best person to check is the judiciary of the country.

Sun asks if he agrees that falsehoods can cause harm to society, and Allan says he does.

Sun Xueling from Singapore asks how Facebook is policing the setting up and shutting down of fake accounts and their networks.

“The shutting down of fake accounts is an ongoing battle that we have,” Allan says. “Most fake accounts are created with commercial intent … but they’re taken down within minutes.

“Then there are people who are careful, create one or two accounts, and act as though they are a normal Facebook user. The issue in the US, with the Internet Research Agency, was that.”

Allan says that “low-quality information” has reduced by over 50% on the site, according to a study from a French research institute. But, he says, those people who curate individual fake accounts are the hardest to catch.

Zimmer quotes again from the New York Times story two weeks ago: “Mr Zuckerberg and Ms Sandberg stumbled … and sought to conceal warning signs from public view.”

Allan says he doesn’t think that’s true. “Issues have come up, and been debated fully and thoroughly.”

Zimmer notes that Facebook’s quarterly profit is $13bn. “What do you say to the 400 million constituents we represent that shows you’re taking this seriously? There are other bigger issues involving election campaigns … but you’re still downplaying the role that Facebook has in this situation. That’s a huge player on the global scene, and you still don’t seem to get a grasp on how much influence you have on global election campaigns.”

Allan says: “We now have a world-leading security team, who are finding those people and taking them down. We tell you, and you ask how did they get on the site. There will be problems, but we will catch most of them, and our goal is that the Canadian elections should not be unduly influenced through online activity on our platform.”

Canada’s Bob Zimmer asks whether Allan thinks Canada’s democracy is at risk if the country doesn’t change its laws to deal with ‘surveillance capitalism’.

Allan says there are a number of vectors that are problematic: foreign interference, the ability for others to project their views into the country; but also domestic issues, allowing people inside the country to do dirty tricks campaigns.

After a brief interruption from Ireland’s Eamon Ryan, and a quip about missing his gavel from Zimmer, the Canadian asks about Zuckerberg’s dismissal of the idea that Facebook affected the US election as a “crazy idea”.

Allan concedes it was “not elegantly said”, but says that “in an election campaign there is a huge amount of legitimate activity carried out by all the parties … We did spot this activity that was wrong, shouldn’t have happened, but we think that if you look at what changed the outcome, it’s the main point.”

“They’re both problems, but if you ask my why that statement was made, I’m trying to describe to you the thinking behind it.”

The UK’s Brendan O’Hara reiterates the irritation with Facebook’s decision not to send Zuckerberg, and asks if Allan was sent to answer questions or defend the company.

“Were you sent because you, in the entire Facebook empire, are the best person to answer all these questions, or because you’re best placed to defend the company?”

Allan says he thinks it’s the former, and reminds O’Hara that Mike Schroepfer, the company’s chief technical officer, had previously come and not satisfied the committee. He says he volunteered to speak to the committee: “I said, ‘I believe that I have the knowledge that this group needs.’”

“To be precise, both for the issues that you want to raise as the UK commitee, and, I now work on election issues globally… this is the stuff I work on. Our working assumption was that’s what you want to discuss.”

O’Hara complains about how many times Allan is promising to write with answers after the commitee, and asks Allan what light he thinks he’s shone on the issue that has provided greater clarity than Zuckerberg could have.

“I think I’ve given you insights around the way we think about regulation–” he is cut off by Collins, who hands over to the next questioner.

Pow turns to Facebook’s decision to challenge a £500,000 fine from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Allan says there’s a problem about how you assign blame between a first party and a third party in the case of a breach here. “Some of the language here suggests that if I have an email, and share it with a third party, that that could be a breach. That’s the sort of question we have to answer.”

Pow suggests that the appeal shows that Facebook actually doesn’t like regulation. Allan says “we are pleased about the right kind of regulation. Let’s get to the point where you agree that we’re doing the right kind of job, and can hold us to account if we’re not.”

POw says it feels like Facebook priortised its business and the value of its shares over public safety.

Allan says: “We have a mission. We want our service to be good, to be useful and to be safe.”

Pow cites Allan’s claim that the Facebook platform was “win win win,” and says it now seems to be “lose lose lose”. Allan says that that’s only true for a small set of specific issues.

Pow: “Mr Zuckerberg said that much of the criticism of Facebook over the last 18 months had been fair and important; would you agree with that?”

Allan: “Yes.”

Pow: “But in another article, he said that much of the criticism had been untrue and unfair.”

Allan says that some specific points are “quite personal attacks, which we don’t recognise. I work with these people, and I don’t recognise the mischaracterisation of these individuals.”

The plummeting trust in the company is, he says “a major concern. We recognise that we’re not in a good place in terms of trust.”

The UK’s Rebecca Pow next, who wants to make some “quite general points”. She cites a New York Times article saying that Facebook “ignored warning signs” about the negative impacts of its social network.

Allan says “the article mischaracterised discussions and people over the last few years. We are careful about how we release public information, about how they land. There’s no point in releasing security information if everyone’s going to declare it as partisan and dismiss it.”

Canada’s Nathaniel Eskine-Smith quotes from Zuckerberg’s statement apologising for Facebook’s failures, and notes that he wasn’t sorry enough to show up.

He then reels off a list of specific failures, from enabling the Rohingya genocide to allowing people to advertise to white supremacists and asks Allan if Facebook would do differently today.

He then follows up by asking if those failures were malicious or negligence. Allan isn’t happy with the binary.

Erskine-Smith then begins to ask questions that seem drawn from the Six4Three emails: did Facebook limit API access to apps that buy mobile adverts; did Mark Zuckerberg ever cancel an announcement to implement API restrictions. Allan begins to protest that the questions are based on the emails, but both Erskine-Smith and Collins deny that any of the contents of the Six4Three emails were shared outside the DCMS committee. Allan then says he doesn’t know the answers, and Erskine-Smith argues that Mark Zuckerberg would, which is why he should have shown up.

Erskine-Smith then asks whether Allan believes a user’s failure to uncheck a box about sharing data with app developers counts as “meaningful consent” under Canadian law; Allan says he does, prompting a laugh from Erskine-Smith.

Ireland’s Hildegarde Naughton asks about Facebook’s advertising ban during the country’s abortion referendum.

“We’re not comfortable making that decision”, Allan says, but when there’s no clear laws, sometimes the company is forced to act. The concern, he says, is that there was political interference from overseas.

Naughton brings up two private member’s bills running through Ireland’s parliament, and asks if Allan accepts that Facebook needs to be regulated. “Yes,” he says. “Many of the laws on political advertising were drafted pre-internet. We’ve seen many interesting developments; in Brazil, for instance, the responsibility is put on the political actor, so that they can only use services with transparency tools. To the extent that this is all clarified, and we have a simple playbook, that would be extraordinarily helpful.”

“I have now tens of thousands of colleagues who are deeply committed to protecting the safety of our users. The best way that we can ensure safety is when we’re able to be very open about the problems we’re seeing; some of the problems are on our platform, and we can just throw them off, but some of them need regulation. If someone’s a threat to children, for instance, we don’t want to throw them off the platform and have them go somewhere else.”

Farrelly turns to “Mainstream Network”, which was running adverts opposing the Chequers deal. Allan says the company has stopped running those adverts, but adds that “as of this week, any company that wants to run ads like that will have to provide a disclaimer saying how it’s funded”.

(That’s the first public confirmation of when Facebook is planning on launching the second half of its transparency tools in the UK, which were delayed earlier this month.)

Farrelly suggests that the Six4Three emails – which we still haven’t seen – show that Facebook is potentially breaching the US Rico act, which is intended to crack down on organised crime. He asks if Facebook has ever taken advice on how to defend against a Rico case. Allan says it has not, and that such a comparison is unfair.

Farrelly asks if it’s fair to ask what Facebook has to hide. Allan: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to share all our discussions with the public… in terms of what we did, we’ve got nothing to hide, in terms of all our internal discussions, having those treated as our company’s positions, I don’t think that’s fair.”

The UK’s Paul Farrelly again turns to Six4Three. “What’s their beef with you?”

Allan: “Their beef rests on us making the changes that you all want us to change. When we changed the API, they lost access to the friends data, and they launched a series of lawsuits.

“Their app – I was not a user – promised to help you find photos of your friends wearing bikinis.”

Farrelly notes that it’s “ironic”, because of the way Facebook started (as a website allowing users to compare the hotness of Harvard students). Allan notes the irony, but points out that “Facemash” did not include bikini pictures.

Allan says that the change in API terms happened around the time that Facebook transferred to being a mobile-focused company from being a website, and that that explains some emails apparently contained in the seized Six4Three cache. “All companies at that time discussed what the new business models look like … I suspect you may have, in the record, some partial discussions about potential new business models.”

Clive Efford asks Allan about his joint role as a member of the House of Lords, and how it looks that he’s making excuses for Zuckerberg’s failure to show.

“Not good,” Allan admits. “But I also have a role supporting my company as it tries to grapple with the issues it faces today. I am proud of the fact that we have answered thousands of questions and appeared in front of many committee hearings around the world.”

Efford asks Allan to describe the founding principles of the Facebook platform. Allan says that the company’s 2 billion users are better served by allowing third-party developers to provide services to those users that Facebook itself won’t build.

Efford asks about “PS12N”, a term that Allan doesn’t recognise. Efford says it “seems to have been a way of selecting which apps can access which services on the API.”

Allan describes the platform as being open-access, but offering particular status to those big brands that can bring special value to the site.

“There are people who show up, meet the terms and conditions, sign up, and are allowed on the platform. Then there are large companies, who may have specific terms, but provide services that are more valuable than the run of the mill service, and may also have more infrastructure. They are, for instance, companies that themselves have significant data protection infrastructure, and can thus be trusted to hold data.”

Efford asks if one of those new requirements is the ability to buy large amounts of mobile advertising; Allan says it was not. Efford asks further whether Facebook has ever targeted a developer to close down its operations so that Facebook can move in to that area and make money; Allan again denies it.

Efford says that this shows that the committee needs to speak to Zuckerberg, because Allan doesn’t know enough about these decisions.

Stevens turns to the non-user data Facebook holds.

Allan: “I’ve uploaded contact data; when a non-user joins the platform, that lets them be recommended to their friends.

“We also keep a log of where people come to us from, that helps us [with] security.”

Allan says Facebook makes no money from that data, because no adverts are served on it.

The UK’s Jo Stevens asks about November 2009, when Facebook had a “central privacy page”, that let users “control who sees you profile and personal information”. That was the basis of a 2012 Federal Trade Commission complaint, which alleged that developers were given access to information beyond those controls.

Allan: “My understanding of the FTC settlement is that it objected to the idea that data may have been accessed without consent, without permission. We were confident that the controls we implemented did count as consent.

“The notion at the time was something like a calendar with your friends’ birthdays on would be useful as a third-party application; that would require access to the birthdays of your friends. The idea behind this was not malicious, it was intended to add value.”

Stevens: “If I set my own custom privacy settings, that didn’t matter, because Facebook just overrode them?”

Allan: “No, because there was a separate setting that allowed users to opt-out of sharing their information with developers.”

Ryan finally asks whether Facebook is still applying GDPR around the world, and Allan says that it is.

Ryan brings up Facebook’s new transparency tools around political advertising, now launched in the US, UK and Brazil. “Why can we not have such transparency immediately, now?”

Allan says the company has a team working on deployment now. “There are three elements. The first is that you can go to a page now and see all ads being run. Second is authorisation, that’s where we check that you live in the country – ‘know your customer’. The third is an ad archive: if you run ads as a political advertiser, they go in the archive.

“That’s challenging; doing the authorisation is difficult. And then, for the archives, one of the things you need is for people to declare who they are, who they’re campaigning for. We found people tried to game the system, putting false information in, so we built up a team checking the information.”

Ireland’s Eamon Ryan asks: “The Irish data protection commissioner in 2012 was looking for an end to the possibility of developers accessing friends’ data. They considered taking a legal challenge, but said they thought it would take too long. We didn’t get a clear answer why Facebook decided to fight that recommendation. Where was that decision made? By whom in the company? And in 2015, when this misuse was discovered, at what level was it decided not to notify the Irish data protection commission?”

Allan says the view was that Ireland was giving “strong advice” but not declaring it “illegal”; “there was a view that the platform was working well at the time … and so the decision was taken with the data protection team to say ‘if we’re not compelled to make this change, we’re not going to make this change’”.

Ryan asks whether the decision was made in Europe or California; Allan says it was made by Facebook Ireland.

France’s Catherine Morin-Desailly asks Allan to “repeat Facebook’s decision on access controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal”.

Allan says that Facebook’s platform, which dates back to 2007, was used by Aleksandr Kogan to gather data from a large number of people. Morin-Desailly asks whether users were warned; Allan concedes it is a matter for debate but says Facebook believes they were given sufficient notice, but says that the specific usage of the data was abusive.

“It was something that we do believe people were aware of at the time.”

Morin-Desailly turns to “shadow profiles”, Facebook’s apparent policy of creating profiles for non-users. Allan denies creating such profiles: “there are not shadow profiles, there is a certain amount of non-user data that sits on Facebook servers. That can come from two sources: if you upload your contacts, that sits on our servers; and there is a certain amount of data that comes from browsing the web with sites that have Facebook plugins.”

Collins moves on, asking if Facebook created a “whitelist” of developers that continued to have full access to user data after the company changed its policy in 2014.

Allan explains that “some developers needed additional time, and we gave them that time where we thought it was justified”.

“When somebody had chosen to install an application under version one [of the terms], they could choose to give access to broader data. The API was never like a ‘firehose’ of data … If you agreed to it, and agreed to certain permissions, developers could access some friends’ data; in version two, that access was removed.”

Collins asks if Facebook had a reciprocity agreement, offering access to its data if they gave their own data back. Allan says that this only meant that Facebook developers had to offer the ability to users to share content back to Facebook. “Otherwise it’s simply taking data out, extractive, there’s no value back to the Facebook community.”

The DCMS committee has released an image of Mark Zuckerberg’s empty chair, just to hammer home the CEO’s absence.

Allan argues that the intention of Facebook with its app platform is to provide a “win win win”: Facebook gets more features for free, Facebook users get to do things that Facebook doesn’t normally provide, and developers get access to a large customer base.

Lucas again asks for one specific example of a business banned by Facebook for sharing information, and again Allan cannot provide one, but promises to do so after.

Lucas turns to Joseph Chancellor, a co-founder of GSR (the Cambridge University affiliated firm that provided Facebook data to Cambridge Analytica) and former employee of Facebook. He asks what action Facebook took against Chancellor, and Allan says he is not aware of any action.

“Isn’t it true you don’t take any action against developers,” asks Lucas.

Allan says “we will prevent access to our platform” for any apps that breach its terms, but Lucas again says there are no specific examples.

Next up is the UK’s Ian Lucas, who asks whether Facebook first learned about the GSR data incident (the root of the Cambridge Analytica scandal) from the press in 2015.

Allan says he, at least, learned about it then, and that he believes that Zuckerberg did not discover it then. But Lucas pushes for a precise answer.

Allan: “We have provided written answers; my belief is that it was in March 2018, when this round of stories was published, that he learned about them.”

Lucas asks for other apps that were banned. Allan cannot name a specific app, and promises to follow up with a written answer; Lucas notes that that promise was also made by Zuckerberg in front of the US Congress, but that no such written answer was provided. “We still do not know any company that was banned by Facebook on that basis.”

Angus brings up the fact that Facebook hired Washington DC political consultants Definers, who smeared Facebook critics as members of a George Soros-funded conspiracy to take down the site.

Allan: “I”m not going to disagree with you that we’ve damaged public trust with some of the actions we’ve taken. Mr Zuckerberg said himself that was not what he expected of us; Elliot Schrage said he was publicly responsible, and Mr Zuckerberg has given us instructions to look at all relationships we have.”

Angus says he’s not asking Facebook to be “perfect”, but to be “accountable.” “Once again, ‘Mr Zuckerberg is looking into this’; we don’t know that he is, because he’s refusing to show up to parliaments around the world.”

Collins turns to Canada’s Charlie Angus, who says he is “deeply disappointed” at Zuckerberg’s decision to “blow off this meeting”, and asks Allan “who gave Mr Zuckerberg the advice to ignore this committee.”

Allan: “Our intent is to be there to answer the questions you have of us,” but that doesn’t always involve Zuckerberg.

Angus: “Mr Zuckerberg’s decision to not appear here speaks volumes … when he says that the plan was, to move fast and break things, and that breaking may have involved our democratic institutions, does he not think or not believe that parliamentarians will push back?”

Allan: “As we sit here today, there are reviews of Facebook’s engineering product going on that he is leading.”

We’re off! Collins proudly proclaims this as the first time the House of Commons has held such a multi-parliament hearing since 1933.

“This shows just how seriously we take these issues, as do our colleagues from other parliaments.”

Richard Allan is sat next to an empty chair set for Mark Zuckerberg. “We were rather hoping your boss would appear,” Collins says.

Naturally, representatives from other parliaments can’t sit on a British parliamentary committee, so they appear to have instead been recorded as witnesses. Appearing are:

• Leopoldo Moreau, chair, Freedom of Expression Commission, Chamber of Deputies, Argentina.
• Alessandro Molon, member of the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil.
• Bob Zimmer, chair, and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith and Charlie Angus, vice-chairs, standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics, House of Commons, Canada.
• Hildegarde Naughton, chair, and Eamon Ryan, member, joint committee on communications, climate action and environment, parliament of Ireland.
• Dr Inese Lībiņa-Egnere, deputy speaker, parliament of Latvia.
• Pritam Singh, Edwin Tong and Sun Xuelin, members, select committee on deliberate online falsehoods, parliament of Singapore.
• Karine Lalieux, hair, committee on infrastructure, communications and public enterprises, parliament of Belgium.
• Catherine Morin-Desailly, standing committee on culture, education and media, French Senate.

And representing Facebook: Richard Allan, vice president of policy solutions.

Correction: Belgium is represented by Nele Lijnen, not Karine Lalieux.

Chaired by Damian Collins MP, the head of the UK parliament’s digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) select committee, the “grand committee” also includes representatives from Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, Canada, Belgium, France and Latvia.

It is expected to open with a bang, thanks to a cache of documents seized by Collins at the weekend from Six4Three, a US-based app developer that is suing the social network in California.

Six4Three had obtained the documents as part of the legal discovery process, but they were sealed under a court order. Collins invoked a rarely used parliamentary power to compel Six4Three’s founder, who was in the UK for business purposes, to hand over the information anyway.

“This is an unprecedented move but it’s an unprecedented situation,” Collins told the Observer on Sunday. “We’ve failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.”

Today, a “grand committee” comprised of representatives from nine parliaments around the world is due to face Facebook, holding the company to account for its failure to police its own platform in nations as diverse as Singapore, France and Brazil.

The company is represented in the hearings, which kick off at 11.30am, by its European policy chief, Richard Allan, after Facebook declined repeated requests to send its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

Allan is no stranger to the British parliament: he’s a member of the House of Lords, as Lord Allan of Hallam, and was the Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam before then.

Curiously, Allan’s successor as Sheffield Hallam MP was Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader who is now, again, Allan’s boss as the new head of Facebook’s worldwide communications.