Here is the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on May’s NHS announcement.

Here is the full quote from Theresa May on NHS funding.

May says she wants to build a consensus on NHS funding in parliament. But she knows that is not always easy.

Hilary Benn, the Labour chair of the Brexit committee, goes next.

Q: The EU wants to exclude the UK from Galileo after Brexit. It has been reported that the UK will be excluded from contracts from this year. Is that consistent with the good faith provisions in the transition deal?

May says the UK is talking to the EU about this.

Nicky Morgan, the Conservative chair of the Treasury committee, goes next.

Q: What do you feel about overseas states setting up Twitter accounts to threaten candidates, even threatening to have them killed?

May says a vitriol has come into politics which is wrong.

Q: There is a particular concern about deliberate orchestration by an overseas state to undermine democracy. I assume that would be of great concern to you.

Of course it would, says May.

Mary Creagh, the Labour chair of the environmental audit committee, goes next.

Q: Boris Johnson says when the UK leaves the EU it can get rid of burdensome regulations. But Michael Gove says he wants tighter environmental regulations. Which is it?

May denies there is an inconsistency.

Q: Can you comment on reports that officials are looking at an Irish border solution that would keep the UK aligned to a sub-set of single market rules? Does this mean you are more serious about option 3 as a solution to the border?

May says option 3 is still very much the backstop. She says the UK wants to find a solution through the new trade relationship.

Andrew Murrison, the Conservative chair of the Northern Ireland committee, goes next.

Q: Do you worry that not having a Northern Ireland executive makes it harder to take its interests into account for Brexit?

May says she wants the executive to be restored.

She says civil servants from Northern Ireland have attended joint ministerial committee meetings.

She says she is interested in what else can be done to ensure Northern Ireland’s interests are taken into account.

Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the environment committee, goes next.

Q: For perishable goods, the ability to cross borders quickly is essential. What is the government doing to ensure that?

May says she wants borders after Brexit to be as frictionless as possible.

May says she supports her independent local butcher rather than going to supermarkets.

May says she is aware of the contribution Welsh farmers contribute to the Welsh landscape because she goes walking in the country. But she says people will be glad to hear she has no plans to go there this Easter. (That’s a joke about how it was while walking in Wales last year that she decided to hold an election.)

Q: There is real anger about what has happened to fishing. Can you say that fishing rights will not be traded to get a final deal?

May says she understands the anger people felt about how the interests of fishing communities were sacrificed when the UK joined the EEC. She wants to do it differently this time.

Scottish fisheries can be confident that, in 2020, the UK will be negotiating for the 2021 catch as an independent state.

And the government wants to rebuild the industry. That includes the fish processing industry too, she says.

May says she wants to ensure there are no unintended consequences to what gets proposed by the UK government. She says she thinks there is goodwill on both sides.

The committee is now on Brexit.

Pete Wishart, the SNP MP goes next. He asks about devolution and the EU withdrawal bill.

May says further work is still being done to try to find a solution (as to what to do about powers being repatriated from the EU which would normally be devolved) acceptable to the devolved administrations.

She says the government’s priority is to maintain the integrity of the UK’s single market.

May says that to say it is disappointing that the international development committee were not issued with visas so they could visit Myanmar to investigate the plight of the Rohingya is to put it mildly. She says she hopes people will continue to highlight this issue.

Yvette Cooper goes next.

Q: You say you have not seen evidence of Russia interfering in elections. Have you looked for this?

May says she does not look for things herself. That is for others.

Q: But have you asked government agencies to look at this?

May says at the time of the election work was done to ensure the integrity of elections.

Q: Don’t you think you should check, particularly in the light of the claims about Aleksandr Kogan? (See 3.55pm.)

May says what is important is that the Electoral Commission look at this.

Q: So you are not ordering an investigation?

May says the Electoral Commission are looking at this.

Q: We have invited Mark Zuckerberg to give evidence to parliament. He has offered to send someone else. Do you think it would be appropriate for him to appear?

May says this is an important issue. The committee should get the maximum committee to ask questions.

Q: So should he turn up?

May says Zuckerberg will decide for himself. But she hopes Facebook recognises why people are concerned about this.

Q: Have you considered increasing the number of British troops deployed in Europe?

May says troop levels are kept under review. But it is not just a UK matter. Other countries deploy in Eastern Europe too.

Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of the defence committee, goes next.

Q: Given the situation with Russia, shouldn’t the government be cutting the BBC Russian monitoring service. It has been cut by £25m. That is a relatively small sum, he says.

May says the Foreign Office is in discussion with the BBC about higher funding for the World Service.

Lewis says that relates to what is broadcast into Russia. He is talking about the monitoring of what comes out of Russia. He urges May to consider this.

This is from the Mail’s John Stevens.

Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the home affairs committee, goes next.

Q: Some 700 Russians have been granted tier 1 investor visa (which are available to those investing £2m in the UK). Are those being examined to see if the money was legitimate?

May says the Home Office is reviewing the system.

Q: But are the individuals being looked at?

May says she thinks the system is being looked at.

Q: If those 700 have not been looked at, some of those people will get indefinite leave to remain. Isn’t that a problem?

May says there have been various question about the scheme, not just about whether the money is illegal.

Q: How can political parties be sure donations are legitimate if individuals are not checked?

May says there are clear rules about political donations.

Black Cube has sent me this statement in response to the allegations about it made by Christopher Wylie in his evidence to MPs. (See 11.21am.) It said:

Black Cube has always operated within the boundaries of the law in every jurisdiction it operates, following legal advice from the world’s leading law firms. Whilst we are flattered that we are seemingly being connected with every international incident that occurs, we will state that Chris Wylie’s testimony is a flagrant lie. We categorically declare that neither Black Cube, nor any of its affiliates and subsidiaries, have ever worked for, or engaged with, SCL, Cambridge Analytica, or any of their affiliates and subsidiaries. Black Cube has never operated in Nigeria nor has it worked on any project connected to Nigeria, and none of its employees have ever set foot in Nigeria.

We have had to take down more comments than usual today. When commenting, please keep Point 6 of our Community Standards in mind: We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libellous or defamatory postings, or material posted in potential breach of copyright.

Davey criticises Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, for issuing a statement at the weekend dismissing the allegations against Vote Leave as “ludicrous”. He says he wants to know if Johnson was speaking for the government. Labour’s Ben Bradshaw intervenes, and says Johnson posted his tweet before he would have even had time to read the allegations in full.

Here is the Johnson tweet.

In the debate Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem former cabinet minister, is speaking now. He says the Electoral Commission apply three tests to decide whether campaigns have colluded in a way banned by election spending rules. Did they coordinate their campaign materials? Did they coordinate their campaign activities? And did one campaign have the power to approve what another was doing? All three of those conditions apply in this case, he says.

The Labour MP Ben Bradshaw is speaking in the debate now. He says when he started raising concerns about the conduct of the EU referendum campaign in the Commons he was regarded as “a crank”. But almost all the allegations he made have now been substantiated. He says anyone in any doubt should watch Christopher Wylie’s evidence to the Commons culture committee today. He says Wylie was an impressive witness, and produced evidence of serious law breaking.

He praises Damian Collins, the culture committee chair, for taking these allegations seriously. Collins will be putting them to the prime minister at the liaison committee hearing this afternoon, Bradshaw says.

In the Commons Tim Loughton, a Brexiter Conservative, says the remain campaign in the EU referendum set up no fewer than five separate pro-remain groups. The remain campaign funnelled £1m to them, he says. He suggests this is more serious than anything Vote Leave did.

Loughton is referring to the allegations in this report on the Guido Fawkes blog.

In response, Brake says any allegations about rule breaking by either side should be investigated.

Damian Collins says they have been going for almost four hours. He thinks that may be a record for a single-panel evidence session. He asks the witnesses if they have any final comments.

Paul-Olivier Dehaye, the IT expert who has been giving evidence alongside Wylie, says they have been talking about how digital advertising affects individual.

But there is a big question involving how rumours can influence people collectively, he says.

He says only Facebook can do that work.

And that’s it.

Collins says the committee now needs to have a short, private meeting with Wylie.

(That does not normally happen at the end of committee hearings. I guess the committee wants to discuss with Wylie how much of the written evidence he submitted it publishes. See 11.27am.)

I will post a summary shortly.

Ben Bradshaw (see 2.14pm) is in the committee room, watching the proceedings in person, I’m told.

An MP tells Wylie that he has just read on this blog that Dominic Cummings has described Wylie as a “fantasist-charlatan”. (See 1.54pm.) How does he react?

Wylie says he has worked with the information commissioner’s office, with the Guardian and the Observer, with Channel 4 News and with the New York Times. There has been a remarkable amount of fact checking, he says. He says if he is a fantastist, then all those other organisations are too.

The Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, a firm remain supporter, says Christopher Wylie’s evidence today casts doubt on the legitimacy of the EU referendum result.

Wylie says he has seen Cambridge Analytica pitch for business with companies close to the FSB, the Russian spying agency. He cites Lukoil as an example.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s lead Brexit spokesman, has posted this tweet about the hearing.

Since we’re on the subject of Dominic Cummings, he has posted an update to his blog commenting on today’s evidence. He highlights this tweet from my Observer colleague.

And he says:

This tweet from Carole sums up how serious this story really is in so far as it relates to Vote Leave: of course, SMERSH (Russian abbreviation for ‘death to spies’)! The EC/ICO inquiries will look at the facts, the completely different stories that the whistleblowers tell each time they appear (their credibility is such that I bet their lawyers won’t let them appear as witnesses), the evidence, and the law. By the time the inquiries are over, the Observer will look really silly for making a hero out of a fantasist-charlatan, we’ll already have left the EU, and Zoolander will need a new look… The one thing Carole has provided good evidence for is something Vote Leave already knew in 2015: it would be lunacy for Vote Leave to ally with Arron Banks and Cambridge Analytica!

Q: Dominic Cummings describes you as a charlatan. That is unfair. But wouldn’t it be better to describe you as a failed Alexander Nix. You tried to set up on your own and it did not work like that.

Wylie says he does not see himself as a failure. He is in the UK on a tier 1 exceptional talent visa. The UK government only gives out 200 of those a year.

Q: But you pitched for their business, and now you are blowing the whistle.

Wylie says he is not engaged in a vendetta for a pilot project that did not work out. He made the pitch as a favour. He had most of the material already. It did not work out. If Cummings had wanted to hire him, he is not even sure he would have been able to do the work.

Q: You say you got reservations about what you were doing. Was that before or after you offered your data harvesting techniques to Vote Leave in January 2016?

[Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign director, wrote about Wylie’s offer in a very long post on his blog at the end of last week intended to pre-but the Observer’s Vote Leave allegations.]

Wylie says he does not have qualms about data harvesting.

You can do targeting in an ethical way.

But at the time he approached Vote Leave, Trump had not been elected.

He thinks it was at the start of 2016.

Q: You are making an extremely serious allegation, that Cambridge Analytica was under-charging to avoid campaign finance rules. Do you have any evidence for that?

Not in the form of documentation, says Wylie.

But he says Robert Mercer was putting $10m to $15m to create an asset that the company was then licensing for $50,000.

He says he was subsidising the work of CA to the benefit of candidates and parties that he supports.

Julian Knight, a Conservative, goes next.

Q: You say you have seen an invoice from Cambridge Analytica to Ukip?

Yes, says Wylie. He suggests he was shown this recently.

Q: But Ukip has no money.

Wylie says Cambridge Analytica does not need to make money. Robert Mercer can afford for it not to. And he says the figure on an invoice does not necessarily reflect the value of the work. He says Mercer puts money into the company, and the firm might then work for a political campaign. He says this allows campaign spending rules to be evaded.

Q: So you would call it a fraud?

Wylie does not use that word.

But he says if Mercer puts $1om into political campaigns, that has to be declared. If he invests in a company, and it provides services for firms at below cost, that does not have to be declared. He is just putting money in as an investor.

Damian Collins goes next.

Q: There has been speculation about Facebook listening in to people’s conversations. Do you think that happens. Or is is just that they are so good at predicting what you want that it feels as if they are doing that?

Paul-Oliver Dehaye, an IT expert giving evidence alongside Wylie, says Facebook are very good at hiding their targeting information.

Wylie says this is really a question for Facebook.

He says trying to analyse what people are saying could be difficult.

But he says Facebook could benefit from accessing audio without having to listen in to conversations. For example, it could be helpful for them to know if someone was at the office, or at home, or watching TV.

Collins says it is “astonishing” that Mark Zuckerberg is not prepared to submit himself to questioning here or before Congress. He says, if Zuckerberg has any concern for his customers, he should think again.

UPDATE: This is from Catherine Miller, director of policy at Doteveryone, which is campaigning for a fairer internet.

The SNP’s Brendan O’Hara goes next.

Q: Did Cambridge Analytica work during the Scottish referendum?

Wylie says he knows that Alexander Nix pitched for work during the campaign. But he is very “hazy” about the details.

Labour’s Christian Matheson goes next.

Q: What work does Cambridge Analytica do for the UK government?

Wylie says it has mostly worked in Middle Eastern countries, doing research into people who could pose a threat.

Q: Does this work include data being collected on British citizens?

Not from what he’s seen, says Wylie.

Wylie says the committee should take evidence from Brittany Kaiser, the former Cambridge Analytica executive. [The Guardian published an interview with her last week.]

He says he is concerned that some CA staff who worked in Nigeria are now working for the UK government.

Wylie says his understanding is that it was “common practice” for Cambridge Analytica to use tactics like hacking.

Q: Are you accusing AIQ of illegal activity?

Wylie says AIQ played a pivotal role in the scheme that was set up.

Q: You are claiming breaches of electoral law, and intimidation by Robert Mercer. Should he be subject to investigation?

Absolutely, Wylie says.

He says this firm uses companies like Black Cube. (See 11.21am.) It is an intimidating firm.

Simon Hart, a Conservative, goes next.

Q: You are convinced AIQ played a significant role, not just with Vote Leave but with other groups, and that you think those groups were connected.

Wylie says he has provided evidence that BeLeave was based in the Vote Leave HQ. It reported to Vote Leave staff. So this was not just an informal relationship. He has concluded there was coordination.

Q: Facebook became aware that its data was being used for political purposes. Did it know AIQ was using its data?

Wylie says Hart would have to ask Facebook.

He says he does not know if Facebook is aware of the relationship between AIQ and Cambridge Analytica. One consequence of having firms around the world with different names is that it makes it opaque knowing who did what.

Q: Eldon Insurance deals with personal injury cases. There data would be personally sensitive. Are you saying there was a data breach?

Wylie says he does not know that the relationship between Eldon Insurance and Cambridge Analytica. But he has seen Eldon Insurance documents talking about the success rate of Leave.EU marketing.

He says he is curious as to why they had access to that data.

He is not saying firmly that CA did have access to that data. But it is worth asking CA or Eldon Insurance about that.

And was it using the insurance company’s data to target people. That is a fair question to ask, Wylie says.

Jo Stevens says she agrees.

Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader and shadow culture secretary, says it will be “completely unacceptable” for Mark Zuckerberg to refuse to give evidence to the Commons culture committee in the light of Wylie’s evidence.

Wylie says the ICO [information commissioner’s office] does not have much power. And it does not have many staff either.

Wylie says it would be “a shame” if, by the time it were established that the vote to leave the EU was established by cheating, the UK had already left the EU.

Wylie says the Americans still see Britain as a Downton Abbey country. From Steve Bannon’s point of view, if Britain could embrace Brexit, that would boost the chances of something similar happening in the US.

Bannon was really interested generally in Ukip. He saw it as important for America because if you are fighting a culture war, Britain plays a key role in that.

Because of the way Americans imagine British people - it is still Downton Abbey, everyone is posh, educated and refined - if you can instil a populist movement in Britain, in the American psyche that is validating - ‘If Britain is Brexiting, we can elect Trump’.

Q: What about Cambridge Analytica’s work for Leave.EU?

Wylie says CA are very good a using “weasel words”.

He says it is worth asking whether Aaron Banks [the Leave.EU founder] used data from his insurance company, Eldon Insurance, to help the campaign.

Labour’s Jo Stevens goes next.

Q: Vote Leave spent 40% of their budget, or £2.7m, on AggregateIQ. And they were targeting 5m to 7m.

That’s what I was told, says Wylie.

Q: And the conversation rates [the success rate from internet ads] was 5% to 7%.

For some projects, says Wylie.

He says a conversion rate means people will perform a substantive action for the campaign.

Q: In the end just 600,000 people decided the referendum. Dominic Cummings said this was small enough for just a few people to make a difference. So it is perfectly reasonable to say this made the difference.

Wylie says it is “incredibly reasonable” to say the AIQ spending was very important.

I think it is incredibly reasonable to say that AIQ played a very significant role in Leave winning.

I have been updating some of the earlier posts with direct quotes, from the Press Association reports. To get the updates to show up, you may need to refresh the page.

Here is one of the stronger quotes reported by PA not picked up earlier. Wylie said:

AggregateIQ, in part because it was set up and works within the auspices of Cambridge Analytica, inherited a lot of the company’s culture of total disregard for the law ...

This is a company that has worked with hacked material, this is a company that will send out videos of people being murdered to intimidate voters, this is a company that goes out and tries to illicitly acquire live internet browsing data of everyone in an entire country.

I think a lot of questions should be asked about the role of AIQ in this election and whether they were indeed compliant with the law here.

Wylie says he gradually became more uncomfortable working for Cambridge Analytica. There was not a single moment when he decided to blow the whistle, he says.

He stressed that Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer reporter who has published his revelations, has around 12 or 15 other sources too. He is not the only person speaking out, he says.

Q: You have broken a non-disclosure agreement. Are you facing any threats?

Wylie says the most legal pushback he has had has come from Facebook. They sent “some fairly intimidating legal correspondence”.

Wylie says he worked for Cambridge Analytica, but paid for by SCL.

Rebecca Pow, a Conservative, goes next.

Q: You say CA made money through elections through “influence brokering”. What does that mean? And is there something more sinister going on here?

Yes, says Wylie.

He says firms do not make a lot of money from political consulting.

If you help someone win an election, you get paid, but do not make a lot of money.

But if you then introduce a minister to an oil company, you might get a get from a deal.

He says when he was at CA, it was not just about selling influence. They would use fake government projects to help an agenda.

Part of the business model of SCL is to capture a government, win an election. You get paid for that but you don’t get a ton of money.

Where you get money is then going to the minister and introducing the minister to a company and then making deals.

There were different companies interested in building ports and things like that and in order to get a competitive advantage, some money goes here and some money goes here, and you can introduce the company to the minister and the minister approves the project and you get a cut of that deal.

Q: Are these people trying to be big power players?

Yes, says Wylie. You can be like “a colonial master in a country”. You can go into a country with undeveloped civil institutions and make money from it, exploiting the lack of government oversight.

You can be like a colonial master in the country. It felt very much like a privatised colonising operation.

You would go into a country that has underdeveloped civic institutions, you would exploit that and make money out of it. That’s how they make a lot of their money, through exploiting relationships and the fact that there’s not a lot of oversight and government accountability in a lot of these countries.

It’s very easy to make a lot of money like that. The key thing is you have got to have your guy in power.

Q: Are there other data analytics companies operating in the same way as Cambridge Analytica?

Wylie mentions Palantir, a firm that worked for the US National Security Agency. He says Palantir used Facebook data.

Wylie says GSR, the company run by the Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, was set up purely to service Cambridge Analytica.

Wylie says, if you can create a pyschological profile of someone more prone to certain idea, conspiracy theories, for example, you can then create a data profile for them. And you can then target them with advertising.

They might then wonder why the mainstream media is not reporting what they are seeing. For example, they might wonder why the MSM is not reporting Obama moving troops to Texas as a precursor to trying to serve a third term.

Q: Was that a tactic that was used?

Yes, says Wylie.

He says they asked how far they could go with certain types of people.

This is from the Labour MP Ben Bradshaw.

Wylie says AggregateIQ targeted between 5m and 7m voters during the campaign. It did not aim advertising at everyone. It was targeting people it could persuade, he says.

He says online advertising often has a “conversion rate” of 1%.

The AIQ success rates were much higher, he says.

Wylie says Grimes and Sanni were told by the Vote Leave lawyers what to do.

Wylie says he is convinced that Vote Leave, BeLeave, the DUP and Veterans for Britain were working together in the EU referendum campaign.

I am absolutely convinced that there was a common plan and common purpose with Vote Leave, BeLeave, the DUP, and Veterans for Britain. All of these companies somehow, for some reason, all decided to use AIQ ...

When you look at the accumulation of evidence, I think it would be completely unreasonable to come to any other conclusion other than this must be coordination, this must be a common purpose plan.

He says he can’t believe there would have been any other way they would all have found AggregateIQ. At that time you could not even find it on the internet.

[AIQ says it has had a website since it was founded in 2013.]

Wylie says he recalls someone at the AIQ office telling him what was happening was “totally illegal”.

But they found it amusing. You have to remember this is a company that’s gone around the world and undermined democratic institutions in all kinds of countries. They couldn’t care less if their work is compliant because they like to win.

For me it makes me so angry because a lot of people supported Leave because they believe in the application of British law and British sovereignty and to irrevocably alter the constitutional settlement of this country on the basis of fraud is a mutilation of the constitutional settlement of this country.

He says BeLeave was used as effectively a money laundering vehicle. He says this happened because Dominic Cummings [who was running Vote Leave] was determined to win.

He says he is very angry that two young people he introduced to Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson, Darren Grimes and Shahmir Sanni, were used to break the law.

He says it is outrageous that Grimes is personally responsible for what is a criminal responsibility.

He says these two young people were exploited. Grimes was even persuaded to give up university so that he could carry on campaigning for Vote Leave, Wylie says.

Q: Can you say definitely that Cambridge Analytica shared its data with AggregateIQ?

It depends what you mean by data.

Q: Any data?

Yes, absolutely, says Wylie.

Q: Can you say AIQ had access to the data?

Wylie says yes.

He has provided documents to the committee that back this up.

Damian Collins, the chair, says Wylie has given the committee a large stash of documents. The committee will be going through them. It may publish some of the material tomorrow.

• Collins says culture committee may publish documents from the Cambridge Analytica whisteblower tomorrow.

Wylie says when he met Dominic Cummings in November 2015, Vote Leave did not even have any election data.

He says shortly after that, Vote Leave hired AIQ.

He says he thinks that is because they did not want to hire Cambridge Analytica because it was working with Leave.EU, the rival leave campaign. He says Cummings may have decided, if he could not hire CA, he would hire the next best thing. But that is speculation, he says.

He says about two months later Vote Leave was able to obtain a large amount of voting data. He does not know how it got that.

My question is where did you get that data? How do you create a massive targeting operation in a country that AIQ hadn’t previously worked in in two months?

It baffles me as to how that could happen in such a short amount of time.

Wylie says AggregateIQ (AIQ) played a role in a Nigerian election by distributing very violent videos intended to intimidate people. They showed people being dismembered, he says.

UPDATE:

As the Press Assocation reports, Wylie claimed that SCL had been involved in a project in Nigeria in 2015 which had involved hacking the private information of Muhammadu Buhari, who was running for president. And he claimed AIQ had distributed compromising material - known as kompromat - and videos designed to intimidate Buhari’s supporters. Wylie said:

The company utilised the services of an Israeli private intelligence firm, Black Cube.

Black Cube on the Nigeria project was engaged to hack the now-president Buhari to get access to his medical records and private emails.

AIQ worked on that project. AIQ was handed material in Nigeria from Cambridge Analytica to distribute online. That’s distribution of kompromat and of incredibly threatening and violent video content which I’ve passed on to the committee.

The videos that AIQ distributed in Nigeria with the sole intent of intimidating voters included content where people were being dismembered, where people were having their throats cut and bled to death in a ditch, they were being burned alive.

There were incredibly anti-Islamic and threatening messages portraying Muslims as violent.

FURTHER UPDATE: Black Cube has issued a statement describing Wylie’s evidence as a “flagrant lie”. See 4.23pm for the full quote.

For reference, here is an Observer graphic setting out the relatonship between SCL, Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ.

Wylie is now talking about the establishment of AggregateIQ, the Canadian firm with links to Cambridge Analytica.

He says he found some experts he wanted to hire. But they were in Canada and did not want to leave. He discussed this with Nix. It was agreed that they would set up an operation in Canada. The intellectual property was assigned to SCL, he says. And the new company traded as SCL Canada.

Q: What is the motivation for these people?

Wylie says a lot of people at the top of the company are very rich anyway.

He says Nix is wealthy. He once had to leave a meeting to pick up a £200,000 chandalier.

But he says wealthy people like this need to have something interesting to do. Going into a country to influence its politics fills that need, he says.

You have to remember that a lot of these people are very wealthy already.

Alexander Nix in particular - there was one time when we were running late because he had to pick up a £200,000 chandelier.

These are people who don’t need to make a lot of money, but the thing that I learned is that for certain wealthy people, they need something to keep them occupied and they need projects.

Going into the developing world and running a country is something that appeals to them.

Wylie says Alexander Nix became involved in the company because his father had shares in it.

He says Nix had no background in tech, or pyschology, or politics, or any other core features of the business.

But Nix was a specialist at sales, he says.

Q: Your predecessor died in Kenya. Were there any suspicious circumstances?

Wylie says he has heard various different stories as to what happened. He does not know what happened. But in Kenyan politics, if something goes wrong, you can pay for it.

He says there was news coverage in Romania because the colleague, Dan, was the son of a Romanian politician now in jail.

Wylie says the colleague was called Dan Muresan.

Wylie says, when he was taken on, he was not told that his predecessor had died in Kenya.

Q: So what were you told?

Wylie stresses that what he was told was pure speculation.

He was told that Muresan was working with a politician. In those circumstances you are not paid for your work, but you can win contracts afterwards. He says he was told that the deal went wrong and that Muresan was poisoned in his hotel room. He says he was also told that the police were bribed so they did not enter the hotel room for 24 hours.

People suspected that he was poisoned in his hotel room. I also heard the police got bribed to not enter the hotel room for 24 hours. That’s what I was told. I was not there so I can’t speak to the veracity of that.

But he stresses that he does not know whether these claims were true.

Labour’s Paul Farrelly goes next.

Q: So your main motivation is concern that techniques developed for military use are being used to influence elections?

That is part of it, says Wylie.

But he says he is also concerned that Cambridge Analytica goes around the world undermining institutions.

It is “what modern day colonialism looks like”, he says.

It is going into countries struggling to get off the ground and undermining their institutions.

Q: So is it like Smersh from James Bond [although Farrelly seems to be calling it Smash]?

Wylie says the Channel 4 undercovering filming told its own story.

Q: Is it true that Steve Bannon came up with the name Cambridge Analytica?

Yes, says Wylie.

He says Alexander Nix, who was head of CA until he was suspended, has a standard sales pitch. It involves his posh veneer.

But that did not play well with Steve Bannon.

Nix realised that, Wylie says. So he decided to set up a “fake office in Cambridge” to present a more academic image for the company.

It was as a result of that the Bannon decided the company should be called Cambridge Analytica. He liked the academic image.

Q: Did you have a formal relationship with Cambridge?

Not formally, says Wylie, but he says the firm worked with a lot of academics.

Cambridge has a very good psychology department. The company worked with some of those specialists.

Q: Why have you decided to speak out about your former colleagues now?

Wylie says people have duties as citizens.

People ask why it has taken him so long to speak out. But he has been working with the Guardian on this for a year.

And he has been working with the ICO [information commissioner’s office].

He also signed non-disclosure agreements. He was worried about being sued into oblivion by Robert Mercer, the billionaire part owner of Cambridge Analytica.

He also says that it has taken time for him to realise the political implications of the work he was doing. He started speaking to the Guardian after the election of President Trump.

As a citizen, one has a duty to report unlawful activity,” he said, explaining that he came forward shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump.

I wouldn’t say it’s just because of Donald Trump, but Donald Trump makes it click in your head that it has a much wider impact.

I don’t think that military-style information operations is conducive to any democratic process.

Q: Are SCL and Cambridge Analytica effectively the same organisation?

Christopher Wylie says that is the case.

Damian Collins, the Conservative chair of the committee, opens by saying Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the committee’s invitation to give evidence.

He says Zuckerberg has proposed that Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer, gives evidence. The committee will set that up for after Easter, he says.

He says the committee still thinks Zuckerberg should appear. It was not clear from his letter whether he was refusing, Collins says. He says the committee will write to Zuckerberg again, repeating the request for him to appear.

• Collins says committee will renew its request to Zuckerberg for him to give evidence.

UPDATE: Here is the statement.

Labour has taken too long to stamp out antisemitism in the party, the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, said today. As my colleague Matthew Weaver reports, Long-Bailey said it was imperative for the party to urgently address the problem to ensure that the Jewish community felt welcome.