A Conservative MP has settled a libel and data protection claim against Google over an advertisement which falsely accused him of protecting paedophiles.
Lee Anderson, the MP for Ashfield since 2019, sued Google Ireland Limited after an advertisement linked to a ‘fringe campaign group’ called Keeping Kids Safe appeared on the political blog Guido Fawkes last February.
The advert – which was published via the Google Ads platform – featured a picture of Anderson with the ‘highly defamatory’ headline ‘MP office protect paedophile’, the High Court heard today.
Google removed the advert after Anderson complained, but refused to provide details of the number of times it displayed the advert or whether it appeared on other websites, which ‘compounded the claimant’s distress’, Anderson’s barrister Felicity McMahon said. She also said Google ‘did not answer the claimant’s requests for information under the General Data Protection Regulation’.
Google ‘purports to place all adverts relating to elected officeholders in a dedicated political advertising library, thus providing a central place where political advertising can be checked and reviewed,’ McMahon said.
‘Despite the inflammatory nature of this advert, and the use of the words “MP” and “paedophile”, the advert was approved for display following an automated review for policy compliance, with no additional checks carried out by the defendant’s staff, and the defendant failed to place the advert about the claimant in its political advertising library.’
She said that Google accepts that the advert is not true and ‘should not have been displayed as it did not comply with the Google Ads policies’, and has agreed to pay Anderson’s reasonable legal costs.
Hope Williams, for Google, said her client wished to ‘sincerely apologise to the claimant for any distress the advert has caused to him and his family, and for any loss of confidence his constituents have suffered in their member of parliament as a result of seeing the advert’.
‘The defendant is clear that all ads on its platform must comply with its policies and applicable law, and it is constantly working to improve its services to provide a good experience for users and advertisers,’ Williams said.
