‘Sinister’ - Bev Turner warns of Big Brother Britain: ‘Terrifying they're tracking us’

The secretive unit was set up in 2019 as ministers sought to combat disinformation, with the initial focus being on foreign interference in the European elections.

The group is said to have turned its attention to the Covid pandemic soon after, with a focus on monitoring social media posts by Britons.

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Legitimate posts questioning the Government’s lockdown policies were collated by the unit, along with an AI firm employed by it.

GB News’ Bev Turner says the worrying discovery highlights a worrying trend akin to “Big Brother”.

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“It’s so sinister and so dystopian to think we’re being watched by our own Governments”, she said.

“It’s to stifle debate. You might be alright with a Conservative Government, but imagine what it will be like with Labour.

“They will watch everything you do and suppress your tweets, but you will always have GB News.”

Speaking on GB News, Tory MP David Davis said the establishment of such a unit in the first place was always likely to cause trouble.

“The establishment of this group was a worry about Russia meddling in our elections, which is reasonable”, he said.

“This is nothing like what it was intended for, and that’s the other outcome of not having proper Parliamentary surveillance and transparency.

“If you leave Governments to do these things, they almost invariably go off the rails.

“That’s why you’ve got to control it. Frankly, shut this down.”

A letter, signed by Davies, Lucas and Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, warned that the CDU “appears to have suffered serious mission creep”.

It also raised concerns about the lack of transparency around the CDU’s activities.

“We will not accept the monitoring and censorship of dissent under the guise of countering disinformation”, the letter stated.

“We call on you to suspend the CDU immediately and commission an independent review of its work, in order to ensure that the rights to freedom of expression and privacy are sufficiently protected.”

A Government spokesman told The Telegraph: “The unit uses publicly available information to tackle the most severe safety, security and disinformation threats, such as Russia’s denial of massacres in Ukraine.

“It does not, and has never, tracked the activity of individuals, and it has a blanket ban on acting against any comments made by parliamentarians and journalists.

“We have noted the concerns raised by each MP and will respond to their letter in full in due course.

“As we have previously offered, we are happy to discuss the work of the Counter Disinformation Unit with any parliamentarian should they wish to find out more about the important work of the unit.”