Section:GDN 1N PaGe:16 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/7/2019 19:49 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Wednesday 31 July 2019
(^16) National
UK’s cherry
industry
bounces back
after 20-year
struggle
Cambridge Analytica
emails reveal its work
for Leave.EU on Brexit
Rebecca Smithers
The UK’s cherry industry, which nearly
collapsed 20 years ago, has bounced
back with predictions of a bumper har-
vest this year.
Cheap imports and high production
and labour costs nearly decimated the
sector, but British growers are now
poised to produce about 6,500 tonnes
of cherries – double the 3,168 tonnes
picked in the UK last year and the high-
est for nearly 50 years.
Alex Hern
Technology editor
Cambridge Analytica did work for
Leave.EU on the referendum, accord-
ing to emails published by a Commons
committee , even though the company
never received payment for it.
Brittany Kaiser, the former director
of business development at the now
closed political consultancy, supplied
the emails to the digital, culture, media
and sport committee. She argued they
showed that, despite claims to the con-
trary, the partnership between the two
organisations went beyond exploring
the potential for future collaboration.
“Chargeable work was completed
for Ukip and Leave.EU, and I have
strong reasons to believe that those
data sets and analysed data processed
by Cambridge Analytica ... were later
used by the Leave.EU campaign with-
out Cambridge Analytica’s further
assistance,” Kaiser wrote in a letter to
Damian Collins, the committee chair.
The emails show Cambridge Analyt-
ica staff , including Julian Wheatland ,
the company’s chief operating offi cer,
discussing with Leave.EU staff
whether to share the results of anal-
ysis performed on Ukip data.
“We have generated some inter-
esting fi ndings that we can share in
the presentation, but we are certain
to be asked where the data came
from. Can we declare we have ana-
lysed Ukip membership and survey
data?” Wheatland asked Leave.EU’s
Andy Wigmore (the right-hand man
of Arron Banks, the founder of Leave.
EU) and Ukip’s then general secretary,
Matthew Richardson.
Wheatland also told Cambridge
Analytica staff that the relationship
was intended to be formalised. “I had
a call with Andy Wigmore today and
he confi rmed that, even though we
haven’t got the contract with the Leave
written up, it’s all under control and it
will happen just as soon as Matthew
Richardson has fi nished working out
the correct contract structure between
Ukip, CA and Leave,” Wheatland said.
In her letter to Collins, Kaiser said:
“Despite having no signed contract,
the invoice was still paid, not to Cam-
bridge Analytica but instead paid by
Arron Banks to Ukip directly. This
payment was then not passed on to
Cambridge Analytica for the work
Tesco says production is once again
thriving and is now so strong that –
along with Waitrose – the supermarket
no longer needs to import the fruit dur-
ing the British season in order to meet
customer demand.
The UK season is notoriously short
- from mid-June to mid-September,
with late-season cherries coming
from Scotland. Production hit rock
bottom in 2000 when the entire Brit-
ish cherry industry produced a paltry
559 tonnes, and with supermarkets
stocking cheaper fruit from Turkey,
Spain and the US.
completed, as an internal decision in
Ukip, as their party was not the bene-
fi ciary of the work, but Leave.EU was.”
A Ukip spokesman disputed that
any money paid by Banks to Ukip was
intended to be passed on to Cambridge
Analytica, and said Kaiser’s allegations
against the party were investigated
by the Information Commissioner’s
Offi ce in 2018. “We took the data to
Cambridge Analytica, who looked at
the data, and then we took the data
away,” the spokesman said. “We
refused the service, frankly because it
was too expensive, and we didn’t want
to engage with what they were doing.”
Cambridge Analytica and Leave.
EU have long maintained that the
analysis was only carried out for the
purposes of pitching for a more per-
manent arrangement. Richard Tice , a
co-founder of Leave.EU, said in 2018
that Cambridge Analytica “received
no data or undertook any modelling
for Leave.EU”.
At the time, Banks said: “Leave.EU
did not receive any data or work from
Cambridge Analytica. Ukip did give
Cambridge Analytica some of its data
and Cambridge Analytica did some
analysis of this. But it was not used in
the Brexit campaign. Cambridge Ana-
lytica tried to make me pay for that
work but I refused. ”
The DCMS committee member Ian
Lucas called on the Electoral Commis-
sion to re open its investigation into
Leave.EU “in view of the additional
evidence from Brittany Kaiser ”.
Collins said: “ There are important
questions to follow up , in particu-
lar whether the data sets created by
Cambridge Analytica were used in the
referendum or other campaigns and
if they were whether or not it was a
breach of data protection law for U kip
voter data to be used in this way – that
certainly seems to be something that
they themselves were concerned
about.”Now more and more British grow-
ers are enjoying better yields by using
dwarf root stock, grafted on to new tree
varieties. These produce smaller trees
that can be grown in plastic tunnels,
creating a microclimate with temper-
atures similar to the Mediterranean.
Picking can be done more effi ciently by
workers on foot rather than on ladders.
Jordon Watson, a cherry buyer at
Tesco, said: “Not only is the industry
back on track after a long hiatus, but
the quality of the fruit is fi rst class,
with soft fl esh, ripe with juice, and an
unrivalled sweetness and taste. ”‘We have interesting
fi ndings but will be
asked where the
data came from’Julian Wheatland
Cambridge Analytica▲ Cherry growers are expecting their
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