“Companies like Facebook made it easy for developers to scrape user data and to deploy it in other campaigns without their knowledge or consent,” Damian Collins, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said in a statement officially released on Sunday.

“They must be made responsible, and liable, for the way in which harmful and misleading content is shared on their sites.”

The report was first published online late on Friday by Dominic Cummings, who ran the officially designated Vote Leave campaign in the EU referendum.