People walk past a banner demanding extension of Brexit transition period outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, on June 10, 2020. Britain will not extend its transitional links to the European Union (EU) beyond Dec. 31, a government minister said Tuesday following the stalled talks between London and Brussels last week. (Photo by Tim Ireland/Xinhua)

Britain's government failed to find out whether Russia meddled in the 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union (EU), a parliamentary report released on Tuesday said, noting that the intelligence services should investigate and make their findings public.

The long-anticipated report by parliament's intelligence and security committee found that Russia had tried to influence a separate referendum in 2014 when voters in Scotland rejected independence.

But it said the committee was unable to determine whether Russia had attempted to influence the EU referendum, which led to Britain's exit from the bloc in 2020.

When asked for evidence on suspected Russian meddling in the vote, Britain's main domestic intelligence agency MI5 produced just six lines of text, the committee said.

"It is nonetheless the Committee's view that the UK Intelligence Community should produce an analogous assessment of potential Russian interference in the EU referendum and that an unclassified summary of it be published," it said in the report, which was produced more than a year ago and shelved until now.

The government of UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who came to power as one of the leading figures in the victorious campaign to leave the EU, rejected the call for a further review. A spokesman for Johnson said the prime minister was confident the referendum result to leave the EU was fair.

The report cast Russia as a hostile power which posed a significant threat to Britain and the West across a range of fronts, from espionage and cyber to election meddling and laundering dirty money.

"It appears that Russia considers the UK one of its top Western intelligence targets," the report said.

It said there were open source indications that Russia had sought to influence the Brexit campaign. But hard evidence had not been produced.

"The key point is ... they had not sought even to ask that question and that is at the heart of this report," Stewart Hosie, a Scottish National Party member of the committee, told reporters.

British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab rejected claims that the government had avoided investigating Russia.

Russia has repeatedly denied meddling in the West, casting the US and Britain as gripped by anti-Russian hysteria.

"Russia has never interfered in the electoral processes of any country in the world - not the United States, not Britain, nor any other countries," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Reuters