The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has taken up MPs’ queries into hedge funds’ use of private polling data in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Andrew Bailey, the with chief executive of the regulator, has invited pollsters to meet and discuss “what, if any, action may be required”.

The chair of the UK Parliament’s Treasury Committee, Nicky Morgan, raised concerns a month ago after a Bloomberg report claimed hedge funds had commissioned private polling data to gain a trading advantage on the day of the Brexit vote, informing a lucrative short bet against the pound.