Commons researcher accused of spying for China says he is ‘completely innocent’
The parliamentary researcher who has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China has said he is “completely innocent”.
In a statement released by his lawyers, Birnberg Peirce, the man – whom they did not name – said:
I feel forced to respond to the media accusations that I am a ‘Chinese spy’. It is wrong that I should be obliged to make any form of public comment on the misreporting that has taken place.
However, given what has been reported, it is vital that it is known that I am completely innocent. I have spent my career to date trying to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist party.
To do what has been claimed against me in extravagant news reporting would be against everything I stand for.
Key events
Tim Loughton, one of the Conservative MPs who has been sanctioned by China for being critical of Beijing, told Times Radio this morning that he and other colleagues have asked for an urgent question on the arrest of a Commons researcher on suspicion of spying for China. Loughton said he wanted an explanation. He went on:
Who knew what when? What discussions have gone on between ministers and Chinese officials to haul them up over this one? Because the prime minister took it up with the premier from China at the G20 summit, as if this is something that had just happened and it’s not.
So we’ve got a lot of questions to put for both the parliamentary authorities and to government ministers as well. And it really is not remotely appropriate that those of us most in the firing line, being sanctioned by China under threat by China, have not been given some briefing about exactly what’s happened. The first I knew about it was when the story was broken in The Sunday Times.
Normally the Commons Speaker works on the basis that, if MPs tell the media they are tabling an UQ, he is less likely to grant it.
Simon McDonald, the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, has acknowledged revealing to colleagues – including government ministers – that he voted to remain in the EU during the 2016 referendum. Kevin Rawlinson has the story.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, also refused to label China as either “friend or foe” when interviewed on Sky News this morning. She said the relationship was “clearly complex”, and she claimed the government needed a strategy for dealing with the threats posed by other stages akin to the counter-terrorism strategy. “We need that because those state challenges are growing,” she said.
Former MI6 boss suggests China should be categorised as state of concern under new National Security Act
Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6, told the Today programme this morning that the National Security Act passed earlier this year would help the UK deal with the threat posed by China. He also said the government should categorise China as a country of particular concern under powers in the Act.
Here is a summary of the main points he made.
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Younger said that the UK had to be willing to “confront” China, but he implied the debate about whether or not it was a “threat” was too simplistic. (This is a debate that has been live particularly in the Conservative party – see 9.22am.) Asked if China should be designated a threat, he replied:
The first is, I tend to switch off when I hear, ‘It’s a threat, isn’t a threat, we should call it a threat, we shouldn’t call it a threat, James Cleverly should go to China or not.’
We need to, geopolitically, be capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time.
Of course, we need to engage with China. Of course we need to compete against China – in a way that it understands competition, by the way, linking economics and politics and security altogether.
And sometimes we need to confront China. In my experience, just being nice to them doesn’t get you very far.
He also said this threat/no threat debate “sounds a bit binary and, if I may so so, a bit immature”. He went on:
China’s a fact. It’s a huge country. We’ve got to find ways of engaging with it. We’ve got to find ways of competing with it, economically and technologically. We have to find ways of cooperating in important areas like climate change. And sometimes we have to be absolutely prepared to confront it when we believe that our security interests are threatened. And by the way, that is exactly how they will behave towards us.
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He said the new National Security Act 2023 would make it easier for the UK to respond to the threat posed by China. The parliamentary researcher arrested for spying was arrested under the Official Secrets Act, a law passed years ago, but Younger said new legislation was needed to tackle forms of covert intelligence gathering by foreign states not covered by the OSA. He said there used to be activities “that frankly members of the public would just think of as spying, such as working for a foreign intelligence service” that were not illegal. He said the NSA, which became law in the summer, changed that. He explained:
With the introduction of the National Security Act, which I campaigned for along with many colleagues, and I think is a good piece of legislation, you now have the direct criminalisation of undisclosed attempts to influence on behalf of a foreign government, what we would call political interference, with an additional option to specify specific states as being of specific concern in that context.
If [people] are talking about the specific point of whether China should be designated within the terms of the National Security Act as a particular state of concern, and therefore links to China should mandate additional reporting requirements … my view is probably it should be.
Younger was referring to the way the foreign influence registration scheme will work under the Act. Here is a description from a Home Office briefing.
The foreign influence registration scheme (FIRS) is a two-tier scheme which increases transparency of foreign power influence in UK politics and provides greater assurance around the activities of certain foreign powers or entities that are a risk to UK safety or interests. As a result, the UK will be better informed about the nature, scale and extent of foreign influence in UK.
The political influence tier will require the registration of arrangements to carry out political influence activities in the UK at the direction of a foreign power. The enhanced tier of FIRS gives the secretary of state the power to require registration of a broader range of activities for specified foreign powers or foreign power-controlled entities where this is necessary to protect the safety of interests of the UK.
The scheme contains offences for those who fail to comply with registration requirements, or who act pursuant to unregistered or falsely registered arrangements.
The scope is far broader than anything we would defined as intelligence here. It includes information more broadly and influence. The significance of influence – undisclosed attempts to change the way in which people behave – is underestimated within our system. It’s not something we’re familiar with. It is fundamental to the way China operates.
Asked if hundreds of people might be engaged in trying to secretly influence policy on behalf of China, he replied:
It’s hard. It’s hard to speculate. You can’t prove a negative. I can only say to you that, far more than it would be the case with a democratic country, this is an intrinsic part of of the way in which China seeks to protect its power.
My suspicion is there will be crude attempts, some of which have been brought to light, some of which would have been subject to warnings by MI5, and there’ll be other more sophisticated attempts. But it’s going to grow.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, will make a brief statement in the chamber at 2:30pm about the arrest of a parliamentary researcher accused of spying, his office says.
This may be an indication that we won’t be getting a separate ministerial statement or urgent question on the topic.
Commons researcher accused of spying for China says he is ‘completely innocent’
The parliamentary researcher who has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China has said he is “completely innocent”.
In a statement released by his lawyers, Birnberg Peirce, the man – whom they did not name – said:
I feel forced to respond to the media accusations that I am a ‘Chinese spy’. It is wrong that I should be obliged to make any form of public comment on the misreporting that has taken place.
However, given what has been reported, it is vital that it is known that I am completely innocent. I have spent my career to date trying to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist party.
To do what has been claimed against me in extravagant news reporting would be against everything I stand for.
In interviews this morning, Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, refused to say whether she thought China should be banned from the international summit on regulating artificial intelligence that Rishi Sunak is hosting in November. “That’s a decision for the prime minister to take,” she said, when asked about the matter on Sky News.
Kemi Badenoch says it would be a mistake to call China a ‘foe’ as spy suspect arrest revives Tory calls to toughen approach
Good morning. One of the many aspects of politics that has changed dramatically over the past decade is the way the government views China. David Cameron came to power determined to establish warm relations with Beijing, but in recent years relations have deteriorated considerably and a Conservative government that views China with considerable suspicion is being urged by some of its hawkish backbenchers to go much further, and to treat it as a hostile opponent.
The revelation yesterday that a parliamentary researcher linked to the Conservatives has been arrested on spying charges has turbocharged this debate. Understandably, the hawks are feeling vindicated.
As Helen Davidson and Peter Walker report, China has dismissed the news as Sinophobic propaganda. “The claim that China is suspected of ‘stealing British intelligence’ is completely fabricated and nothing but malicious slander,” the Chinese embassy in London said.
The Tory hawks want the government to categorise China as a threat. In an update to the integrated review of defence and security published in March, the government instead said it posed “an epoch-defining challenge” (although that was an advance on the previous review, which said the country was a “systemic competitor”.)
This morning Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, was doing a morning interview round and she suggested that toughening the rhetoric used to describe China would be counterproductive. Asked on Sky News whether China was friend or foe, she replied:
China is a country that we do a lot of business with. China is a country that is significant in terms of world economics. It sits on the UN security council. We certainly should not be describing China as a foe but we can describe it as a challenge … I don’t think we should be careless in terms of how we speak about other countries when these sorts of things happen.
She said it was important not to use “language that makes people scared” and to remain diplomatic.
And asked on the Today programme if China should be designated a threat, she suggested that might “escalate” the problem. She said:
Whether or not you use words like threat I think is a reflection of how far you want to escalate things.
China is the second largest economy in the world, it’s heavily integrated in our economy as it is with many of our allies … We’re taking the same approach that those countries are taking.
I will post more from her interviews shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.30am: Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, visits Oxford as part of BMW’s announcement about its plan to produce the electric Mini in the city. Graeme Wearden has more on this on his business live blog.
Morning: Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, visit a school in Dagenham.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Morning: Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, speaks on the first full day of its annual conference in Liverpool.
After 3.30pm: Rishi Sunak is expected to give a Commons statement on the outcome of the G20 summit in India.
After 3.30pm: A minister may give a statement, or have to respond to an urgent Commons question, about the arrest of a parliamentary researcher on suspicion of spying for China.
Also, James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, is on the first day of a trip to Israel and Palestine. He is due to meet the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
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