The arrest under the Official Secrets Act led to the Prime Minister confronting Chinese premier Li Qiang at the G20 summit in India on Sunday.
is facing further pressure to designate China a threat to national security after a parliamentary researcher was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing.The PM slammed the ‘unacceptable’ interference in democracy in the brief meeting yesterday.including security minister Tom Tugendhat and Foreign Affairs Committee chair Alicia Kearns, was arrested back in March – but it went undisclosed until this weekend.
He hit out at the ‘weak’ position of not labelling China a threat, and said: ‘The result is that China is penetrating all our institutions from universities to Parliament.Mr Sunak cited his confrontation with Mr Li in New Delhi as an example of the benefits of his policy of engagement rather than ‘shouting from the sidelines’.
Labour’s shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said not describing China as a threat is ‘naive’ but argued that economic ties with Beijing could ‘over the long-term be a positive thing’. Both were held on suspicion of offences under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, which punishes offences that are said to be ‘prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state’.Tobias Ellwood, the Tory MP who chairs the Commons Defence Committee, warned it is ‘potentially part of a wider, long-term, Chinese strategy to infiltrate Parliament’.
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