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Great Britain should officially determine China a national security threat, Tory frontbencher Dame Come on Patel she said, as she accused the government of “desperation” in its early dealings with Beijing.
Speaking after the row over Prince Andrew’s relationship with alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbowho was banned from entering the UK after being deemed a national security threat, Dame Priti warned that Xi Jinping’s “emergency regime” “had all kinds of intrusions into our country”.
In her first interview since being appointed shadow foreign secretary to Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative veteran said she would “absolutely” put China on a list of nations deemed to pose the biggest security risks to Britain as part of a long-delayed Foreign influence registration scheme (Firs).
“Obviously it’s complicated legislation, but China should always be there,” she said of plans for a register of foreign lobbyists and enemy state agents, which the Tories introduced in 2023 but it is not expected to enter into force until next summer.
Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat were also among influential Tories who this week called for China to be included in the enhanced tier of the scheme – a status reserved only for nations that pose a risk to the UK. Mr Tugendhat told MPs that MI5 had said “very, very clearly” that failure to do so would mean Firs was “not worth having”.
Dame Priti has indicated that she would like to see the UK follow the lead of the US, Canada, India and Albania to restrict TikTokdescribing herself as “skeptical” about the social networking app, whose the parent company is a Chinese firm.
I’m talking to The Sunday Times, she said: “We’re dealing with an extraordinary regime that has had, quite frankly, all sorts of intrusions into our country for over a decade through national security, intellectual property, all the way to cyber activity and disinformation.
“During the Covid period, misinformation, misinformation was absolutely significant. And then, of course, the spies.”
Mr Tengbo, a businessman who has developed close ties to the Duke of York and met former Tory prime ministers Lord Cameron and Baroness May, insisted that allegations of espionage are “completely untrue”. However, last week he lost his appeal against being banned from entering the UK on security grounds.
Looking at Sir Keir Starmer’s new government’s plans to visit China next month for talks on boosting trade, Dami Priti said: “The case we’re talking about now is a spy at the heart of Whitehall and within our institutions and yet we have a government saying ‘here there is nothing to see’.
“So much so that they booked all their plane tickets to go to China, to continue the economic-financial dialogue. This, to me, smacks of a desperate government that has literally done terrible things to our economy, with economic growth now falling, desperate for foreign money.”
The Witham MP added: “I am unconcerned about the direction of travel that Labor is taking with China for a number of reasons, Hong Kong being one of them. Don’t forget that Starmer met with President Xi Jinping just hours before 45 pro-democracy activists arrested and put in prison in Hong Kong.”
At the G20 summit in NovemberSir Keir became the first prime minister to meet a Chinese leader since Baroness May in 2018. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to fly to China in January for talks with Vice President He Lifeng.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “This government will take a consistent, long-term and strategic approach to managing the UK’s relationship with China, rooted in British and global interests.
“We will cooperate where we can, compete where we should and challenge where we must. The first duty of government is to protect our national security and keep this country safe.”