September 11, 2023
Monday 11 September 2023
The Age
Latika Bourke
London: British police have arrested a parliamentary aide who advised two Conservative MPs on China policy, alleging he was spying for Beijing.
He is said to have spent time living in China, according to The Sunday Times, which first reported the story.
The report said there were fears he had been turned into a Chinese mole while living and working in China, and that he had been ordered to return to Britain to infiltrate political circles.
The revelation has sparked a call for staffers working for Australian MPs sitting on the defence and intelligence committees to be vetted by the security agencies.
The opposition’s home affairs spokesman James Paterson said MPs left to fend for themselves could end up like the British MPs.
“This is every MP’s worst nightmare,” Paterson said. “It could happen to any of us, because the vast majority of staff working for parliamentarians – including all backbenchers and opposition shadow ministers – are not security vetted.
“ASIO assesses that foreign interference and espionage are our No.1 security threat, yet MPs are left to fend for themselves when hiring staff.
“At the very least it is time to security vet staff working for MPs who are members of sensitive committees like the intelligence and security committee and the new statutory defence committee.
“We don’t want to wake up one day to headlines like we’ve seen in the UK after the damage has already been done.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak raised it with China’s Premier Li Qiang at the G20, said No.10.
“The Prime Minister met Premier Li Qiang and conveyed his significant concerns about Chinese interference the UK’s parliamentary democracy,” a No.10 spokesperson said.
The arrest of a British citizen on suspicion of spying has rocked Westminster.
The man advised Conservative MPs Tom Tugendhat, a Tory party leadership candidate who was recently promoted to be security minister, and his former factional ally Alicia Kearns, who won the contest to chair the House of Commons’ foreign affairs committee. Tugendhat was the chair of the committee before Kearns.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak raised it with China’s Premier Li Qiang at the G20, his office said.
“The prime minister met Premier Li Qiang and conveyed his significant concerns about Chinese interference the UK’s parliamentary democracy,” a No.10 spokesperson said.
Police said two men were arrested in March, but they are not due to face court until October.
“The investigation is being carried out by officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, which has responsibility for investigations relating to allegations of Official Secrets Act and espionage-related offences.”
Kearns said on X (formerly known as Twitter) that she was aware of the report and would not be commenting. “While I recognise the public interest, we all have a duty to ensure any work of the authorities is not jeopardised,” she said.
Kearns and Tugendhat were members of an internal Tory Party pressure group called the China Research Group, formed to rival a cross-party grouping of more hawkish MPs led by former Conservative minister Iain Duncan Smith, called the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).
Luke De Pulford, a spokesman for the inter-parliamentary alliance, said the men arrested had no affiliation to his group.
“The suspect was a figure hostile to IPAC’s work and not involved with IPAC in any way,” he said.
“We urge authorities to reveal the name of the suspect, so as to avoid casting a wide web of suspicion in a community already strained by [China’s] transnational repression.”
He said IPAC was concerned that MPs were alerted to a potential spy at their place of work by the media, and not the authorities.
“Greater transparency and balanced information flows serve not only to protect potential targets but also to counter [China’s] goal of dividing and blunting those it perceives as critical,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Commons intelligence committee delivered a scathing report saying the Chinese had infiltrated every level of British society.
Last year, MI5 outed London lawyer Christine Lee as a Chinese agent who had made political donations to MPs in an attempt to corrupt them. Lee paid for her son and another researcher to work in the office of the former Labour frontbencher Barry Gardiner.
Lee was awarded a “Points of Light Award” by former prime minister Theresa May for community work, which included Lee’s non-governmental organisation the British Chinese Project.
