Rishi Sunak is under fresh pressure to designate China a threat to national security after a parliamentary researcher was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing.
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 over “unacceptable” interference in democracy.
But China “hawks” on the Tory benches have used the incident to step up calls for a tougher response to Beijing.
The researcher at the centre of the row, who had links with senior Tories including security minister Tom Tugendhat and Foreign Affairs Committee chair Alicia Kearns, was arrested back in March – but this went undisclosed until Saturday.
Anyone working “at the direction” of China or a state-linked firm would have to register and disclose their activities or risk jail under the plans to put the country on the “enhanced” tier of the National Security Act.
During the Tory leadership contest last year, Mr Sunak described China as the “biggest long-term threat to Britain” but official language used since he took office has been softer, with the integrated review of foreign and defence policy calling it an “epoch-defining challenge”.
Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch suggested that designating China a threat would “escalate things” with Beijing.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “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.”
Ms Badenoch said the UK was taking certain measures including making sure it has proper investment screening.
“We are taking action, what we’re not doing is giving endless running commentary on that because that would actually be more helpful to China than it would be to our security services,” she said.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former party leader who has been sanctioned by China, was among Tories pressing the Prime Minister to strengthen his language towards Beijing.
He hit out at the “weak” position of not labelling China a threat, telling the PA news agency: “The result is that China is penetrating all our institutions from universities to Parliament.
Tory backbencher and Home Affairs Select Committee member Tim Loughton said he had written to the Commons Speaker along with colleagues asking for an urgent question about the circumstances surrounding the arrest.
The MP, who has also been sanctioned by Beijing, told Times Radio: “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.”
Mr Sunak cited his confrontation with Mr Li in New Delhi as an example of the benefits of his policy of engagement rather than “carping from the sidelines”.
The Prime Minister said he raised his “very strong concerns about any interference in our parliamentary democracy, which is obviously unacceptable”.
One of the suspects, a man in his 30s, was detained in Oxfordshire on March 13, while the other, in his 20s, was arrested in Edinburgh, Scotland Yard said. Searches were also carried out in an east London property.
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”.
They were bailed until early October.
China hit out at the arrests and claimed the situation was a “political farce”.
A spokesman for China’s embassy in London said: “The claim that China is suspected of ‘stealing British intelligence’ is completely fabricated and nothing but malicious slander.
“We firmly oppose it and urge relevant parties in the UK to stop their anti-China political manipulation and stop putting on such self-staged political farce.”
Former head of MI6 Sir Alex Younger said co-operation with China is necessary but “just being nice to them doesn’t get you very far”.
He told Today: “China is a fact, it’s a huge country, we’ve got to find ways of engaging with it, and find ways of cooperating with it 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.”
