United Front Work Department

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Government if they will make a statement on the extent of the operations of the United Front Work Department within the UK.

[The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)]

The first duty of any Government is national security, and we therefore welcome the court’s decision to uphold the Home Office’s position with regard to the exclusion of H6, who can now be named as Yang Tengbo. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission concluded that there was a “basis for the conclusion” that H6

“had been in a position to generate relationships with prominent UK figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the CCP (including the UFWD) or the Chinese State.”

Where there are individuals who pose a threat to our national security, we are absolutely committed to using the full range of powers available to disrupt them. When we encounter foreign interference or espionage, whether it stems from the United Front Work Department or from any other state-linked actor, we will be swift in using all available tools, including prosecutions, exclusions, sanctions and diplomacy, to keep our country safe.

Given the potential for further litigation, it would be inappropriate for me to say any more, but it is important to recognise that this case does not exist in a vacuum. As the director general of MI5 made clear in October, we are in the most complex threat environment that he has ever seen. Alongside the threat from terrorism, we face ongoing efforts by a number of states, including China, Russia and Iran, to harm the UK’s security. Our response is among the most robust and sophisticated anywhere in the world.

The National Security Act 2023, which was supported by Members on both sides of the House and which strengthened our powers to protect the UK, is central to our protection against states that seek to conduct hostile acts. To date, six individuals have been charged under the new Act, and the Government have been working hard on the roll-out of a crucial part of it: the foreign influence registration scheme, or FIRS. We will say more about that soon, but we intend to lay regulations in the new year and commence the scheme in the summer.

The Government have also set out our approach to China, which will be consistent and strategic. We will challenge where we must in order to keep our country safe, compete where we need to, and co-operate where we can—for example, on matters such as climate change. That is acting in the national interest, as the Prime Minister reiterated earlier today. However, the threats we face from foreign states are pernicious and complex. The work of our intelligence agencies is unrivalled in mitigating them, and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to them for the amazing work that they do to keep our country safe. Today, as ever, they will be pursuing those who wish to do us harm, including those from foreign states. We support our intelligence agencies in their efforts, and we always will—and they will know that at any point when the UK’s national security is at risk, we will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal to keep our country safe.

[Mr Speaker]

I want to put two things on the record. First, it would have been easier for the Government to come to the House with a statement; obviously, there was more to say than we have allocated time for.

Secondly, I say to Sir Iain: please do not tell the media what you are going to do and how you are going to do it, and do not try to bounce the Chair into making a decision. If anybody else had put in for an urgent question, I would have given it to them—on the basis that I am not dancing to the tune of the media.

It would be helpful if the Government came forward with statements, rather than being dragged to the Dispatch Box. Hopefully, we can all learn from this, and here is a good example of how that will be done: I call Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Mr Speaker, I apologise if that was the case.

Yang Tengbo—H6—was, in fact, not a lone wolf. He was one of some 40,000 members of the United Front Work Department, which, as the Government know, the Intelligence and Security Committee report last year said had penetrated “every sector” of the UK economy, including by spying, stealing intellectual property, influencing, and shaping our institutions. Our agents say they are now frustrated by the lack of action, but they do not seem to have the tools they need to deal with the issue. One of those tools is staring us in the face. Will the Government commit to putting China in the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme, and will they do it now? There is no need for delay.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, found that H6—Yang Tengbo—is already well known as a United Front member, and that he is known to others who are already deep in the political establishment. Parliamentarians are exposed to the United Front on a regular basis. Will the Minister remedy this today, and accept that China is our most prominent security threat and that all action must take priority?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), who was the previous Security Minister, has said publicly that the Home Office was ready to name China in the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme, which would have forced United Front members like H6 to register or face serious consequences. Given that doing so is an available option, why have we not done it yet? Is it true, as is being reported by papers, including The Times, that behind the scenes the Government are now under pressure from banks, the wider business community and Government Departments not to do it?

When it comes to a member of the royal family, I simply say this: how was it that somebody who was known to the security forces was allowed to get so close to a member of the royal family without proper scrutiny exposing them?

Finally, I note that the Prime Minister said today in response to the issue that we will “co-operate where we can”, particularly on environmental issues, and “challenge where we must”, particularly on human rights issues. If the Prime Minister means that, why are we still buying from China huge numbers of solar arrays that have demonstrably been made using slave labour? Surely his statement is clearly incorrect; far from challenging China on human rights, it now appears that we are turning a blind eye. Why is that?

[Dan Jarvis]

Let me first come to the point the right hon. Gentleman made about FIRS. Upon our arrival in government, we found that FIRS was not ready to be implemented, as has been claimed. Since coming into office, we have ensured that more people than ever are now working on FIRS implementation, and the case management team have been recruited and are now in place. As I said in my opening remarks, we plan to lay the regulations that underpin the scheme in the new year, ahead of the scheme going live in the summer. As we have previously committed, we will provide three months’ notice of the scheme’s go-live date to give all those who will be affected by it adequate time to prepare.

The scheme will be underpinned by an IT solution consisting of a registration platform, a case management system and an online public register. The IT programme developed under the previous Government was not ready for the scheme to go live, and plans were not sufficiently robust. This Government have progressed at pace with the work to ensure that we are in a position to launch FIRS, with the laying of the regulations in the new year with a view to the scheme going live in the summer. Work is also under way to identify which foreign powers will be placed on the enhanced tier. That will be based on robust security and intelligence analysis. The Home Secretary and I plan to begin setting out the Government’s approach for the use of the enhanced tier in due course.

Immigration and Home Affairs

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman was the one who said it, so he is the one who will know. If he wants to deny that he ever said it, I will not say it again—honestly—but I think that he protests a little too much with this sort of wriggling. He would not do very well under interrogation.

We have heard today that the leadership contest will run until November. We have five months of this. There are hardly any Tory MPs here because they are all off doing their little chats and meetings. It is like a cross between “Love Island” and the jungle. Rob and Suella have broken up, and now John has gone off with Kemi. Everyone is looking over their shoulder for snakes and rats. Apparently somebody has had a nervous breakdown, and that is probably all of their Back Benchers, dreading getting a little text saying that another candidate wants a chat. We can see it. Look at them all. They are all saying, “I am a Tory MP. Get me out of here.” That is exactly what our Labour MPs have just done: they have got a lot of Tory MPs out of here because the country is crying out for change—for what the Prime Minister has described as a decade of national renewal on our economy, our public services and our relationship with the world, and in politics itself, by bringing politics back into public service again.

I say to all hon. Members, on my side and on the Opposition Benches, that I will work with everyone to restore Britain’s sense of security, public safety on our streets, secure borders, and confidence in our police and criminal justice system. Yes, I will repeatedly challenge the Conservatives on the legacy that they have left us, because the damage is serious, and I think that they have been hugely reckless with the safety of our country. Yes, the approach and values of our parties may be different, but I think that there are important areas where we should be able to come together to bring change in the interests of our country, our communities and our security, because that is what public service means. That is what this Labour Government are determined to do. We have set out in the King’s Speech three Home Office Bills on crime and policing, borders and asylum, and security. I will cover each issue in turn, starting with safety on our streets and confidence in the police and the criminal justice system.

Everyone will have, fresh in their minds, the concerns raised by constituents during the election campaign. I fear that, at a time when we have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police and PCSOs, confidence in policing has dropped. Street crime and knife crime are surging in towns and suburbs—not just in our cities—and shoplifting has become an epidemic. Those are the kinds of crimes that really affect how people live in their own communities, yet too little is being done.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her new position. Before the election was called, we had succeeded in a cross-party campaign to make cuckooing a criminal offence in the Criminal Justice Bill, which then sadly fell. I notice that in the crime and policing Bill, there is no mention at all of cuckooing. Does she support the idea of making cuckooing—using the homes of the most vulnerable in society for criminal behaviour—a criminal offence? If so, will she commit to introducing that process again? She would have my support, and I can guarantee that she would have the support of the previous Government, because I told them so at the time. Over to her.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Member raises an immensely important point, which we support. I am happy to talk to him further, or he can talk to the Minister with responsibility for victims and safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips). A series of issues included in the Criminal Justice Bill, which fell when the election was called, had cross-party support and need to be taken forward.