China Espionage: Government Security Response

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

To reassure the noble Lord, I am still delighted that he is back. He raised some very important points. I cannot go any further at this point on the enhanced tier of the FIRS, but the noble Lord will be very aware that, before I joined the Government, I ran Index on Censorship, so the issues related to Jimmy Lai—I have met Sebastien Lai—and the issues about Xinjiang and transnational repression are ones that I campaigned on for many years.

I will be clear on some of the specifics that have been raised. I have to be very careful when discussing Sheffield Hallam, because ongoing legal processes are happening there. I recognise the admirable and tireless work of my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, whose name is on the centre at the heart of this. Her work to progress social justice and human rights, including as a patron of the Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, is at the heart of the allegations. Any attempt by a foreign state to intimidate and coerce universities to limit free speech and academic freedoms in the UK will not be tolerated. The Government have made this clear to Beijing after learning of the case of Sheffield Hallam and other recent cases. The new Office for Students guidance makes it explicitly clear that universities should not tolerate attempts by foreign states to suppress academic freedom.

The noble Lord knows better than I about some of the actions we have taken in tackling transnational aggression in the UK and the ongoing support that we are giving to Jimmy Lai and the Lai family. We will continue to do so. The genuine anguish that that family is currently experiencing because of this case is simply unacceptable. I reassure the noble Lord that even while he was off, we continued to do our work, and my right honourable friend Foreign Secretary raised the case of Jimmy Lai with her counterpart on 6 November. I will write to him on the other points he raised.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, as chair of the ISC, I welcome the Statement. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, most of it, if not more, was covered in our 2023 report on China. The reason China has got a foothold here has to be looked back on very clearly, including whether the golden era for UK-China relations during the coalition Government allowed it to get a foothold in a whole host of areas.

Obviously, my main concern is academia, where universities—because of the decisions on the funding of universities—have now become dependent on the drug that is Chinese student finance. I urge the Minister that, if we are going to tackle that—not just the reliance of individual university institutions on Chinese finance but the intimidation of individuals who attend them—we need to take a very robust approach to it.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Beamish for all the work he has been doing on this, both through the ISC and beforehand. He has talked to me a great deal on this issue, and I am grateful for it. I completely agree with some of his assessments regarding the importance of academia and making sure that universities both understand their responsibilities to academic freedom and have the tools to combat some of the challenges that they currently face. It is one of the reasons we are arranging a closed meeting for all vice-chancellors, which will be led by the DfE but will have the relevant officials in the room to make sure that they know what is happening and what support they can get, as well as the expectations that we have of them as the caretakers of our academic freedom values.