China

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my relevant non-financial interests.

If we look through the lens of Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Wuhan or Xinjiang or through the lens of Xi Jinping’s support for Putin in Ukraine, we see that the security threat posed by the CCP is both stark and self-evident. Let us consider, as the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, has invited us to do, the stark and unprecedented public warning from the director of MI5 and the FBI director last week, which stated that the Chinese Communist Party is

“covertly applying pressure across the globe”,

including through “covert theft”, “technology transfers” and “interference” in our political systems. Such interference was illustrated by the case of Christine Lee, the Chinese spy, who sought to influence Members of this very Parliament, boasting that she had even secured amendments to a Bill before this House. It is just the subversive tip of an iceberg.

Too many among the political and business elites have naively considered the CCP and Chinese state-owned enterprises as benign, welcoming unprecedented levels of Chinese investment into strategic sectors of our economy and research partnerships with institutions linked to the People’s Liberation Army, and even considering a free trade agreement between the UK and China. This week alone, Treasury officials were reported to be scrambling to ensure the restart of the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue, despite Parliament and the Foreign Secretary stating that China’s treatment of the Uighurs is “genocide”.

Take public procurement. In a variety of sectors, we are far too dependent on Chinese companies, from NHS PPE to surveillance technology cameras in numerous government departments. The Cabinet Office told me that there are more than 1 million Hikvision cameras, referred to by the noble Lord, in the United Kingdom. This is a Chinese company that the Government openly admit is a security risk, that receives nearly half its funding from the state and that has been blacklisted in the USA—our Five Eyes ally—for its active complicity in gross human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Then there are long-term security concerns regarding Chinese takeovers of strategic UK industries, from the attempted takeover of the UK’s biggest manufacturer of semi-conductors, Newport Wafer Fab, to that of the graphene maker Perpetuus. We must strengthen resilience, protect cutting-edge technology and safeguard our research facilities. Universities must get off the gravy train and be more vigilant about their partnerships and theft of sensitive academic research. It is indefensible—even worse, a betrayal of our national interests—for UK universities to be working with, and providing sensitive research on, hypersonic missiles to companies and research institutions linked to the People’s Liberation Army.

We are all grateful to the noble Lord. I hope that the International Relations and Defence Select Committee report to which he referred will be the subject of a debate in your Lordships’ House soon.