China Espionage: Government Security Response

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, like most speakers so far, I welcome the Minister’s tone in this matter. It is a change of tone, because in the past, so often, the Government have used word “co-operate” followed by the word “challenge”, and “co-operate” has been used as a way of degrading the level of challenge. I hope that this will be sorted out.

I very much support what has been said about universities. Having pursued Cambridge University—Jesus College, Cambridge, in particular—I found an absolute reluctance to publicly or even privately admit any error at all in this, after years of struggle about this, which goes on. I still do not hear any serious public statements on these matters by the governors, the vice- chancellors and so on. It is very cautious. I am glad that the closed meeting will take place, but it needs to be publicly discussed.

On the threat to individuals, Chloe Cheung has been mentioned, quite rightly, by the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, whom I too welcome back. I know Chloe Cheung, and I have spoken to her. She has shown me photographs of the goons who follow her in this country. I strongly ask—and she is just one example—how much protection is the British state able to afford to these people? They are in real danger in this country—physical danger and, of course, psychological threat.

In the Statement, the Government express their desire to

“degrade the ecosystem of proxy cover companies”.

I am not quite accusing the bank I am going to mention of being a proxy cover company, but I would point out the enormous level of vested interest in China in this way, which leads to weakness. Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, is a major sinner in this respect. HSBC famously closed down three accounts of the League of Social Democrats in Hong Kong. Without wishing to be too personal, it is not wildly encouraging to hear that George Osborne, he of the golden era, is a candidate to be the new chairman of HSBC. If he was chairman, I do not imagine that we would get a very rigorous attempt to clamp down on Chinese illegitimate activity. I ask the Government whether even huge organisations, such as HSBC, should be more carefully monitored.

Finally, UK-China Transparency is working on some stuff which suggests, because serious organised crime is mentioned as an area of co-operation, that it might also be an area of challenge, because it seems that China is involved in co-operation with serious organised crime in this country. This needs to be properly investigated.

The overall point I would ask the Government to answer—and I will be very pleased if the Minister answers this—is that all these problems are identified, but what is the key to it all? Do the Government agree with the proposition that what we have from China is what is sometimes called a whole-system approach but is better described as totalitarianism? That is always operated by the power in all areas of Chinese life—business, academia and everything—of the Chinese Communist Party.

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

I thank the noble Lord. I am not sure I will be able to answer all his questions, but I will reflect on Hansard and come back to him. He may appreciate which ones I might not want to answer. With regard to the fundamental question, which is about totalitarianism—that is, authoritarian versus democratic systems—which is at the heart of this, the national security strategy sets out the intent of:

“Authoritarian states … to out-compete liberal democracies”,


including “competition from China” and its

“assertion of state power that encompasses economic, industrial, science and technology policy”.

We firmly recognise that the UK and China have significant differences, including on economic values and freedoms, Hong Kong, support for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine and matters of national security. We engage confidently and pragmatically with China, including robustly raising these differences.

The noble Lord highlighted my language earlier. We are clear that we will co-operate with China where we can but will challenge where we must. That will continue to be the case, including on transnational repression. I want to be very clear. The UK Government will not tolerate any attempts by foreign Governments to coerce, intimidate, harass or harm their critics overseas, especially in the UK. We continually assess potential threats in the UK and take protection of individual rights, freedoms and safety very seriously. Counter- terrorism police will continue to offer training to all police forces where they believe that this will be happening. On the other points, I revert to the noble Lord.