Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Tom Tugendhat

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

12. What steps her Department is taking to close facilities used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the UK.

[The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)]

As I outlined in my statement to the House on 20 February, we are taking increasing steps to address the threat from Iran—but, I should make clear, not to address the welcome we extend towards the Iranian people. Today of all days, we should say, “Nowruz etan Pyrouz.”

[Alicia Kearns]

There are three—if not seven—cut-outs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operating here in the UK, silencing critics of the ayatollah, inciting hate, celebrating terrorists and recruiting for a terrorist state. The Government know that this House wants the IRGC proscribed, but in the immediate term, will they please protect us from transnational repression by shutting down these cut-outs of the Iranian state? I also ask the Home Secretary or the Security Minister to meet Vahid Beheshti, who is on day 26 of a hunger strike outside the Foreign Office because he wants the IRGC proscribed. I am seriously concerned about his health, and it would help if the Government were to meet him.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I would be very happy to meet him and, indeed, anybody else who takes the threat of the IRGC in this country as seriously as we do. We have had this work ongoing for a number of months now, and my hon. Friend will be aware that asking for actions to be taken means we must be legally compliant with the responses. That is where we are getting to; we are increasingly at the point where we are taking more and more action against the IRGC. So may I say, in the words of Omar Khayyam, in his poem for new year:

“No words about last winter can bring cheer;

don’t speak of yesterday—rejoice today.”?

Overseas Chinese Police Stations in UK: Legal Status

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Tom Tugendhat

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box for the first time.

[The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a great pleasure to be here on my first outing at the Dispatch Box to speak about something that, as the House will know, I take extremely seriously. Reports of undeclared police stations in the United Kingdom are, of course, extremely concerning and will be taken seriously. Any foreign country operating on United Kingdom soil must abide by UK law. I have discussed this matter with the police and I am assured that they are investigating allegations of unlawful activity. It would be inappropriate for me to comment further on operational matters.

I will take the opportunity, however, to reassure the House of the Government’s resolve to take the matter seriously. I will also shortly make a statement to the House on safeguarding our democracy. The protection of people in the United Kingdom is of the utmost importance. Any attempt to illegally repatriate any individual will not be tolerated. This egregious activity is part of a wider trend of authoritarian Governments perpetrating transnational repression in an effort to silence their critics overseas and undermine democracy and the rule of law. For example, we have been aware for some time of efforts to interfere in our academic freedoms and university sector, and we have been taking steps to protect our institutions.

This Government are committed to tackling the challenge of transnational repression wherever it originates. It would be unacceptable for any foreign Government to feel able to operate in that way in the United Kingdom, and it must be stopped. The Home Office works closely with Departments across Whitehall and with devolved Administrations to ensure that our national security is protected and that, in particular, those who have chosen to settle here are free to engage in our democratic society without fear of the regimes that they have tried to leave behind.

Through our excellent police forces and the agencies that work with them, we take a proactive approach to protecting individuals and communities from all manner of threats. Where we identify individuals who may be at heightened risk, we are front-footed in deploying protective security guidance and other measures where necessary. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who has taken over the best job in Parliament as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. They have worked tirelessly on this issue, including with our close international partners.

The upcoming National Security Bill will strengthen our legal powers to deal with transnational repression. Coercion, harassment or intimidation linked to a foreign power that interfere with the freedoms of individuals will be criminalised under the new foreign interference offence in the Bill. Existing criminal offences against a person, such as assault, may also have sentences increased using the state threats aggravating factor in the Bill where they are undertaken for, on behalf of or with the intention to benefit a foreign power. The Bill will introduce a new foreign influence registration scheme, for which many hon. Members have campaigned, including my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton. That will provide greater transparency around foreign interference in our society.

It is clear, however, that we can and must do more. I have therefore asked officials to step up the work to ensure that our approach to transnational repression is robust, and I have asked our Department to review our approach to transnational repression as a matter of urgency. I will provide an update on that work to the House in due course.

[Alicia Kearns]

I thank Mr Speaker for granting this urgent question. I take this opportunity to welcome my right hon. Friend to his place and say how reassured I am to have someone of his expertise leading on this important area for our national security.

There are troubling reports of a widespread network of Chinese police stations operating worldwide, including three in our country in Croydon, Hendon and Glasgow. Publicly, those stations are harmless administrative centres for Chinese nationals, but reports suggest that they are actually used to hunt down dissidents and alleged Chinese criminals. The Chinese Government have admitted their existence, so I have some questions for the Minister. What is the legal basis for their operations on UK soil? Are Chinese officials involved in their administration? I welcome that the Minister has tasked an investigation, but will he commit to update the House on it in due course?

Finally, the British national overseas scheme was world leading, but we have a duty to protect those who come here and seek refuge on our soil. Does he agree that, following the Chinese consul general’s attack on a Hongkonger only a couple of weeks ago, we are playing a dangerous game in sacrificing our sovereignty and the safety of not just British nationals, but refugees at the altar of not wanting to upset an authoritarian state?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I again pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done over recent weeks, in particular, and years in alerting this House and the country to the threats that we have faced from authoritarian regimes around the world. I pay particular tribute to her leadership of the China Research Group, on which I was honoured to work with her before.

The reports that my hon. Friend mentions are not exclusive to this country. Sadly, we have seen authoritarian states exercising repressive tendencies abroad and seeking to extradite, or indeed inveigle, citizens of their own country back to their homeland to extract punishment. That is simply unacceptable. The protections of the UK state need to apply to all those in the United Kingdom and it is absolutely essential that those protections are afforded to all. That is why I am working, and will work further, with the police and agencies to ensure that we are on top of this offence and that, should evidence be shown and proof be given, action will be taken.

I also thank my hon. Friend enormously for her comments about the British national overseas scheme. She is right that that was not only world leading but essential for protecting British nationals in the face of an authoritarian dictatorship, and that those who come here under the scheme should be afforded the same protections, rights and dignity as all British nationals everywhere.

UK-Taiwan Friendship and Co-operation

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 10th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. China believes it is in the ascendancy and needs simply to wait it out until the UK and the US lose their ability to maintain an international rules-based order, and then it can occupy Taiwan. He puts it very well when he says that we too are watching and we too will wait, and we will stand by our allies. He is absolutely right that we need a cross-party approach, and I believe that under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) we see exactly that on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The current tensions in Taiwan must be seen for what they are: the direct result of the emergence of democracy and the Chinese Communist party’s own insecurity about a modern, successful and democratic Chinese society. When people ask why we should care about an island on the other side of the globe, the answer is simple. Taiwan represents the best of democracy, and the United Kingdom must always take the side of democracy and our friends who are trying to uphold its values.

Over the past few years, we in this House have watched with dismay as the Chinese Communist party has stripped away the freedoms and liberties of our friends in Hong Kong. The implementation of the national security law has transformed a vibrant and open society into a repressive, Orwellian nightmare, where a teenager faces prison for voicing slightly critical views on social media. While we all mourn the loss of those freedoms, I urge hon. Members not to fall into a state of resignation; our friends in Taiwan need more than that.

Therefore, I will discuss three areas that bind the interests of the United Kingdom to Taiwan: further economic co-operation, international recognition, and security and regional stability. The UK and Taiwan already enjoy a fruitful trading relationship: £7.2 billion of goods and services were exchanged in 2020 alone. Taiwan, as we all know, is the leading producer of semiconductor chips, the micro-engines of our modern world. From mobile phones to the fighter planes that make up the Royal Air Force, the importance of those chips cannot be overstated, but there has been a shortage in recent years, leading both the European Union and USA to implement strategies to maintain their access. We must do the same.

Sensing an opportunity, the Chinese Communist party is already moving to try to dominate this market, although I suspect it will not be able to because of the high-quality workmanship needed to create the chips. Only last year, China purchased the UK’s largest producer of semiconductor chips, Newport Wafer Fab. I opposed the takeover, as did the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I urge the Government to continue to do more to protect industries of special national interest. We cannot be selling them off. We must seek to produce, to protect our own production capabilities and to foster trading relationships with democracies that will protect supply chains.

A trade deal with Taiwan would not only ensure access to semiconductor chips, but help the UK to achieve our net zero targets without compromising on our morals. In my Rutland and Melton constituency there is a 2,175-acre solar plant proposed on good agricultural land, which is being developed by a de facto Chinese company with supply chains reaching into Xinjiang, the site of the Chinese Communist party’s genocide. I will not see Rutland’s soil tainted by mass human rights atrocities. I urge the Government to pursue a bilateral trade deal, because we know Taiwan produces quality solar panels free of Uyghur blood labour.

Taiwan is a country committed to net zero by 2050, producing high-quality green technology, and it shares our democratic morals. What better partner for a trade deal? Let us strike one and begin to develop the alternative supply chains we need to free Taiwan and to a lesser extent ourselves from economic reliance on the Chinese mainland. Let us focus on high-quality technologies and renewables. There is opportunity for us and for them.

The UK is also in the process of joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. We have recognised the shift in global wealth and power towards the Indo-Pacific, and global Britain is rightly stepping up to that. As we pivot towards Asia, however, we must have someone to lean on. Taiwan could play an important role there.

We are all aware of the limitations placed on Taiwan globally: despite having the 21st largest economy and a population of 24 million, it is still barred from meaningful participation in much of the international order. Although tens of millions of passengers pass through its airports, Taiwan has not been represented at the International Civil Aviation Organization since 2014. That is illogical, and the UK must support its readmittance to that body.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for Taiwan’s place in the international community and its role in international bodies. Does she agree that this is not just about Taiwan, but about us as well? What we have seen from the absence of Taiwan’s voice on the World Health Organisation is a worse performance against covid, the Wuhan virus that emerged under Chinese tutelage. Does she agree that we are seeing a damaged response and a worsened ability of the British people to protect themselves because China has decided, for its own selfish reasons, to bully and silence Taiwan?

[Alicia Kearns]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is no question but that the Taiwanese response to covid was transparent. It was one of friendship, education and reaching out, yet the international community somehow closed their doors to it. Not only is Taiwan barred from the World Health Organisation and World Health Assembly, but it was expelled from its observer position. That is not acceptable for a country that had impressive contact tracing and border controls, and a rejection of the Orwellian restrictions that other countries put in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman will know very well that this country recognises that peoples in our community have the right to self-determination. In China, sadly, that has been taken away from people. I agree entirely that there are many peoples who the Chinese state calls Chinese, but who call themselves something else. We have always recognised that people choose their status, not Governments.

Let me come back to Taiwan and why the debate is so important. Many of us are focusing, understandably, on what is going on in Moscow. We are focusing on the journey that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary took today to see her opposite number, Mr Lavrov. We are focused on the fact that we are seeing physical threats to borders in Europe for the first time since 2014—and that was the first time that had happened since 1945. We are seeing genuine aggression against free and sovereign people in a way that we have not in 60 or 70 years, except for in the case of the annexation of Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and, of course, Donetsk and Luhansk.

We are also seeing dictatorships trying to undermine democracies. We are seeing it because they have shown it to us. The relationship between Mr Putin and Mr Xi is extremely concerning. They have advertised it to us; they met in order to demonstrate their commitment to each other, and to undermining democracy and freedom around the world. That is why we are talking about Taiwan today. We are seeing a real moment in global politics—a point when we are more vulnerable than we have been for a long time. We see, sadly, a diversion of attention in Washington, confusion in Brussels, and a proliferation of different ideas, thoughts and challenges in Paris, Berlin and Rome.

We are seeing steel in Vilnius and Warsaw, and among many partners and friends. But sadly we are not seeing it as widely as we need to. That is exposing us to a double-edged risk—perhaps not just the risk that Russia may invade Ukraine. It may; 125,000 troops on the border suggests that it is possible. But Russia may also use this opportunity to demonstrate that there is confusion and division in the west, and use that to convince friends and allies that the deals that it has made in the last 20 or 30 years are no longer valid, and that they should bow down to Beijing and Moscow instead. That would be much more damaging to our long-term future, our peoples’ liberties, and our economic prosperity than many other decisions that could be taken. What is worse, the decision to do that in Ukraine would open up an opportunity to think about doing the same in Taiwan.

It is certainly true that any military invasion of Taiwan would be extremely difficult. The Chinese military—the People’s Liberation Army Navy, as it is somewhat bizarrely called—has been developing an amphibious capability that it thinks puts it in with a chance of a successful landing on Taiwan’s shores. I know—we all know—that is what it is doing; it is not a secret.

[Alicia Kearns]

I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend when he is making such a good point, but does he agree that, very concerningly, some of the research, intelligence and information that underpin some of those new technological advances that China is making are coming from British universities, British researchers and British companies, where espionage is at large? It is funding them quite openly, yet there seems to be no accountability in academia for the selling of what should be state-protected secrets to somebody who is clearly at odds with our own interests.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend and I will come back to that point, because she will not be surprised to hear that I wish to build on it.

Those of us who have some experience of fighting in mountains know that it is a lot harder for the attacker than the defender. Those of us who have sadly spent too much time reading stories of Operation Overlord will know that even the short straits that separate us from northern France provided an extremely difficult obstacle for our forebears to get over. So 100 miles of really difficult water to cross on the straits of Taiwan really does present an obstacle. Indeed, the sea state there is often so difficult that only for very short windows is it possible to truly cross. The landing positions that the Chinese forces would need to assault are narrow and therefore likely to afford Taiwanese forces the ability to defend.

I do not think that we should really be looking at the military threat in the classical sense. Instead, we are looking at the military threat in the sense of what we see from Russia in Ukraine and, sadly, from China in other parts of the world. We are seeing an erosion—an erosion of the will to fight, an erosion of the nation state to hold together, and an erosion of the integrity of a society to resist pressure—and that is coming in many, many different ways.

The first, sadly, is in what has become known as fake news: the disinformation campaigns that we are seeing around the world, the extraordinary assaults on our intelligence, our intellect and our ability to talk to one another as equals by spreading the hatred and lies that we see, sadly, too frequently here in the UK, in the United States and in many other countries. We are seeing that being absolutely industrialised in countries such as Ukraine and Taiwan. They are not the sole aim of these targets, but merely the roadblock on the way to the rest, because this is intended to change the way in which the global economy works and the way in which our people—the British people—are able to live their lives and enjoy their futures. It is intended to erode our liberties so that a few rich men in Beijing and Moscow can enjoy their stolen goods and make sure that they sleep at night.

That is not acceptable. We were not elected to this place and charged with being here to sacrifice the freedoms of the British people to a couple of despots in Beijing or Moscow. Standing up with our allies and friends around the world is exactly what we should be doing, but again, this is not just about them, because the techniques that we are seeing in Taiwan and Ukraine are spreading here.

Today, like every day, businesses and individuals in Taipei and across the island will be the subject of quite literally millions of cyber-attacks. They are under such intense assault that it is very difficult to understand how many routine operations can continue, and yet they do. We are seeing the same type of assaults here in the UK—not the same volume, but the same type—and we therefore have a lot to learn from Taiwan in how it resists. The same is true in Ukraine, where we are seeing Russia learning a whole new way of doing warfare by interrupting everything from the electricity grid to the communications networks in order to undermine the capability of the state and society to hold together.

But we are also seeing that here in the UK and that brings me to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton so rightly made. We are seeing an erosion of our own freedoms here in the UK, and not just through the dirty money that the Foreign Affairs Committee has been so clear in calling out since 2018. Indeed, I see on the Opposition Front Bench the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), who was on the Foreign Affairs Committee at the time—promotion for some!

We have been calling this out for a long time because it is fundamentally undermining the prosperity and happiness of the British people. We are seeing properties being over-inflated in value. We are seeing assets being used to undermine us, not to support us. We are seeing assets of community value—football teams and businesses—being used effectively as a piggybank from which cash can be removed on future occasions for pay for operations on behalf of a state that thinks nothing of attempting to murder the Prime Minister of Montenegro, actually murdering a citizen in the United Kingdom using a nuclear substance, using chemical weapons on the streets of Salisbury, blowing up an arms dump in Prague, and threatening literally thousands of people with cold and famine by trafficking them and forcing them into the forests around Belarus to use as weapons against the people of Poland and Lithuania. This is not a co-operative state; it is a hostile state and these are its actions. Here, we need to do more about it. We need to stop the dirty money, which we have called for, but we need to go further, because we are also—this is the tragedy—seeing the erosion of the liberty of some British people. The freedoms that we value are the freedoms that we need to stand for.

Yesterday, sadly, for the 100th or 200th time—I cannot remember how many—I spoke to some students who told me that their debates in their universities were silenced. They said that people were not willing to speak out or to stand up for what they knew was true because they would face the pressure of the Ministry of State Security, China’s enforcement arm, in silencing them in debate here in the UK. I spoke to them about the nature of this interference and they said that sadly it often comes from a fellow student or from a teacher or lecturer who is connected in some way to the state. We are seeing the erosion of the liberty of British citizens and of those who have come here seeking that liberty, whichever country they come from, because we are sadly not robust enough in standing up for it.

We need to close down the Confucius Institutes. They are agencies of a hostile state through the United Front Work Department—an organisation that we in this House have grown used to in recent days because of the works of Christine Lee, who we were all warned about. We have got used to the actions that it has been taking in seeking influence, in the most extraordinary propaganda operation that the world has ever seen, and we have got used to the pernicious effect on our own community.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton spoke about the theft of intellectual property—some of it, sadly, intellectual property that should remain secret. She is absolutely right. Defending state secrets is, after all, an essential role of government. But defending the liberty of British people to study and learn ideas of any kind, of any form, in a free environment at a university or a school, is surely even more fundamental than that. We must maintain absolute freedom of our people to express their views, whether on Tibet, as my hon. Friend did, on the status of Hong Kong, or, as officials in Beijing did only the other day, on the status of the Falkland Islands. They can express their views however they wish. Silencing debate undermines us and erodes freedom. It also erodes our path to the future.

Let me tell the House why I am still optimistic, despite that catalogue of crimes that I think have been committed against us. When I look forward, I see beacons like Taiwan as a demonstration that, actually, free people choose freedom. I see an example showing that Chinese society and culture, in different forms, are intrinsically at home with liberty. I see the writings in the universal declaration of human rights—written by an ambassador from China, P.C. Chang—and I see the rights that are literally encoded in the fundamental documents of the international community. I therefore see the hope that the attempts of the Chinese state—the Communist party—to silence these people will eventually fail, because they will.

What we are seeing coming out of Taiwan is another example of why those attempts will fail. Many people will know that TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor chip manufacturer, constitutes an extraordinary demonstration of innovation and capability on the island. It is a fantastic example of the meeting of science and craft, in that it brings together the skills of innovation and the skills of creation. I think it fair to say that it is now one of the keystones of the global economy. Delays caused to its output by various water issues and other problems had a direct effect on the manufacturing of cars and kettles, even here in the UK. It is essential to our global economy, and it is telling that its extraordinary success is based on the free ideas and the creativity that are needed—or, rather, can only be achieved—in a free society. This is a very good reminder that liberty does not just feed the soul; it feeds the pocket, and it feeds prosperity for everyone.

We see people around the world making choices. We see the migrant routes out of various parts of the world, and we see where those migrants go. There are not that many who think that China or Russia is a good idea, but there are many who choose freedom in countries such ours. When I see the threats that are ranged before us, I feel that what we are seeing coming out of Beijing today, and what we are seeing coming out of Moscow today, is much more in keeping with Shakespeare’s King Lear than with Henry V.