China Spying Case

Debate between Julian Lewis and Chris Law

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)]

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), and I think he hit the nail on the head. I have been thinking throughout the debate that this is not just about the failure of the prosecution, but about our approach to China—not just this year, last year or during this Government; this has gone on for years and years. The sanctions were imposed in March 2021, which is four and a half years ago. Interestingly, neither the Government of the day nor the official Opposition demanded sanctions; it was the Speakers of the House of Commons and the House of Lords who responded by banning the Chinese ambassador from entering. It has been reported that at the time, the Government attempted to overturn that decision. The key point, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central has said, is crystal clear: all of us need to work on our lines and we need cast-iron assurances that, no matter where we have been in the past, going forward we will be very clear about the real threat that China poses.

China’s history tells us that already: six decades of military occupation in Tibet; the mass detention, re-education and forced sterilisation of the Uyghur population; we have witnessed democracy come under attack in Hong Kong time and again; and there is the ever-present threat against Taiwan. China runs a global influence operation and it has been acknowledged in this House that the united front has penetrated every sector of the United Kingdom’s economy. We have been well warned.

As I said earlier, and as has been repeated many times, in 2023 the Intelligence and Security Committee said that China was a “threat”, an “acute threat” and a “grave threat”. In 2022, the head of MI5, Ken McCallum, said that the Chinese threat

“might feel abstract. But it’s real and it’s pressing. We need to talk about it. We need to act.”

That is what we have failed to do until now.

If one of the key hinderances to the prosecution appears to be the concern that the Government would not be able to convince the jury that China was an enemy, how would the Minister describe a state that conducts long-term, large-scale espionage operations, including recruiting those who work in Parliament, and that poses a serious national security threat on these islands? Why has it taken the failure of this case for the Government to definitively state that China is a threat? Why has this position come as a response to an embarrassing political crisis?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent and unanswerable case, but the trouble is that even in the circumstances of this case, the Government have not said that China is a threat. They keep saying that it poses a range of serious threats, but they keep baulking at saying that it is a threat. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has no hesitation in saying that China is a threat, and he should challenge the Government to do likewise.

[Chris Law]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. China is a real and serious threat. I say that not just as an individual who happens to chair the all-party parliamentary group on Tibet, who is anxious about being spied on too, but on behalf of my party and of colleagues across the House who feel the real and present threat not only to ourselves but to our constituents.

Why has this position come as a response to an embarrassing political crisis, rather than as the principled position and proactive strategy for which so many of us have been calling for so many years? Why is it, as Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, put it that

“the Chinese Communist Party’s progress towards the ‘Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation’…has met formidable resistance, not from governments, but little ole’ constituency MPs.”?

That is a really good question to consider.

The Government and the Opposition will squabble over who met with whom when, about who said what when, and about who they can blame to squeeze as much political one-upmanship from this case as possible, but the Chinese Communist party must be laughing at this House right now, as we ping-pong when it is clear that we need national security to be taken very seriously and we need to see China placed on the foreign influence registration scheme.

Public trust and the confidence of international allies are wavering, and the ongoing threat to our national security, democratic institutions and economic infrastructure remains. To conclude, it is time to end the inertia, caution and self-censorship from Whitehall and from Government when it comes to China, and to acknowledge, address and act on the threat that we continuously face.