Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will publish any (a) electronic and (b) written communication from Downing Street to his Department on the Chinese Embassy before the decision was made to call in the planning application.

The planning application has been called in by the Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and she will make this decision independent from the rest of Government corresponding to her quasi-judicial role. Other Government departments have separately worked through considerations of the application. We have no plans to publish information relating to these conversations due to their sensitive nature.