Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what recent assessment they have made of the Chinese surveillance companies (1) Dahua, and (2) Hikvision; what assessment they have made of any links between those companies and human rights abuses in the Xinjiang province; and what assessment they have made of whether they constitute a security threat to the UK.

The UK takes its national security extremely seriously. On 24 November 2022, the Government announced that Departments should cease deployment of visual surveillance systems produced by companies subject to China's National Intelligence Law onto sensitive sites. The Government has also consistently led international efforts to hold China to account for its human rights violations, including the use of invasive surveillance to target Uyghurs and other minorities. On 31 October, we supported a joint statement at the UN Third Committee alongside 49 other countries that specifically called out China's systematic use of invasive surveillance on the basis of religion and ethnicity. We also consistently raise the situation in Xinjiang with the Chinese authorities at the highest levels. Most recently, the Foreign Secretary did so in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart on 20 September.