The UK should officially designate China a national security threat, Tory frontbencher Dame Priti Patel has said, as she accused the government of “desperation” in its early dealings with Beijing.
Speaking in the wake of the row over Prince Andrew’s links to alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo, who was barred from the UK after being judged likely to pose a threat to national security, Dame Priti warned that Xi Jinping’s “extraordinary regime” has “had all sorts of incursions in our country”.
In her first interview since being appointed Kemi Badenoch’s shadow foreign secretary, the veteran Conservative MP said she would “absolutely” place China on a list of nations deemed to pose the biggest security risks to Britain, as part of the long-delayed Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (Firs).
“It’s clearly complicated legislation, but China should always be up there,” she said of the plans for a register of foreign lobbyists and hostile state agents, which was introduced by the Tories in 2023 but is not expected to come into force until next summer.
Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat were also among influential Tories to call this week for China to be included in the enhanced tier of the scheme – a status reserved only for nations posing a risk to the UK. Mr Tugendhat told MPs that MI5 has made “very, very clear” that failing to do so would mean Firs is “not worth having”.
And Dame Priti indicated she would like to see the UK follow moves by the US, Canada, India and Albania to restrict TikTok, describing herself as “sceptical” of the social media app, whose parent company is a Chinese firm.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, she said: “We’re dealing with an extraordinary regime that for over a decade, quite frankly, has had all sorts of incursions in our country through national security, intellectual property, right down to cyberactivity and misinformation.
“During the Covid period, misinformation, disinformation, was absolutely significant. And then, of course, spies.”
Mr Tengbo, a businessman who forged close ties to the Duke of York and met ex-Tory prime ministers Lord Cameron and Baroness May, has insisted that allegations of espionage are “entirely untrue”. Last week, however, he lost his appeal against being banned from entering the UK on security grounds.
Taking aim at Sir Keir Starmer’s new government’s plans to visit China next month for talks on bolstering trade, Dami Priti said: “The case that we’re speaking about now is about a spy in the heart of Whitehall and within our institutions and yet we have a government that is saying ‘there’s nothing to see here’.
“So much so that they’ve booked all their plane tickets to go over to China, to resume the economic-financial dialogue. This, to me, smacks of a desperate government having literally done terrible things to our economy, with economic growth now going down, being desperate for foreign money.”
The MP for Witham added: “I’m just beyond concerned in terms of the direction of travel that Labour is choosing with China for a range of reasons, Hong Kong being one of them. Don’t forget Starmer met President Xi Jinping just hours before 45 pro-democracy activists were arrested and put in prison in Hong Kong.”
At the G20 summit in November, Sir Keir became the first prime minister to meet the Chinese leader since Baroness May in 2018. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to fly to China in January for talks with vice premier He Lifeng.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “This government will take a consistent, long term and strategic approach to managing the UK’s relations with China, rooted in UK and global interests.
“We will cooperate where we can, compete where we need to, and challenge where we must. The government’s first duty is to protect our national security and keep this country safe.”
