UK Delays Decision on Chinese ‘Super Embassy’ in London
Udumbara
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The UK government postponed a decision on whether to grant China permission for a new “super embassy” in London on Oct. 16.
The delay follows the parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) urging the Labour government’s housing and planning secretary, Steve Reed, to block the plan, arguing it would harm Britain’s security and economic resilience.
JCNSS wrote to Reed on Oct. 13 saying that approving the embassy at its proposed site near the historic Tower of London was “not in the UK’s long-term interest.”
Committee chairman Matt Western MP wrote in a letter to Reed that the location presents “eavesdropping risks in peacetime and sabotage risks in a crisis” due to its proximity to fiber-optic cables, data centers, and telecoms exchanges serving the financial centers of Canary Wharf and the City of London.
He also noted reports of plans for basement rooms and tunnels, and that the security services have warned that allowing Beijing to set up the biggest embassy in Europe would create a hub for the country to expand its “intelligence-gathering and intimidation operations.”
The Chinese regime purchased the site, Royal Mint Court, in 2018. However, the local council rejected its requests for planning permission to construct the new embassy in 2022. CCP leader Xi Jinping last year requested that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer intervene.
Starmer’s central government then took control of the planning decision.
The postponement of the decision on the embassy comes amid a still swirling storm concerning Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spies operating in the UK.
Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33, appeared during a short hearing at the Central Criminal Court in London—better known as the Old Bailey—on Sept. 15.
Cash and Berry were due to go on trial at Woolwich Crown Court in London in October, but prosecutor Tom Little told the hearing that the case no longer met the evidential threshold.
The collapse of the trial prompted a blame game between the Labour government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as to who was responsible for the action falling apart.
Parkinson said that the CPS was unable to obtain clear direction from the government about whether it considered China a threat to national security at the time of the offense, and that without this information, the case could not proceed.
He also agreed to release the evidence submitted by the government concerning the case.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch rejected the notion that the previous government did not consider China a threat, saying that “something must have changed when the charges were brought and when the case collapsed,” which would have been under Labour.
The director general of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, Ken McCallum, said on Oct. 16 that “Chinese state actors” present a daily threat to the UK’s national security.
He said the security services had carried out an operation against a threat from China in the past week.
McCallum’s concerns were echoed by Dominic Cummings, ex-adviser to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Cummings said during his time at Number 10 Downing Street that he was warned that Chinese intelligence had breached high-level systems used to transfer sensitive UK government information.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson denied the claim, according to the publication.
“It is untrue to claim that the systems we use to transfer the most sensitive government information have been compromised,” the spokesperson said.
