MPs and peers warned of China spy risk on LinkedIn
MPs and members of the House of Lords have been warned by MI5 that they face a significant risk of espionage from the Chinese state.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord McFall, his counterpart in the House of Lords, issued a new “spy alert” issued by the security services.
The MI5 alert identifies two LinkedIn profiles that it said were used on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).
It says these individuals acted as “civilian recruitment hunters” and targeted individuals working in British politics, demanding “insider views”.
Writing to MPs, Sir Lindsay said Chinese state actors had been “relentless” in “interfering with our processes and influencing activities in Parliament”.
He said the Chinese MSS is “actively reaching out to individuals in our community” and that they want to “use professional networking sites, recruiting agencies, and consultants acting on their behalf to gather information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships.”
The warning from MI5 states that the “fake persons” approach aims to “work as freelance consultants writing geopolitical reports”.
Other elements of espionage described in the MI5 alert include all-expense paid trips to China and payment for information via cash or cryptocurrency.
Targets are said to include “Parliamentary staff, economists, think tank staff, geopolitical advisors and collaborators” [the government] including MPs and members of the House of Lords”.
Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the warning showed China was taking an “aggressive position” on whether it was a threat to Britain’s national security, which “cuts through all that nonsense”.
“We need to be much, much more careful,” he told BBC News.
“Why is the government so incapable of saying China is a persistent and ongoing threat to Britain’s national security?
“This is obvious to every single member of the public… but somehow the government seems to think it is not that obvious.”
