English ministers have approved a new Chinese embassy in London despite British intelligence agencies saying they cannot eliminate the risks to national security.
Britain’s Local Government Secretary Steve Reed approved plans for the building at Royal Mint Court, near the Tower of London, on Tuesday.
Security minister Dan Jarvis told MPs he was “assured that the UK national security is protected” and any risks posed by the new embassy were being “appropriately managed”.
And the heads of MI5 and GCHQ said intelligence agencies had created a “package of national security mitigations” for the embassy.
But, in a letter to the Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary, they acknowledged it was “not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate” national security risks posed by foreign embassies, including the new Chinese mission.
The decision came at the end of a long-running campaign against the proposals, which campaigners and British MPs have said would provide a base for Chinese spying and security crackdowns.
MPs and peers on the Labour-led Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy had urged ministers to reject the plans, warning the embassy, the biggest in Europe, would “create a hub for expanded intelligence-gathering and intimidation operations”.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a Conservative MP who has been sanctioned by China, said: “At a time when the Chinese Communist Party is intensifying its intimidation of Britain, this decision sends entirely the wrong message.”
And Christopher Mung, a former Hong Kong district councillor who fled to Britain in 2021, said the decision would “enable” Chinese efforts to repress Hongkongers and others abroad.
Despite these concerns, the British government said the risks could be managed, and Mr Jarvis told MPs there were “national security advantages” to the plans, which will consolidate seven Chinese diplomatic buildings into one site.
His conclusions were partially supported by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, which said in a statement that security concerns “can be satisfactorily mitigated”.
But the committee, which oversees Britain’s intelligence agencies, said China continued to target the UK and its interests “prolifically and aggressively”, and criticised the government’s process for evaluating security concerns as it weighed up whether to approve the new embassy.
Lord David Alton, a member of the Interparliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), told a press conference in Westminster he was “not persuaded” that the risks could be managed.