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20-11-2025
LONDON: Britain’s MI5 security service warned lawmakers on Tuesday about attempts by Chinese agents to collect information and influence activity, according to an email sent to lawmakers seen by media, the latest spy threat to the nation’s parliament.
The warning comes after prosecutors abandoned the trial of two British men charged with spying on members of parliament for China in September because, they said, the British government had not provided enough evidence to show that China was a threat to its national security.
Lindsay Hoyle, the House of Commons speaker, and his counterpart in the House of Lords circulated a new “espionage alert” issued by the security services to warn them of the threat posed by Chinese spies.
Hoyle said the Chinese Ministry of State Security was “actively reaching out to individuals in our community”, and that they wanted to “collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships, using professional networking sites, recruitment agents and consultants acting on their behalf”.
He warned that two individuals were both known to be reaching out on LinkedIn to “conduct outreach at scale on behalf” of the Chinese government.
The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The warning came after MI5 said in October Chinese spies were creating fake job adverts to try to lure British professionals into handing over information.
MI5 said thousands of suspicious job adverts had been posted to online job platforms.
Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, also said in a speech that Chinese spies posed a daily national security threat.
In January 2022, MI5 sent out an alert notice about lawyer Christine Lee, alleging she was “involved in political interference activities” in the United Kingdom on behalf of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Lee later sued MI5 in a bid to clear her name, but lost the case.
Last year, Britain is facing a “staggering rise” in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on UK soil by Russia and Iran, as the two states recruit criminals to “do their dirty work,” the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency said Tuesday.
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the United Kingdom if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
So far, the threats have been aimed at Iranians abroad who oppose the country’s authorities. But McCallum said there is the risk “of an increase in or broadening of Iranian state aggression in the UK” if the Middle East crisis escalates with Israel launching a major attack in response to Iran’s recent missile barrage.
In a rare public speech setting out the major threats to the UK from both states and militant groups, McCallum argued that hostile states, radicalized individuals and a revived Islamic State group have combined to create “the most complex and interconnected threat environment we’ve ever seen.”
McCallum said there also is a risk that Israel’s conflicts with Iran-backed groups, the militant Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen could trigger attacks in the UK, though so far the crisis has not translated “at scale into terrorist violence” in Britain.
The number of state-threat investigations undertaken by MI5 has risen by 48% in the past year, with Iran, Russia and China the main perpetrators, McCallum told journalists in London. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
