China ‘super embassy’ decision put back to December

The Government has postponed a decision on whether to grant China permission for a new London “super embassy”, which Dominic Cummings said he was warned would house a “spy centre”.

It comes after a parliamentary committee urged Housing and Planning Secretary Steve Reed to block the plans, saying they would harm the UK’s security and economic resilience.

The new deadline for Mr Reed to take the decision is December 10.

The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) wrote to the minister on Monday saying that approving the embassy at its proposed site near the Tower of London was “not in the UK’s long-term interest”.

Committee chairman Matt Western MP wrote to Mr Reed saying that the proposed location presents “eavesdropping risks in peacetime and sabotage risks in a crisis” due to its proximity to fibre-optic cables, data centres and telecoms exchanges serving Canary Wharf and the City.

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”.

Mr Cummings said that when he was working as then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s adviser, he was warned that China wanted to build an espionage hub.

He told ITV’s Talking Politics podcast: “MI5 and MI6 said to me explicitly: China is trying to build a spy centre underneath the embassy.

“It’s an extremely bad idea to allow this to go ahead. It’s particularly a bad idea given the exact location and various cables which run underneath London.

“Please will you help us try to persuade the prime minister to kibosh this dreadful idea because other powerful parts of Whitehall don’t want to have a row with China about it, particularly the Treasury.”

He said they discussed it with Mr Johnson, “but of course, as always with these things, right, it rumbles on year after year after year”.

The prospect of Whitehall approving the project was “a sign of some kind of appalling mix of incompetence and extreme cowardly weakness”, Mr Cummings continued.

“What are the ramifications for America, which shares vast amounts of extremely secret information with British intelligence services? How do you think the CIA and the NSA (National Security Agency) are going to react to this if Starmer OKs it?”

The looming decision on the embassy comes amid continued scrutiny of how the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service handled the collapsed Chinese spying case.

Mr Western said the case was a recent reminder of the scale of China’s alleged illicit activities.

“We urge you to acknowledge that approving this decision is not in the UK’s long-term interest, and the consequences of having such a site will be very difficult to handle if relations with Beijing worsen in future,” he said.

“We therefore urge the Government to keep long-term national security at the forefront of its decision-making, and this must be demonstrated in your response to the embassy planning application.

“The UK’s security and economic resilience will be negatively affected if the plans are allowed to proceed as currently proposed.”

Plans for the embassy were rejected by Tower Hamlets Council in 2022, with the Chinese opting not to appeal.

But Beijing resubmitted the application a fortnight after Sir Keir Starmer’s election victory last year, believing Labour may be more receptive to the application, and the plans were called in so ministers would make the final decision.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp accused the Government of being “scared” to give planning consent.

“Now the Government is too scared of the public to give planning consent to the Chinese spying base as they had planned to,” he said.

“And they’re too scared of the Chinese to say ‘no’. Hence the delay. Contemptible,” he posted on X.

Shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly called for the planning review to have access to “full unredacted drawings” for the plans.

He said Sir Keir should follow the lead of Ireland and Australia when faced with similar proposals from Russia and ensure his government throws out the “sinister application”.

The Liberal Democrats accused the Government of “kicking the can down the road”.

Calum Miller, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, said: “It’s beyond time this embassy proposal was put out of its misery – and that the Government send a signal to China that we will no longer roll over in the face of their industrial espionage.”

Downing Street suggested the “detailed nature” of concerns about the plans were behind the postponement.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told reporters: “Given the detailed nature of the representations that have been provided, and the need to give parties sufficient opportunity to respond, MHCLG (The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) consider that more time is needed for full consideration of the applications.

“You are aware that this is a quasi-judicial decision, independent from the rest of Government. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment further when the case is before MHCLG ministers.”

The new December 10 deadline date for a decision is “not legally binding”, the spokesman added, suggesting the timeline could slip again in future.