MPs have vented their fury over a six-month silence that followed an aide operating at the heart of parliament being arrested on suspicion of allegedly spying for China and accused of passing information to Beijing in breach of the Official Secrets Act.
They voiced concern on Monday that the gap meant they had been unable to take their own security precautions, amid wider concern that individual pro-democracy activists could be put at risk by any security lapse.
Kirsty Blackman, an SNP frontbencher, asked why parliament only learned about the allegations from media reports over the weekend, and called for “a review into the decision-making process” as soon as possible.
Tim Loughton, a Conservative MP who has been previously sanctioned by China for criticising the country’s regime, said no guidance had been provided to MPs by parliament’s security authorities or by the Foreign Office or Home Office.
Responding directly to Blackman, Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, said “the MPs who needed to be told were told” at the time of the arrest, which had quietly taken place in March.
Investigators needed time to complete their inquiries, Hoyle added, describing the episode as “a major security issue”.
The researcher, who is in his 20s, was arrested in Edinburgh at the same time as a second person, in their 30s. It is understood he had links to Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, until he became security minister, and subsequently Alicia Kearns, who chairs the foreign affairs select committee.
Only a small number of MPs appear to have been warned, with other members of the cross-party foreign affairs select committee saying they had not been told about the arrest at the time.
Police sources also confirmed to the Guardian that there had been no public report of the arrests at the time they were made.
A handful of senior ministers were aware of the situation, however. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, told parliament that James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, had raised the matter in private with his counterparts when he visited China at the end of August.
“I’m limited in what I can say specifically, but I’ve been emphatically clear in our engagement with China that we will not accept any interference in our democracy and parliamentary system,” Sunak said.
He added: “I can absolutely confirm that the foreign secretary raised these issues on his recent visit.”
Parliament’s security team is understood to have been “actively involved from the beginning” in the investigation, according to a senior parliamentary source. They said that the authorities worked with the security services to identify the parliamentary researcher who was arrested.
The researcher is not being named by the Guardian for legal reasons and on Monday, without identifying himself, he released a statement denying that he was a spy.
“It is vital that it is known that I am completely innocent,” he said in remarks released by his lawyers.
“I have spent my career to date trying to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist party. To do what has been claimed against me in extravagant news reporting would be against everything I stand for.”
The two men remain on police bail until an unspecified date in early October, while investigators continue to examine the case, which has prompted increased concerns about Beijing’s willingness to spy on the UK.
The parliamentary researcher arrested has no family ties to China. Security sources said on Monday that they believed the alleged spying could represent a potential escalation by Beijing of its espionage activities.
“If this is proved to have happened once, it is not likely to be an isolated incident,” one former senior intelligence official said.
China has accused Britain of engaging in “nothing but malicious slander” in its response to the news of the arrests. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the UK complained of “anti-China political manipulation” and urged the British leaders to “stop putting on such self-staged political farce”.
Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international group of MPs and legislators monitoring human rights in the country, said those who knew the arrested researcher had not had a chance to reflect on the impact on any China-related cases they dealt with.
“This guy was arrested in March, so people around them don’t know what their potential exposure to risk is. That includes MPs who dealt with asylum requests or visa requests for people like those from Hong Kong, dissidents and others.
“But we are also talking about people whose families are back home in China, but who are working here, and are doing work that would open them up to accusations on the part of the CCP of working with foreign forces, for which they could face long periods of imprisonment,” he said.
Mark Sabah, UK and EU director of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, said he feared that pro-democracy activists who shared personal information with British MPs could be at risk if any information had leaked to Beijing.
“The big issue here, though, is that it’s not the MPs who suffer most from this, whether it’s embarrassment, or the security or parliamentary screening team,” he said.
“It’s actually the people who make approaches to lobby for causes like Tibet, Hong Kong and others who have genuine threats from the Chinese Communist party and who are in need of genuine and safe channels they can use to advocate and feed information into the debate.”
