High security measures have been imposed for Sir Keir Starmer’s trip to China after a Chinese official took photographs on his mobile phone of the inside of the plane used by Theresa May when she visited the country.
Sir Keir’s team has been issued with burner phones, temporary SIM cards and throwaway laptops rather than their usual computers to limit the likelihood of them being bugged.
They are likely to be advised that even plugging a device into a power socket could lead to it being compromised.
Government officials, business chiefs and journalists on the trip will most certainly be told to assume that they are being photographed in their hotel room and other venues.
Amid claims China has been bugging No10 phones for years, former security minister Tom Tugendhat messaged on X: “Starmer’s circus aren’t just taking burner phones to China to beat spying, they’re taking a burner plane!
“The Government jet is staying home because it would need to be guarded round the clock to stop China putting bugs on it - so they’ve hired a plane!”
Government sources suggested a large plane had been chartered due to the size of the business delegation travelling with Sir Keir, Government officials, the security team and journalists.
When Mrs May visited China in 2018, a Chinese minder took photographs inside her plane.
The British security team and senior No10 officials were alerted to the man’s activities including taking pictures of the upper section of the plane.
But they did not challenge him amid the risk of sparking a diplomatic incident during Mrs May’s visit which took in Wuhan, Beijing and Shanghai.
The man was accompanying a more senior official.
Members of Britain’s armed forces surrounded the plane when it was on the ground to stop it being targeted by Chinese spies.
Sir Keir said his mission to Beijing would bring benefits for people in the UK as he prepared to begin the first prime ministerial visit to China in eight years.
But his visit was surrounded by controversy including over the Government’s decision to give the go-ahead for a new Chinese mega-embassy in London.
The PM touched down in China on Wednesday along with a delegation of almost 60 representatives of British businesses and cultural institutions as he continues his efforts to build bridges with Beijing.
Speaking to reporters on the flight to Beijing, he said: “The evidence there are opportunities is the fact that we’ve got so many CEOs with us on this flight, that we’ve got 60 coming out to explore those opportunities.”
He added that this “reflects back at home in terms of the benefit that it brings back to the United Kingdom”.
Sir Keir is the first British Prime Minister to visit China since Theresa May in 2018.
The intervening years saw a cooling of relations with China under the Conservatives, before Labour began re-engaging with a series of ministerial visits capped with Sir Keir’s trip.
The Prime Minister reiterated that he wanted “a comprehensive and consistent approach to China”, rather than veering “from golden age to ice age” as under the previous government.
In the UK, he has come under pressure to raise a series of human rights issues with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior officials, including the imprisonment of British national and Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai and the treatment of the Uigher minority.
But ahead of his meetings with the Chinese leadership, Sir Keir declined to be drawn on what he would seek to raise.
