Labour say ‘covert and calculated’ spying by China won’t be tolerated – live updates

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Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is battling a Labour backlash over plans to “restore order and control” to the asylum system.

Labour backbenchers publicly condemned the “shameful” package, which is aimed at deterring migrants from seeking asylum in the UK and making it easier to remove people with no right to be in the country.

Allies of Ms Mahmood warned that “dark forces” would be unleashed if Labour does not respond to voters’ concerns and tackle the problem.

The Government said it would robustly defend the UK’s national security and democracy.

Home Office minister Dan Jarvis said his department would “stand ready to … disrupt, degrade and protect against the dangerous and unrestrained offensive cyber ecosystem that China has allowed to take hold”.

Mr Jarvis said the recent Cyber Security and Resilience Bill would provide safeguards and he did not rule out sanctions as a penalty against those involved in spying.

MPs heard that China is the UK’s third largest trading partner as the minister said it was in the UK’s “long-term strategic interest” to trade and work with China on shared interests, including the environment, research and crime.

However, he added: “We will always, always, challenge any country, including China, that attempts to interfere, influence or undermine the integrity of our democratic institutions, and we will take all necessary measures to protect UK national security.

“That is why we have taken the action today and I am clear that further steps can absolutely be taken. Disrupting and deterring China’s espionage activity wherever it takes place, updating our security powers to keep pace with the threat, helping those who work in politics to recognise, resist and report the threat, and working with partners across the economy to strengthen their security against the threat.

“Our strategy is not just to co-operate. We will engage China where necessary, but we will always act to defend our interests and challenge where our values are threatened.”

It is “perfectly reasonable” to pay migrant families who have been denied asylum in the UK to return to their home countries, a Cabinet minister has said.

Steve Reed would not be drawn on how much the Government might offer, telling Times Radio: “We will consult on that.”

The Housing Secretary continued: “I think it’s perfectly reasonable to give people financial support to make the journey back to their home.

“In the long run, it’s cheaper for the British taxpayer to do that.

“We need to look at the overall cost of the Tory asylum-seeking system that we inherited.”

Mr Reed stressed that families would not be separated as he defended the plans.

“We cannot have a system that incentivises people to put their children on boats like that. We know that we need more safe and legal routes so that families who have the right to come here and seek asylum can get into the country, but we can’t continue to allow incentives to exist that result in children drowning in the Channel.”

A list of threats posed by China makes a mockery of the country not being on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme (Firs), a Conservative MP has said.

Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who is a co-chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, listed a series of ways Beijing has posed a risk.

Addressing ministers, he said: “Bringing forward this whole issue, the China espionage case, following on from the collapse spy case.

“Doesn’t he look back at this and think this is peculiar, because we’ve got Hong Kongers here in the UK now with bounties on their heads, threatened daily by China, dragged into illegal police stations, and then the minister talked about all the other things, threats to our democracy, threats to our industry, cyber threats, threats to our universities, and threats to our MPs, who are sanctioned and who daily have to face these challenges.

“Doesn’t that make a bit of a mockery of the idea that China is not a continuing threat and that they are not now in the upper tier of Firs?”

Security minister Dan Jarvis said the Government had announced a comprehensive set of measures, but there is a “willingness” to go further where required.

Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokeswoman Lisa Smart said her party welcomed the announcement as a “first step” but it is “not sufficient” by itself and called for the Government to reject plans for a new Chinese embassy near Tower Bridge.

Steve Reed said “every single” Labour MP was elected on a manifesto that pledged to secure the UK’s borders as he defended the government’s asylum reforms amid a backlash from within the party.

Asked whether Labour backbenchers publicly criticising the plans should join the Green Party, the Cabinet minister told Sky News: “Absolutely not.

“Every single one of us who is a Labour MP was elected on the same manifesto, and that manifesto committed us now as a Government to securing our borders.

“It’s very important that we do that. The British people expect us to do that. But we also have to end this vile trade in human lives.”

Pressed on whether he was proud to be part of Sir Keir Starmer’s Government, Mr Reed said “absolutely”, and cited the salience of the migration issue on the doorstep.

There is a delicious irony that one of the principal midwives of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, was profoundly conservative, and later one of the most reactionary post-war Home Secretaries, leading opposition to the Wolfenden Inquiry’s proposal to decriminalise gay sex between consenting adults. Yet he played a central role in the fledgling Council of Europe, serving as rapporteur of the committee that drafted what became the ECHR, which came into force in 1953.

The apparent contradiction in Fyfe’s positions is less striking than it seems. The Convention was designed as a restatement of core liberties the British believed they already enjoyed, albeit uncodified and inchoate. Few on the left or right would quarrel with the Convention’s actual text. For many continental states, emerging from tyranny and occupation, its articles became a template for modern statements of rights. But the UK resisted incorporation for decades on a bipartisan basis. The argument was simple: we already had these rights, incorporation would be an unnecessary, continental import.

In early 1987, a courageous Conservative MP, Sir Edward Gardner QC, who had been my head of chambers at the Bar, introduced a Private Member’s Bill to incorporate the Convention into domestic law. It died immediately, opposed by both front benches.

Former home secretary Jack Straw writes:

A Labour peer who escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia has said he does not think the UK is “that attractive as a country, but people think we are”, in the wake of the Home Secretary’s announcements on the asylum system.

It was put to Lord Alf Dubs on the BBC’s Today programme that refugees want to come to the UK specifically.

The former Labour MP said: “If you go to south-east Europe, if you go to Greece, most people want to go to Germany, so there are different countries that are the most desired in terms of the safety that they will provide.

“I think we’re in danger of getting this the wrong way round, they are people who are fleeing for safety – I don’t think we’re that attractive as a country, but people think we are.”

He added that he does not believe the Government’s plans “will make enough of a difference”.

Lord Dubs added: “My particular fear is integration in local communities: If people are here temporarily, and people know they’re here temporarily, then the danger is that local people say, well, you’re only here for a bit, why should we help you to integrate? Why should your kids go to local schools? And so on.”

The Independent’s political correspondent Millie Cooke reports:

Zia Yusuf has hit out at Labour’s plan to take assets off migrants to pay for their accommodation in the UK, dubbing it “entirely performative”.

Speaking about the policy, Reform’s head of policy said: “I put it to you that if Nigel Farage had sat at a press conference and announced that a Reform government would start taking jewellery away from people coming across from small boats, Lord only knows what would have happened. And I take great exception to that.”

He added: “And also one of the points about that particular policy is my view is clearly entirely performative. I don’t know who they think is coming across by small boats, not 50 Cent and Lil Wayne. And so therefore taking their gold chains away is not going to raise anything like enough money to make any dent on the asylum budget.”

The Independent’s crime correspondent Amy-Clare Martin reports:

Flags have become “tools of division” and “intimidation”, a major policing conference has been told.

Chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) Emily Spurrell told delegates in Westminster that flags are “sowing fear” and “fuelling division” as she warned asylum reform “must not come at the cost of compassion”.

Mr Spurrell said: “We all know our asylum system is struggling. It is slow, under-resourced, and in desperate need of reform. We’ve heard this week some of the plans the Home Secretary has to overhaul the system.

“Change must not come at the cost of compassion. We must never forget that behind every asylum claim is a human being, often in fear for their life.”

She also hit out at protesters who link immigration to the epidemic of violence against women and girls.

“Let’s be clear, to couch anti-immigration rhetoric in the language of protecting women and girls is not only misleading – it is offensive,” she added.

“The threat to women and girls is a national emergency – but it is not one that has been imported. It comes from within our communities, our homes, and too often, from those who should be there to love and protect us.”