The Government has postponed a decision on whether to grant China permission for a new London “super embassy”.
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”.
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.
