British authorities on Wednesday arrested the husband of a sitting member of Parliament in a Chinese espionage case, sparking further concerns in London and Washington about the extent of Beijing’s influence.
Joani Reid, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s governing Labor Party, issued a statement indicating that her husband was among three unnamed individuals British police arrested this week on suspicion of spying for China. Reid insisted her husband was innocent, after London counterterrorism authorities alleged the suspects assisted China’s foreign intelligence service in violation of the National Security Act of 2023.
Conservative MP Greg Stafford told the House of Commons on Wednesday that Reid “sits on a select committee that would have information which is sensitive, maybe even secret” and had visited defense sites across the United Kingdom, according to the Irish Times. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch responded to the reports by demanding Starmer “stop being naive, grow a backbone and treat China as the threat we all know it is.”
The development comes after long-standing fears about Chinese agents infiltrating London’s political circle. Incidents that have raised scrutiny include concerns raised by Sarah Champion, who sits on Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, and said she found Chinese spyware on her parliamentary computer. A recent move by Starmer’s government to authorize a sprawling new embassy for Beijing close to underground fiber-optic cables carrying sensitive information between London’s two main financial districts revived criticism from certain circles in both Britain and the United States that authorities are not doing enough to thwart espionage.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, were among U.S. lawmakers who rebuked the move earlier this year.
The U.S. has also grappled with espionage activity from Beijing, including multiple “spy balloons” that floated across U.S. states. The U.S. military shot down one such balloon, described by China as a weather balloon, off the coast of South Carolina in 2023, with the State Department saying it had equipment that was “clearly for intelligence surveillance.”
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Previously, U.S. officials accused China of seeking to infiltrate the country’s political system through suspected intelligence operative Christine Fang.
“Fang Fang” was most notably accused of targeting Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) as well as other up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country. Even though U.S. officials do not believe Fang received or passed on classified information, the case “was a big deal, because there were some really, really sensitive people that were caught up” in the intelligence network, a current senior U.S. intelligence official told Axios in 2020, when the revelations were detailed.
