Why can’t this Government be straight with us about China?, asks Nigel Farage

They are current serving personnel and veterans from the last few years.

They were after their details, including details of their bank accounts. Wow, I thought, this is a really big, big story.

What do we get from the government today? Repeated attempts to try to play it down.

Here was Rishi Sunak earlier on today, speaking at the Crystal Palace Academy: "The Defence Secretary will be making a full statement to Parliament later today.

"And more generally, if you look back to our integrated review, I set out a very robust policy towards China which means that we need to take the powers to protect ourselves against the risks that China and other countries pose to us.

"They are a country with fundamentally different values. To us, they're acting in a way that is more authoritarian at home, assertive abroad.

"That's why, for example, we blocked Chinese investment into a sensitive semiconductor company last year. Again, that's just one of the numerous actions that we've taken to protect this country. And recently I announced a historic increase in our defence spending."

No prime minister. The question wasn't about defence spending.

It was about the Chinese government attempting to hack serious details. But I have to tell you, I have no idea what Rishi Sunak's position on China actually is.

It seems to move around with the win. But it's okay because the Prime Minister assured us that the defence secretary, Grant Shapps, would tell us all in the House of Commons this afternoon.

"This was the work, as I say, of a malign actor who compromised a contractor run network entirely separate from the mod core system. However, as I've said, we cannot at this stage rule out state involvement from elsewhere."

Well, it was up to John Healey, the shadow defence Secretary, Labour, and he did come out with it absolutely clearly.

"The media have clearly been briefed that China is behind the hack, but the defence secretary only tells us about a malign actor.

"Now the government rightly has a very rigorous system before official accusations or attributions are made. But if this data breach is found to have been carried out by a hostile state, it would represent a very serious threat to our national security and the Government have been warned.

"The ISC committee confirmed in its China report last year cyber attacks by hostile states now happen daily and our wider armed forces community are being targeted.

"But the committee also found no cross-government China strategy completely inadequate resourcing and defence intelligence, with no systematic record of resources focused on China."

When you look at the way Grant Shapps dealt with that and the way John Healey dealt with that, is it any wonder that the Labour Party are now more trusted on defence than the Conservatives, something historically that would have been very difficult to say at any point during my lifetime. So why can't this government be straight with us about about China?