Labour scolded by Tugendhat for 'recklessly' reaching out to China despite spy allegations: 'This is a very serious threat!'

"This isn't about one spy. It's not about one individual. It's not even just about Prince Andrew," Tugendhat told GB News.

"This is about a pattern of activity we've seen coming out of China, not just in recent months, but over years now."

Tugendhat warned the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), which he introduced while serving as security minister, has faced unexplained delays in implementation.

The scheme, designed to curb Chinese spying activities, was "absolutely ready to go" when he left Government in July.

"It just needed a little bit more parliamentary time and it was ready to go. It was supposed to be live by the time of the election that I was expecting, which was in November," he explained.

He expressed frustration at the delay, stating: "There's no reason to delay. There's absolutely no cause to delay."

The former security minister emphasised that proper protections need to be in place before engaging with China.

Tugendhat explained how the FIRS scheme would help identify potential security threats by establishing patterns of activity.

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The FIRS scheme, particularly its enhanced tier, would enable authorities to detect suspicious activities.

"The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme would have built up the pattern of life. That means that incidents like this would have been alerted, would have been brought to attention earlier, and we would have been able to deal with them," he said.

He added: "If you want to find a needle in a haystack, first you need a haystack."

"This is a very serious threat. What we've got to do is to make sure that we are in the right position to defend ourselves," Tugendhat emphasised.

He warned about the "undermining of the British economy" and theft of jobs and intellectual property.

"The ideas, the imagination of the British people, being stolen off us and being sent to China to be developed in different ways," he told GB News.

His tenure as security minister saw significant action against foreign espionage.

"In the two years that I was the security minister, we arrested and charged more Russian and Chinese spies in this country than over the previous decade," Tugendhat stated.