Move to cut Chinese imports scrapped
BORIS JOHNSON risks angering the China-sceptics in his party by quietly dropping his policy of reducing Britain’s reliance on imports from the country.
Two years ago, during the height of the pandemic, the Prime Minister instructed civil servants to draw up plans for ‘Project Defend’ – a strategy for protecting national security after the pandemic by diversifying the UK’s imports of critical goods, such as pharmaceuticals, away from Beijing. But a letter sent by Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said the project was quietly dropped last year.
In response to questions about the project in the House of Lords, Lord Ahmad referred to the project in the past tense. He said: ‘Project Defend was a cross-Government project created at the start of the pandemic. It successfully analysed the supply chains that were critical to the United Kingdom, raising our visibility and understanding of supply chain vulnerabilities.
‘It supported critical winter planning in 2021 and supported Government departments and industry to identify options for building more resilient supply chains.’
But last night, China hawks in the Lords said they planned to amend the Procurement Bill to force Ministers to effectively revive the policy by eliminating any form of strategic dependency on China imports.
Tory peer Baroness Stroud, who has tabled the amendment, said: ‘If the Ukraine crisis tells us anything it is that dependency on bad actors exposes us.
‘This amendment is a step towards putting that right and I hope the Government will adopt it.’
Luke de Pulford, the co-ordinator of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said: ‘The Government should not underestimate the depth of the disappointment on the Tory backbenches. There’s a real sense that the rhetoric on China doesn’t match the action.’
Last night a Government source said Project Defend was restricted to Covid supply issues, and that after the pandemic, the Foreign Office was ‘toughening up in this area rather than weakening’.