County MP joins calls for tougher action on China
IT FOLLOWS CYBER ATTACK ON THE MoD
A COUNTY MP is among senior Tories who have called for tougher action on China after speculation that Beijing is responsible for a largescale cyber attack on the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
While the government has said state involvement cannot be ruled out, it declined to identify the culprit and said it cannot release further details “for reasons of national security”.
Alicia Kearns, Tory MP for Rutland and Melton, called on the government to “get the Foreign Office changing our position” on China.
She said: “In the last six weeks, the Chinese Communist Party has concluded to be responsible for hacking our armed forces, conducting a cyber attack on the Electoral Commission, cyber attacks on French and British MPs, a German aide was arrested on espionage charges, and two British men were charged with obtaining information useful to an enemy.
“Attacking our institutions and people who defend or represent our people is not the act of an ally or a friend, and the police – the British police – have explicitly deemed this the actions of an enemy.
“What is the minister doing to make sure we finally get a cross-government consensus and get the Foreign Office changing our position on this?”
Ms Kearns, who is also chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, added: “These are not the acts of a friend or an ally, these are the actions of a country who considers itself anathema to our values, our and those who defend our interests.”
Former leader of the Conservative Party Sir Iain Duncan Smith urged the government to put China in the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.
The Conservative MP (Chingford and Woodford Green) asked: “Why in heaven’s name don’t we take the decision to place this malign actor into that enhanced place and then make sure we deal with them accordingly?”
Mark Francois, former Armed Forces minister and chair of the European Research Group, called for the government to stand up to China, and accused the Foreign Office of being behind the government’s refusal to name the malign actor in this latest cyber attack.
The Tory MP for Welwyn Hatfield said: “This will be very worrying for service personnel, their families and veterans.
“And they’ll be disrespected that the government seems to have briefed that it was China overnight and then not had the nerve to confirm that in the House today, because someone rang up from the Foreign Office and said ‘don’t do that.’
“When oh when are we going to start standing up to the Chinese in a way that they are clearly not frightened to stand up to us?”
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps acknowledged China’s proven cyber attacks, including on the Electoral Commission and on individual MPs, but he was “simply unable” to say who was behind the attack in this case yet.
He said: “I do want to stress that, although we can see a malign actor is involved, we are yet to make the full connection to a state.
“Although, as I pointed out, I can’t rule that out that that might be concluded, we have no evidence to conactivities clude that way yet.” He said they must “follow due process” in investigating this before confirming who is responsible.
“I want to make it absolutely clear to the House, we did absolutely everything we could to avoid this being made public until I had the opportunity to come to this House.
“We endeavoured to ensure that our own approach towards removing the data from being online, closing that system down, ensuring the personnel were paid, making sure that the alternative payments system were in place for expenses and other things, and all of that could happen, ideally, before we came to this House. We most certainly did not wish to see or brief out the story.
“Unfortunately, because there are a large number of people potentially impacted, it was almost impossible for people not to go and then talk about it, and I believe that’s how it’s come into the public domain.”