Sunak urged to get tough over Chinese smart meters

RISHI Sunak is facing calls to rip out ‘Chinese smart meters’ which could allegedly be used to shut down power supplies to hundreds of thousands of British homes.

On the eve of the G20 summit in Indonesia, the Prime Minister was urged to warn other world leaders of the ‘enormous threat’ posed by Beijing’s desire to infiltrate other countries’ infrastructure.

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith also called on the PM to order a halt to the installation in UK houses of smart meters made by a firm linked to the Chinese state.

He raised the ‘nightmare’ prospect of China cutting off household energy through access to remote power switches in meters.

Sir Iain told The Mail on Sunday that the PM should first halt the installation of the meters, made by Kaifa Technology UK, and then potentially replace the ones already installed.

He said ‘all smart meters feature a switch that can be used to remotely turn off power’, which in the wrong hands ‘could be abused to inflict mass blackouts and damage the National Grid’.

The Daily Mail last month revealed that 250,000 meters supplied by Kaifa, controlled by a subsidiary of the state-owned China Electronics Corporation, were already in UK homes.