By Sam Tabahriti and Andrew MacAskill
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s MI5 security service warned lawmakers on Tuesday about attempts by Chinese agents to collect information and influence activity, according to an email sent to lawmakers seen by Reuters, the latest spy threat to the nation’s parliament.
The warning comes after prosecutors abandoned the trial of two British men charged with spying on members of parliament for China in September because, they said, the British government had not provided enough evidence to show that China was a threat to its national security.
Lindsay Hoyle, the House of Commons speaker, and his counterpart in the House of Lords circulated a new “espionage alert” issued by the security services to warn them of the threat posed by Chinese spies.
Hoyle said the Chinese Ministry of State Security was “actively reaching out to individuals in our community”, and that they wanted to “collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships, using professional networking sites, recruitment agents and consultants acting on their behalf”.
He warned that two individuals were both known to be reaching out on LinkedIn to “conduct outreach at scale on behalf” of the Chinese government.
The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The warning came after MI5 said in October Chinese spies were creating fake job adverts to try to lure British professionals into handing over information.
MI5 said thousands of suspicious job adverts had been posted to online job platforms.
Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, also said in a speech that Chinese spies posed a daily national security threat.
In January 2022, MI5 sent out an alert notice about lawyer Christine Lee, alleging she was “involved in political interference activities” in the United Kingdom on behalf of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Lee later sued MI5 in a bid to clear her name, but lost the case.
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Andrew MacAskill; editing by Michael Holden and Sarah Young)
