Priti Patel has said that Sir Keir Starmer should not visit China this week because he is putting national security at risk.
The former home secretary said the Prime Minister was going to Beijing ‘on his knees’ rather than from a position of strength.
She called for him to ‘stand up’ for the UK rather than trying to ‘line pockets’ and do ‘so-called trade deals’ with the regime.
Her warnings come after a former MI6 boss warned that China was a ‘much more dangerous threat’ to the UK than the US.
Sir Keir will fly to Beijing with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and a business delegation in order to boost trade with the country.
The trip has sparked controversy just days after the Government approved Beijing’s plans for a ‘super embassy’ in London near sensitive communications cables. And it comes in the wake of Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai being found guilty of colluding against the Chinese government.
It will be the first visit of a UK prime minister since Theresa May in 2018.
Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti accused Sir Keir of ‘kowtowing’ to the Chinese.
Dame Priti Patel has warned the Prime Minister against his visit to Beijing, saying he is putting national security at risk
Sir Keir Starmer meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro last year
‘Keir Starmer, having done terrible things to this country’s economy, is now jetting off to Beijing because he wants to secure a trade deal,’ she said. Asked if she thought he shouldn’t go, Dame Priti replied: ‘I don’t think he should. We already have economic ties with China. We have trade taking place.
‘But he should be putting pressure on China to stop the cyber-attacks, to stop the espionage, to stand up and confront Beijing on Jimmy Lai and what has happened with that particular case. And instead, what we see is him kowtowing to China.’
She told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: ‘I say to Keir Starmer, get a grip of those fundamental issues before we start jetting off to try to line pockets and do so-called trade deals, because this is simply not good enough.
‘He’s putting the national security of our country at risk. He’s already put the economy in jeopardy. Everyone can see that, and they can feel that.
‘But standing up for your country and going to China from a position of strength is what he should be doing. Currently, he’s on his knees and he’s going there in a position of weakness.’
Dame Priti’s intervention came after Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6 and former UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said China was a greater threat than the US. His comments come in the wake of the row over Greenland, after Donald Trump demanded that the island be sold to him.
‘American tech is very powerful, and the only country that’s really rivalling the Americans on this is China,’ he told Times Radio. ‘Whatever our reservations are about the US, China is a much more dangerous country to be partnering with.
‘Certainly, it poses a continued threat to our national security and we can’t rely on China for high-tech services. But I think it is important we develop a diversity of relationships.’
Last week President Donald Trump criticised the Prime Minister’s plans to give up the Chagos Islands
It came after Labour admitted that the Government’s Chagos Islands deal would collapse if Donald Trump refuses to rip up a 60-year-old treaty.
Sir Keir Starmer’s deal to surrender the territory to Mauritius was upended last week after the US President called it an ‘act of great stupidity’. The Tories warned the deal would violate a US-UK treaty from 1966. Labour then pulled the Chagos Bill but claim it will return.
Reports suggest the Government conceded in a letter on Friday that it would not be possible to go ahead with the deal without the US scrapping the agreement.
Last week, the heads of Britain’s domestic intelligence agencies publicly warned they cannot eliminate the risks attached to the new Chinese embassy.
The Government published a letter to the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary written by MI5 director general Sir Ken McCallum and GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler.
They admitted: ‘For the site, as with any foreign embassy on UK soil, it is not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate each and every potential risk.’
