Starmer and Xi Jinping meeting at the G20 Summit last November. Xinhua Yonhap News. 

Allegations have emerged that China has been hacking confidential information from British government servers for an extended period.

The Times reported on the 16th (local time), citing sources including Dominic Cummings, the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, that China had obtained vast amounts of sensitive classified information over several years.

Cummings claimed that a security breach occurred within the Prime Minister's Office—often referred to as "the bunker"—resulting in the leakage of top-secret information, and that then-Prime Minister Johnson suppressed the report after being briefed on it in 2020.

He emphasized, "Vast quantities of material were compromised, including data classified as top secret, which would be extremely dangerous if controlled by another foreign power," adding that these were "things that the government must keep secret, such as intelligence reports, and the consequences of them being leaked are extremely serious."

The Times also reported that a senior government official and Thomas Tugendhat, the former Minister of State for Security, confirmed there is evidence that sensitive government information had fallen into Chinese hands.

Bloomberg, citing its own sources, also reported that Chinese hackers had routinely accessed mid-to-low-level classified information on British government servers for at least a decade.

According to former high-ranking security officials and government sources, the compromised information included material marked "Official-Sensitive" and "Secret," as well as data held on government secure networks. The leaks reportedly included classified information regarding government policy-making, private communications, and diplomatic channels.

A spokesperson for the UK Cabinet Office refuted these claims, stating, "It is not true that the systems that transmit our most sensitive government information have been compromised."

Ciaran Martin, who served as CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) from 2016 to 2020, told the BBC, "This is an issue that the NCSC should have led on, but there was no such investigation," adding, "While China is a persistent and serious cyber security threat, there was no evidence by 2020 that they had penetrated these kinds of highly customized systems (government classified information networks)."

However, the UK has recently become highly sensitive to Chinese espionage activities. This is due to a series of warnings regarding security threats posed by China, as well as the intense backlash following the decision not to prosecute suspects accused of being Chinese spies.

In its regular report on the 14th, the NCSC noted, "China is a highly sophisticated and capable threat actor that targets a wide range of sectors and organizations globally, including those in the UK."

On the 13th, MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, warned in guidance sent to public officials that "The UK is being targeted by long-term strategic foreign interference and espionage from Russia, China, and Iran," and that these countries are "each in their own way pursuing their economic and strategic interests and seeking to harm our democratic institutions."

Last month, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped charges against former parliamentary researcher Chris Cash and others who were under investigation for collecting and passing information that could be useful to an enemy, citing insufficient evidence.

This led to allegations that the Starmer government chose not to provide key testimony that "the UK government views China as a threat to national security" in an effort to improve economic relations with China.

As the controversy continued, the Prime Minister’s Office released several witness statements from Matthew Collins, the Deputy National Security Adviser, on the 15th.

While these statements included a mention that "the government is committed to pursuing a positive economic relationship with China," they also contained content stating that "China's intelligence operations threaten the UK's economic prosperity, resilience, and the integrity of our democratic institutions," and that "(China) is the greatest state-based threat to the UK's economic security."

Yonhap News