UK ministers have failed to act on national security threats posed by university research projects linked to the Chinese state, it has been claimed.
An internal audit carried out on Whitehall found that there was an “extremely high risk” of sensitive information being obtained by Beijing, the Commons was told during prime minister’s questions.
Stewart McDonald, an SNP MP, said the audit “flagged up hundreds of programmes as being at high risk of potentially being used by the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] for military use, and other applications in strategic and sensitive areas as being of high interest to an authoritarian regime such as China”.
He said: “A smaller proportion was judged to be extremely high risk.
