We need zero tolerance towards foreign influence on our MPs

Raven on lampost at Houses of Parliament in early winter morning
Raven on lampost at Houses of Parliament in early winter morning - Alexey Fedoren

With international tensions rising in Ukraine and Gaza, and President-Elect Trump threatening a devastating trade war with China (among others), how Britain handles its diplomatic efforts has rarely been more important.

Yet two issues – one major and one fairly minor – have the potential to cause Britain’s allies as well as our own security agencies some major concerns at this sensitive juncture.

The minor one concerns Labour MP for Stockport, Navendu Mishra, who asked a series of written questions in parliament about India without declaring that he had received donations worth thousands of pounds from a range of Indian organisations. This seems to have been nothing more than an administrative oversight on Mishra’s part and there is no suggestion of any level of corruption.

A Labour spokesperson said Mishra had previously declared his interests when speaking in parliament and having failed to do so in respect of these written questions, he had notified the Commons registrar.

But they added: “As an MP of Indian heritage, the written parliamentary questions Navendu has tabled represent legitimate and longstanding interest in affairs related to India. They do not and have never represented any commercial interests.”

It hardly needs to be pointed out that an individual MP’s heritage has no relevance to which Commons rules he or she must follow. The party spokesperson was coming perilously close to evincing some politically-correct moral relativism, there, and as such it is not at all helpful to Mishra. But I’m sure that won’t happen again.

More worryingly (as reported by the Politico website) is news that a US-style register of “foreign influence-peddlers” operating in the UK has been delayed by the government as it seeks to reset relations with China. The Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) was due to have been launched this autumn by Conservative ministers, had the general election not got in the way. Now former ministers fear that Britain is softening its stance on China, especially after a low-key visit to Beijing by foreign secretary, David Lammy last week.

The FIRS scheme would require anybody carrying out political activities in the UK at the direction of a foreign power to sign a register. It has been years in the making and is supported by Britain’s intelligence services which have expressed fears about the threat posed to British interests by China.

The Home Office insists the scheme will go ahead in the New Year, but after years of cross-party consensus on the need for it, it has now become something of a political football, which is not good news  either for the government or for Britain’s allies. Simply put, those on the Conservative side responsible for bringing the scheme this far seem to have lost confidence in the Labour government’s determination to deliver a much-needed reform.

Politico also reports one government official asserting that the decision to pursue a change in approach to China has been influenced by the Treasury – another headache for the security services if they suspect that any “reset” in relations with Beijing could prioritise the balance of payments over national security.

Chinese influence among MPs has been a constant source of suspicion for many years, with allegations of MPs’ staff and other Commons pass-holders being linked to the Chinese state. Compared with such scandals, Navendu Mishra’s failure to declare a financial interest when tabling written questions about India might seem small beer.

But the necessarily informal nature of life in the Commons has led, over time, to an extremely lax approach to security; those familiar with the structure and status of the many all-party parliamentary groups that have been set up – some with opaque funding and secretariats – will recognise the potential dangers in granting too easy access to the parliamentary estate by individuals who have not been properly vetted.

If that relaxed approach has found its way upwards through Whitehall to the FCO and Downing Street, that would be a worrying development. When democracy’s enemies in North Korea and Russia are sabre-rattling and pointing accusatory fingers at the UK and its allies, we can hardly afford to lower our guard when it comes to China, or any other foreign nation, come to that.