Markus Andrews

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell appeared in court on Tuesday to support a Labour MP charged with three counts of housing fraud, praising her as a “hard working” and “very good person”.He was questioned by prosecutors on the second day of Apsana Begum’s trial, amid accusations the Poplar and Limehouse MP jumped the queue by claiming she was living in “overcrowded conditions” when she was in fact residing at a four-bedroom house with three other people.Ms Begum, who has held the east London seat since 2019, told jurors at Snaresbrook Crown Court she believed multiple bids for council properties carried out in her name were made by her “controlling” ex-husband.She added that Ehtashamul Haque, from whom she split less than two years after the pair moved in together, often kept things from her, including his tendency to drink heavily.Ms Begum acknowledged that she had moved in with ex-partner in June 2013 so no longer needed to apply for social housing, but jurors heard how offers for properties continued to be made on her housing account.“I think it may have been my ex-husband,” Ms Begum said. “He did have access to a lot of my things by that time. I had taken a loan out for him [and] he did create an email address for me, and we had a password that was shared.”When pushed by prosecutor James Marsland, she admitted that her ex “did know I had had an application for housing before”. Taking the stand as a character witness for Ms Begum, Mr McDonnell said his colleague was so “hard working” that he considered offering her a minister’s position if Labour won the 2019 general election.“I was hoping if we were elected, I would like to add her to my ministerial team … as a parliamentary private secretary,” Mr McDonnell said, adding: “I’ve worked with her quite closely in Parliament. I think she comes across as always wanting to do the right thing [and] I always describe her as a very good person.”Mr McDonnell, the MP for Hayes and Harlington, who was the shadow chancellor of the exchequer in the five years to 2020, said he met Ms Begum during her 2019 campaign to represent Poplar and Limehouse, which she went on to win. “I thought she was a very straightforward, sincere, committed person, very keen to represent the local community,” he told the court. Asked by Mr Marsland, the prosecutor, if Ms Begum was a “good political operator”, Mr McDonnell batted the term away and said “in some respects [it] would be derogatory”.“I think she relates to people well and I think she can put a good argument,” he instead put forward to the court. “You have to win people [over] with honesty and sincerity, and I think that’s what she’s done, not just in my own political party but across the house as well.” More

Britain’s most senior police officers were not consulted about Boris Johnson’s new plan to “beat crime” – or even aware it was being drawn up, The Independent can reveal.The measures, which the prime minister unveiled on Tuesday, include electronic tags on burglars, longer sentences for some crimes, and an extension of controversial blanket stop-and-search powers.But police bodies and victims’ advocates say they were not involved in the formulation of the “beating crime plan”, and were only sent the full details on Tuesday – a day after it had been distributed to members of the media.The 50-page document is believed to have been written by central government in a matter of days, and contains some measures that had not been requested by criminal justice agencies or experts.Anger is also growing among rank-and-file police officers, who lashed out at government “gimmicks” days after a vote of no confidence in the home secretary, Priti Patel, over a pay freeze.Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which represents the country’s most senior officers, said on Tuesday: “We received the plan today and will now be reviewing it carefully to understand how we deliver it operationally.”He said it appeared to contain a mix of issues where police had previously engaged with the government and “some new ideas”. Neither the NPCC, the Police Federation, the Police Superintendents’ Association nor the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners were formally consulted on the plan.Police chiefs were first informed of its existence, but not its full contents, in a briefing with the policing minister Kit Malthouse on Monday evening.The shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, told The Independent: “This just goes to show how out of touch, arrogant and dismissive of policing this Conservative government are. Little wonder that the plan itself is paper-thin and contains nothing new.“To not even consult officers on a plan for policing is ridiculous – perhaps they were worried about picking up the phone after the insulting zero per cent pay award offered this week.”Boris Johnson says stop and search policy is ‘kind and loving’In a letter delivered by hand to Downing Street on Tuesday afternoon, the Police Federation said its 130,000 members were “sick of gimmicks and government contempt for police”.“Just this weekend, we found out through a Sunday newspaper column about a new so-called beating crime plan,” said the letter to the prime minister.“We don’t need old ideas presented as new. We need genuine investment for the whole of the criminal justice system and genuine consultation over new ideas. Without that, this is just another ill-thought-out initiative.”Senior officers said many measures in the plan, including making the contact details of neighbourhood police officers available, were already in place, and money pledged for violence reduction units had already been spent.The £31m expansion of a project to reduce offending driven by drug addiction had been requested by senior police officers, but a controversial expansion of stop-and-search powers was not. When asked why a consultation had not taken place, the Home Office claimed it had been “talking to” the NPCC, senior officers and the National Crime Agency about the plan since late May.The government’s plan will relax the conditions needed for police to stop people without suspicion – a practice that critics say is ineffective and racially disproportionate – although the results of a 2019 pilot of the changes have never been published.Senior police officers, including the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, have been vocal in their support of “intelligence-led” stop and search, but the section 60 powers being expanded allow anyone in a designated area to be searched if there are fears of violence.The plan also promises “league tables” for the time that local forces take to answer 101 and 999 calls, but critics have questioned how useful the measure would be in judging the quality of police responses.In a foreword to the plan, Ms Patel and the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, hailed it as the government’s “blueprint for cutting crime, increasing confidence in the criminal justice system as a whole and putting victims first”.However, victims’ advocates said they had not been consulted ahead of the document’s publication. Claire Waxman, the victims’ commissioner for London, said the proposals showed a “disappointing lack of commitment to victims” and would not ensure they receive justice.“Despite referencing victims over 100 times throughout this plan, there is very little of substance that will actually lead to an improved journey through the justice system,” she said.“How can we plan to send a higher volume of people through the system when the length of time for investigations, charging decisions and court dates are at an all-time high?”Downing Street did not answer The Independent’s questions on allegations that the plan was drawn up in a matter of days without consultation with police, but insisted it contained new measures and a “fresh commitment to the country, as we build back from the pandemic, to have less crime, fewer victims and a safer society”.The Home Office said: “Working hand in hand with the police has been a cornerstone of this government’s plans to deliver less crime, fewer victims and a safer society. Over the past two years, we have been working with the police to tackle homicide, serious violence, and neighbourhood crime.” More

A government scheme to beat the “pingdemic” by exempting essential workers from self-isolation has been denounced as a shambles, as small businesses warned they were facing frustration and delays in trying to sign up staff.Ministers last week announced 800 daily testing sites would be set up around the country to allow double-vaccinated workers in the food industry and emergency services to show they are safe to work, and a further 1,200 were announced on Monday as the scheme was expanded to include jobs including binmen, prison warders and energy workers.Some 500 are supposed to be operational by the end of this week, with only a few dozen thought to be up and running now. But representatives of small businesses said they had struggled to find lists of venues for workers to take PCR tests, and the Department of Health was unable to provide The Independent with a figure for how many have so far been set up.The national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, Mike Cherry, said that when the daily testing scheme was announced last week, many firms hoped it would end problems caused by staff being identified as contacts of Covid-positive people and told to stay home ahead of the 16 August date for all double-jabbed adults to be exempted from self-isolation.But he said they had been “disappointed” by the bureaucratic burden of applying for exemptions and the limited number of workers who appear to be eligible. And he warned that “countless” businesses could be put at risk as a result.“The increasing list of those allowed to take a PCR test after being pinged does not include the vast majority of small business workplaces,” said Mr Cherry. “Those that hope that they do fall into scope are finding out that they do not.“For a small business without a big HR or legal department, that does not have an account manager within a government department like a large business does to ask and manage the process, the exemption application process is demanding and hard to navigate.“A fundamental question is, how are we defining ‘essential’? One of the many lessons of the pandemic has been how interconnected our economy is – it’s no good getting food and essential supplies to remote convenience stores if those stores are shut because all the staff have been pinged and they’re not classed as essential.“Unless these issues are sorted, and sorted rapidly, we risk undoing provisional progress towards recovery, putting the ‘staycation summer’ at risk, while endangering countless businesses.”Road Haulage Association managing director for policy and public affairs Rod McKenzie told The Independent: “It’s a shambles.“What hauliers are telling us is that it is too complicated, it’s too hard to understand what you have to do and work out whether you are exempt or not.”Mr McKenzie said government had been “secretive” about the number of testing sites which have been set up and where they can be found.With just three weeks to go until the 16 August date for lifting the threat of self-isolation for the double-vaccinated, he said many truckers viewed the time and effort required to register for exemption as more trouble than it was worth.“Our members find it confusing and bureaucratic and a lot of them are just not bothering to apply,” he said. “These guys were essential workers before, they are essential now. We’re seeing empty shelves in supermarkets which are used to two or three deliveries a day and are maybe only getting one. If they are double-jabbed and they’re testing negative, why not let them work?”Food wholesalers Birchall Foodservice of Burnley, which supplies care homes, hospices, hospitals, schools and colleges as well as restaurant, said they were “completely in the dark” about how to access teh exemption scheme for their staff.HR manager Krissy Fremont told Radio 4’s Today: “There’s still a total lack of detail. We were told yesterday the government would directly contact wholesale food service providers that were going to be on the list, and we haven’t been contacted.“We were given an email to contact and ask if we were on the list. I did that yesterday and got an automated response saying ‘We’re receiving a high volume of emails, we’ll get back to you’. So we’re as much in the dark as we were.”Ms Fremont said that she and other office workers had been out in vans making deliveries to ensure that customers did not miss out because drivers were absent after being pinged.“Our care sector can be anything from a care home to a hospice or some levels of hospital, so these are vulnerable people who need their food deliveries,” she said. “We support holiday hunger campaigns for children receiving free school meals and without our deliveries those children aren’t going to get those meals.”Labour’s shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon said: “Ministers have been told time and time again that their short-term fixes are merely a sticking plaster on a crisis that is only going to worsen.“They must act fast to clear the testing backlog and boost driver recruitment before the impact on workers and consumers becomes critical. Boris Johnson’s usual corner-cutting approach is simply not good enough.”The Department for Transport did not respond to The Independent’s request for a comment on suggestions the scheme was a “shambles” and there was no immediate reply to requests for details of the number and location of testing sites. More

Britain’s disability employment gap has been “made worse” by the coronavirus pandemic, with disabled workers more likely to be furloughed or have their hours reduced, Labour has said.Speaking on the eve of the government launching its national strategy for disabled people, Labour’s chair Anneliese Dodds said there is “a big issue in the UK” around the employment of disabled people, with a 28.6% gap in employment between disabled and non-disabled people.“In many respects, that’s been made worse during the [coronavirus] crisis, and we’re saying to the government, you’ve got to take action here. People want to be able to work.”The Oxford East MP’s comments came as she visited Nuneaton Signs in Warwickshire, a social enterprise that employs almost 30 disabled people and those with mental health conditions, to announce Labour’s pledge to end insecure work and introduce employment rights from day one.With almost one in five disabled workers in Nuneaton currently unemployed, the Oxford East MP also conceded that there is “a huge amount that needs to be done” to address employment for disabled people.“We’ve said, first of all, that when it comes to every employment-focused policy, with all of the Covid-related measures, that they should have had an assessment of their impact on equality and disabled people from the very, very beginning.“We simply didn’t, there’s been no assessment of their impact, and actually, we’ve seen in many cases, disabled people are more likely to be put on furlough, who are really worried about their futures, so the government’s got to think again there.”It follows an announcement on Monday that Labour would create a single ‘worker’ status for all employees except those who are self-employed, with rights issued to them from their first day on the job.It’s one of five principles being put forward by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of his shadow cabinet across the summer, with other policies including a job guarantee for young people, a £10 minimum wage and the right to flexible working.Ms Dodds, who also leads on the party’s post-coronavirus Stronger Together campaign, added: “Far too often, what we’ve seen is flexibility purely for the employer, and not for the employee. That’s been the situation for a very long time and it’s got worse during the crisis. That’s why Labour’s setting out today a new deal for working people.“There should be that security from your first day in work, and actually, many, many employers support this, because they know when they’ve got a stable workforce who are committed, then actually, that’s great for morale, that’s great for productivity, that’s great for the profitability of the business, and that’s what we need to see in our country.”Michelle Knight, a wheelchair user who works in sales and marketing at Nuneaton Signs, said staff are “like a little family” in the business.“I don’t feel, with being in the chair and everything, I don’t feel like an outsider. I feel comfortable in my disability being here.”In a statement, Justin Tomlinson MP, the minister for disabled people, said: “This Conservative Government have delivered record disability employment and has set an ambitious target to get 1 million more disabled people in work by 2027. “Even during the unprecedented challenge of Covid over the last year – the disability employment gap has closed further.“Our support through the Covid pandemic was one of the most generous in the world and we will continue to support people as we recover though our multi-billion-pound Plan for Jobs – supporting disabled jobseekers to find and retain fulfilling careers.” More

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove has branded those who refuse a Covid vaccine “selfish” and insisted that they face being barred from mass events.Boris Johnson’s government is mulling the use of vaccine passports for big events such as football matches – having already announced they will be required for nightclubs and other crowded spaces in England from the end of September.Mr Gove risked the wrath of Tory MPs firmly opposed to mandatory use of vaccine passports by warning those who refuse to be jabbed that they may not be able to access mass events.“Ultimately, if you can be vaccinated and you refuse to, that is a selfish act,” said Mr Gove during a visit to the Lighthouse Lab in Glasgow. “You’re putting other people’s health and lives at risk – you should get vaccinated.”When asked if refusal to be jabbed should prevent attendance at some mass events, the Cabinet Office minister said: “It depends on which part of the United Kingdom you’re in and what the nature of the event is.“But if you deliberately refuse to get vaccinated and there are certain venues and certain events that require a certain level of safety, then the terms in which you will be able to get into those venues … those events will be barred to you.”Suggesting some form of mandatory Covid certification was necessary, Mr Gove pushed for cooperation across the UK – but stressed it would be for the devolved administrations to make their decisions on the matter.“I think that the more we collaborate on this, the better,” he said. “The Scottish government will decide for itself what form of Covid status certification they believe is right.“We’ve worked well with the Scottish government so far, but I think that people would expect there to be, in the same way we’ve got the same access to NHS services across the United Kingdom, the same access to certification, that would be the ideal, but it’s for the Scottish government to decide.”Influential backbench Tory MP Steve Baker said the issue of vaccine passports could cause a major rift in the party, following reports the government was considering a plan that would require students in England to be double jabbed before returning to universities.“It is an outrageous proposal, and one that doesn’t seem likely to do any good,” said Mr Baker, deputy chair of the Covid Research Group (CRG) told The Sun.“I believe the government is in terrible danger of splitting the Tory party irretrievably, after all we have been through with Brexit.”A group of more than 40 Tory MPs have signed a petition launched by privacy rights group Big Brother Watch against Covid status certification denying individuals “access to general services, businesses or jobs”. Dozens of Labour and Lib Dem MPs have also signed the declaration.But Mr Gove rejected the idea of split in the Conservatives over the issue. “We’re going to do what’s right for public health.“I think that Covid certification in certain limited venues and for certain limited events is a way of making people safer and giving more of us more freedom,” he added. More

Boris Johnson warned the public not to get carried away by a week of falling Covid case numbers, as scientists and NHS leaders also urged caution over the welcome trend.The latest government data showed the daily number of Covid cases recorded in the UK fell for a seventh day in a row – but the prime minister stressed the pandemic was far from over.“It is very, very important that we don’t allow ourselves to run away with premature conclusions about this,” Mr Johnson told broadcasters on Tuesday.The prime minister pointed out that it would take a while for the lifting of restrictions in England on 19 July to feed through to the data. “People have got to remain very cautious and that remains the approach of the government.”Health experts warned that the country remained in the grip of a “third wave” of coronavirus, pointing to 131 further deaths reported within 28 days of a positive test – the highest daily figure since March.Public Health England’s medical director Dr Yvonne Doyle said: “This is in part due to the high number of cases recorded in recent weeks. We know deaths follow when there are a high number of cases, and data today highlights we are still in the third wave.”Scientists have suggested that the closure of schools for summer, the end of the Euro 2020 tournament and warmer weather might have reduced social mixing indoors and therefore Covid transmission levels.Some have suggested a growing reluctance to get tested could have contributed to the surprising fall in case numbers. Dr Christopher Jewel, a member of the government’s Sage Spi-M modelling group said some people “may be less inclined to get tested if they have summer holidays booked”.Professor Graham Medley, chair of the Sage Spi-M modelling group, said the fact that so many people have been “pinged” by the NHS Covid app and told to self-isolate could have brought case numbers down.“The pingdemic meant a lot of people isolating, and you can’t get infected if you are isolating so a side effect of the pingdemic might be to reduce infection rates,” said Prof Medley. “We will see in the coming days if hospital admissions start to fall.”The UK recorded 23,511 Covid cases on Tuesday, dropping for a seventh day in a row. It is the first time this has happened since comparable figures began last summer. But the fall in cases has not yet led to a fall in hospitalisations. NHS chiefs have warned they are under similar levels of pressure as at the height of the pandemic in January. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said hospitalisations from Covid illness was still rising, while the health service attempted to go “full pelt on the backlog recovery”.Professor Neil Ferguson, a member of the government’s Sage group, warned a “resurgence” in the virus was still possible in the weeks ahead. The Imperial College epidemiologist said it would be “several more weeks” before the full impact of the 19 July unlocking in England is known.Despite the encouraging data on Covid infection levels, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove vowed to plough ahead with plans for compulsory “vaccine passports” – branding all those who refuse a vaccine “selfish”.Mr Gove risked the wrath of Tory MPs firmly opposed to mandatory use of vaccine certification by warning those who refuse to be jabbed that they may not be able to access mass events.The government is mulling the use of vaccine passports for big events such as football matches – having already announced they will be required for nightclubs and other crowded venues in England from the end of September.The senior cabinet minister said some events “will be barred to you” if “you deliberately refuse to get vaccinated”. Mr Gove also said he was still pushing for co-operation across the four nations of the UK on Covid certification.Influential Conservative MP Steve Baker warned that vaccine passports could cause a major rift in the party, following reports the government was considering a plan which would require students to be double-jabbed before they are allowed to return to university campuses.“It is an outrageous proposal, and one that doesn’t seem likely to do any good,” said Mr Baker, deputy chair of the Covid Research Group (CRG) told The Sun. “I believe the government is in terrible danger of splitting the Tory Party irretrievably.”Mr Johnson attempted to smooth over a row about vaccination at universities, after he was accused of blaming students for the relatively low vaccine take-up rates among young people.“I think that the young people of this country are doing an incredible job of coming forward to get vaccinations,” he told reporters, declining to confirm or deny reports that unvaccinated students might be banned from lectures and halls of residence.The prime minister added: “The figures are outstanding. It’s almost 70 per cent now of 18 to 20 year-olds who have come forward to get jabs. It’s just wonderful.”Meanwhile, GPs and hospitals were told that all children 12 and over who are eligible for a Covid vaccine must receive it before the start of the new school term.The instruction from NHS bosses came as figures showed record numbers of pupils had been forced out of classrooms due to coronavirus just before the summer break.A record 1.13 million children in England were out of school for Covid-related reasons towards the end of term, government figures released on Tuesday showed. Around 994,000 children self-isolated due to a possible contact with a Covid case. More

Boris Johnson’s cuts to international aid look set to undermine his efforts to secure pledges of $5billion for education in the developing world at an international summit being chaired by the UK this week, campaigners have warned.There are fears that the recent Commons vote to indefinitely extend the cut – from the United Nations target of 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of GDP – has hit the UK’s “diplomatic muscle” said the development movement One.The campaign’s UK advocacy head Lis Wallace told The Independent that Mr Johnson was on track to fall as much as $1bn short of the money needed to fund the Global Partnership for Education over the coming five years, putting learning for 175m boys and girls at risk.She said that failure to hit the target at the London summit on Thursday would amount to a judgement on the UK’s decision to slice £4bn a year from its aid budget in response to the financial crisis caused by the Covid pandemic.And she warned that, coming after a G7 summit in Cornwall which fell short of expectations, missing the target would set a bad precedent for Mr Johnson’s most high-profile foray onto the international stage this year, when he hosts the UN COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November.“When a government hosts these moments there are expectations,” said Ms Wallace. “We look to them to set the bar, to step up and ask other governments to match that kind of level of ambition.“It’s a big test of our diplomatic muscle as a country. And it’s happening in the context of the aid cuts and in the context of a parliamentary vote which makes the cuts semi-permanent. That does send a signal to other countries – at the very time that we’re asking them to step up, it looks like we’re stepping back.”Polling for One suggested that failure at an international summit would reflect badly on Mr Johnson, with 65 per cent saying that having volunteered to host the gathering, it is his personal responsibility to ensure it succeeds, against just 7 per cent who disagreed.A majority (61 per cent) said Britain was at its best when it shows it is serious about tackling global issues and plays a leading role in tackling the world’s problems.And more than half (54 per cent) agreed that other countries were more likely to make big commitments at a summit hosted by the UK if Britain itself sets an example.Mr Johnson’s pledge of £430m for the Global Partnership for Education, announced at the G7 summit, fell short of the £600m sought by some civil society organisations.It formed part of an overall promise of at least $2.75bn agreed by G7 leaders in Cornwall, also including €700m from the EU, leaving a further $2.25bn to be raised from non-G7 donors, likely to include Australia, China and Scandinavian countries.Some 68 per cent of those questioned in the poll agreed there was a “moral obligation” on richer countries to ensure every child receives a good education, against just 9 per cent who disagreed. And 53 per cent rejected the idea that it does not matter whether children in poorer countries get a good education or not, against 23 per cent who agreed.Ms Wallace said: “As an organisation, we were disappointed at the outcome of the G7, which did not come up with a plan to end the Covid pandemic and made commitments to share vaccines which were too little, too late. It looks like we are going to miss the mark at the global education summit, and that doesn’t bode well for COP.“It seems that, when it comes to our diplomatic efforts, the aid cuts mean we have one hand, if not both hands, tied behind our back when we are asking others to put money in.”But a Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The target of $5bn has always been a five-year target. At the last Global Partnership for Education replenishment summit in 2018 around 80 per cent of the funding was raised at the summit itself, with the rest coming in across the lifetime of the replenishment period.“The UK is the largest bilateral donor to the replenishment. We have committed £430m towards the Global Partnership for Education’s replenishment ahead of the Global Education Summit in London later this week. This is our highest ever pledge, with an uplift of 15 per cent.” More

A senior trade adviser to Boris Johnson has said that he expects the sale of a Welsh semiconductor firm to a Chinese-owned company to be blocked, after the prime minister asked his national security adviser to review it.Tony Abbott, who is also the former Australian prime minister, said that his country would not allow a deal like Nexperia’s £63m takeover of Newport Wafer Fab, and believed that the UK was now “obviously … moving in a comparable direction”.In a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank, Mr Abbott – who serves as an external adviser to Mr Johnson’s Board of Trade – said that western countries would be “most unwise” to sell technology businesses to China.Every Chinese business is “subject to direction” from the Communist regime in Beijing which regards trade as “a strategic weapon to be turned on and off like a tap to reward friends and to punish foes” in a “new Cold War”, he warned.He also said that western nations should each be conducting a national audit to determine which resources are essential to deliver a “reasonable life” and should be entrusted only to close allies to provide.Asked by The Independent whether this meant that the Newport Wafer Fab deal should be blocked, he replied: “We have this thing called the Foreign Investment Review Board [in Australia], which has a pretty wide remit to examine all significant foreign investments from a national interest perspective.“Pretty clearly, the sort of purchase that is currently contemplated here in Britain would not go ahead, were it happening in Australia.“But I also think now that the PM’s national security adviser is looking at it here, obviously Britain is moving in a comparable direction.”Nexperia’s bid for NWF will safeguard 400 jobs at the company’s factory in south Wales, but has raised concerns because the facility manufactures crucial power components for cars that have been in limited supply amid a global shortage of microchips.Netherlands-based Nexperia is owned by Chinese electronics company Wingtech, whose shareholders are understood to include state-funded investors.After initially refusing to intervene in the proposed sale, Mr Johnson told MPs on 7 July that he had asked national security adviser Sir Stephen Lovegrove to look at it again.The PM told the Commons Liaison Committee: “We have to judge whether the stuff that they are making is of real intellectual property value and interest to China, whether there are real security implications. I have asked the national security adviser to look at it.”The former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, this week said that the purchase poses a greater threat to British interests than Huawei’s involvement in the 5G network.Commons Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat has previously warned that the UK was “turning a blind eye to Britain’s largest semiconductor foundry falling into the hands of an entity from a country that has a track record of using technology to create geopolitical leverage”.Mr Abbott told Policy Exchange today that the economic rise of China had allowed half a billion of its inhabitants to join the middle classes and had provided a stream of cheap consumer goods for the rest of the world.But he warned that circumstances had changed since his own government sealed a trade deal with China in 2014.A newly aggressive China under Xi Jinping is asserting itself in what was likely to become “a new Cold War against a strategic competitor that’s far more formidable than the old Soviet Union because it’s been increasingly embedded inside the global economy and can bring economic as well as military pressure to bear against its targets,” he warned.“Barring a change of dynasty in Beijing, China is likely to be the challenge of the century, with big implications for economics as well as for security.” Mr Abbott said that under President Xi, China was “absolutely set on becoming the world’s number one power”.He also said that democratic countries must be “much more careful about becoming economically dependent on China, and about exchanges with China that have far more long-term value for them than for us”.He added: “It would be most unwise, for instance, to sell technology businesses to Chinese interests – notwithstanding mutual goodwill between Chinese buyers and Western sellers – because in the end, every Chinese business is subject to the direction of the Beijing government in a way that no western country’s businesses are.“Likewise university collaborations, at least in the hard sciences, however beneficial they might ultimately be for global knowledge and understanding probably shouldn’t be seen as too much of a one way street.”Every business should be concerned to “minimise the critical place that Chinese intermediate goods might have in our supply chains, lest they be denied just when they’re needed most”, he warned.And countries should conduct a national audit to decide “what’s needed to maintain a reasonable life in an emergency, what they need to be able to do for themselves or should stockpile, what they’re happy to trust close allies to provide and what they’re happy to obtain from the wider world because swift supply is not critical”, he said. More