UK clears China’s mega-embassy plan with conditions (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The British government has given approval for China to build a huge new embassy in central London, subject to some conditions. The decision had been delayed twice over national security concerns. The site is near London's financial district and some politicians fear it could be used as a base for spying. The approval was announced before an expected visit to China by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In the last hour, the head of Britain's security service, MI5, has said it's not realistic to expect to be able to eliminate each and every potential risk linked to the new embassy. Our political correspondent Damian Gramaticus has this update.

[00:00:35] Speaker 2: The indications had been, despite all of the arguments and the controversy around this plan, the indications had been that the government was minded to approve it and the biggest signal we got of that was late last year when Downing Street kind of indicated that the security services, the UK security services had looked at this plan and had not raised any objections and that was crucial because a lot of the objections revolve around the positioning right next to the Tower of London, a very sort of prominent site, this huge building that once housed the Royal Mint where the national currency was made, but also that site is right next to routes that carry underground data cables for the City of London. There was a concern about China being able to access those from the premises. What we've got now, the planning decision from the housing secretary, Steve Reid, who in his job as housing secretary, the government brought this decision in-house, they took it away from the local council who'd already rejected it once, and the decision we've just had is that the government is approving this plan to go ahead for this what's being called mega embassy, subject it says to some conditions. I've just been looking through trying to read those conditions. I haven't got through to all of them but some of them relate to some of the concerns that have been raised that this site, this very prominent site, is right opposite the Tower of London. It's a very busy tourist part of London and local residents whose houses actually would form part of the site and adjacent to it have been very worried about the fact that it will, protests will happen in the area. Those who are opposed to the Chinese communist government and so groups like Tibetans, pro-democracy campaigners, Hong Kong is an exile, and that there will be possible large demonstrations and security risks. Some of the conditions here are around what would have to be done in the area, in the kind of modelling landscaping of the area to deal with those protests and security risks. That's part of what has been the conditions approved. I haven't got to the other conditions yet but the inter-important thing with all of this I think is that this is a very politically sensitive decision for the government here because of the opposition from the Conservatives, from the Liberal Democrats, from Reform UK, from all of the opposition parties who said that this shouldn't go ahead because the security risks to China accessing underground cables, the fact that it would give China such a huge prominent site in the heart of London and that this could become a base for spying operations and influence operations targeting Chinese dissidents abroad. The UK government's position had been that it's better to have China all on one site, all its diplomats and representatives in London operating from one site and that the security risks it appeared could be managed. Now it seems that the the Housing Secretary has looked at the results of, there was a whole planning inquiry, he's looked at the results of that, he said he agrees with the planning inspector and he has approved this to go ahead.