The UK communities secretary, Steve Reed, has given permission for China to build a vast new embassy near the Tower of London after spy chiefs told him that the risks to national security could be controlled and dealt with.
The decision paves the way for Keir Starmer to visit Beijing in the coming weeks – though local residents plan to legally challenge the decision, potentially delaying the development by months or years.
“Ethical or similar objections to the provision of an embassy for a specific country cannot be a material planning consideration,” Reed said, as he largely endorsed a report from the department’s Planning Inspectorate.
MPs from across the political spectrum have voiced their opposition to the application, although the security services have said they can handle the risks of espionage that may stem from the enlarged site, which sits close to data cables that run to the City of London.
Reed noted that neither the Home Office nor the Foreign Office, having discussed the issue with the police and the intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6, had any site-specific security concerns that would justify blocking the development.
“No bodies with responsibility for national security, including HO and FCDO [the Home Office and Foreign Office], have raised concerns or objected to the proposal on the basis of the proximity of the cables or other underground infrastructure,” Reed said. Nor had the owners of the cables raised any concerns with the minister, he added.
Shortly after, the government published a joint letter from two leading spy officials, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, and Anne Keast-Butler, the head of GCHQ, providing an overview of the national security risks posed by the embassy and whether they could, in their view, be managed.
In the letter, they said: “It is not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate each and every potential risk,” but added they had been able “to formulate a package of national security mitigations”, by working with officials across government, that was “expert, professional and proportionate”.
That conclusion was endorsed by the cross-party intelligence and security committee, but its chair, Lord Beamish, complained that the process by which spy agencies informed the planning decision “was not effectively coordinated, nor was it as robust as we would have expected for a matter of such consequence”.
The Labour peer said there was a lack of clarity as to the role that national security considerations played and that “key reports lacked the detail necessary, were dealt with piecemeal, and appeared not to have been kept up to date”. The committee would be writing to the prime minister to set out its concerns.
Critics of the site say its size – the embassy site would be the largest in Europe, hosting more than 200 staff – means it would become a hub for Chinese espionage and intimidation of dissidents, including from Hong Kong – and a target for large, hard-to-police protests.
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, accused Keir Starmer of a “shameful super-embassy surrender”. The Conservative MP said the prime minister was giving China’s president, Xi Jinping, “what he wants – a colossal spy hub in the heart of our capital”.
Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative party leader who is a co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, also accused Reed of ignoring security warnings and wider considerations.
“This is a terrible decision that ignores the appalling brutality of the Chinese Communist party as it practises forced labour at home and spies on the UK and uses cyber-attacks to damage our internal security,” he said.
But Reed said China had agreed to consolidate seven existing diplomatic sites into one once the new embassy was built – which MI5 has indicated would make monitoring of the site easier.
Any spying on the UK, harassment of dissidents or surveillance conducted by China from the embassy site could be dealt with by “other legal processes and by various agencies” and could not be controlled “through the planning system”, Reed concluded in a 23-page letter released on Tuesday morning.
People living next to the site said they hoped to seek a judicial review if they could raise £145,000 to fund legal representation. Mark Nygate, the treasurer of Royal Mint Court residents’ association, said: “The residents are determined to keep fighting today’s decision.”
Former head of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre Ciaran Martin said on Sunday that the British intelligence agencies would not allow the “mega embassy” to go ahead if it posed unmanageable risks.
Although officials say there has been no political input in the planning process, the green light is likely to smooth relations before Starmer’s visit to China, expected at the end of January.
Beijing has made the embassy a priority in the UK-China relationship. Xi raised the matter directly with the prime minister in their first phone call in August 2024.
The UK’s plans to redevelop its own outpost in China’s capital have been blocked for years by Xi’s government because of the London embassy row.
