Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department plans to take with respect to former RAF pilots who have helped to train the People’s Republic of China’s military personnel.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) are taking a range of measures to dissuade current and former UK pilots from being recruited.

The Department is issuing threat guidance to personnel at risk of being approached and are reminding personnel of their obligations to protect sensitive information acquired during their tenure as crown or civil servants and will be looking at options to tighten the contractual obligations of Service leavers and are also encouraging the reporting of any recruitment activity targeting pilots or any other specialist area of Defence. The alert has been issued to relevant personnel across Defence, including to partners in Defence industry. MOD are also actively sharing information with key allies.

The MOD has no evidence that anyone has breached the high threshold of the Officials Secrets Act (OSA), but if any evidence were to be forthcoming, we would not hesitate to bring criminal charges. The Department takes this matter extremely seriously and are actively taking measures to deter future recruitment as well as engaging with the individuals already involved to ensure they are fully aware of the risk of prosecution under the OSA.

The Government's National Security Bill (led by the Home Office) will capture a range of relevant activity and provide additional possible routes to prosecution. A review of the use of confidentiality agreements is being conducted across Defence, with the aim of providing additional contractual levers to prevent individuals breaching security.