Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 10 November 2022 to Question 77322 on China: Intelligence Services, what estimate her Department has made of the (a) number of undeclared police stations in the UK and (b) support offered to them by the Chinese Government.

As I said to the House in my statement on 1 November, reports of undeclared ‘police stations’ in the UK are of course very concerning and are taken extremely seriously. Any foreign country operating on UK soil must abide by UK law.

Home Office officials are in regular contact with the police. They are investigating allegations of unlawful activity. It would be inappropriate for me to comment further on operational matters.

As I said to the House on 1 November, I will provide an update on the work relating to transnational repression in due course.