Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what precautionary measures they have taken to increase the resilience of cables in the area of the new Chinese embassy in London; and what steps they have taken to move critical communications cables running across or near the site.

National security is the first duty of any Government, and that is why the intelligence and security agencies have been absolutely integral in determining the necessary mitigations for any risks associated with the new site for the Chinese Embassy.

While it would not be appropriate for the Government to provide detail of those mitigations, the Director of GCHQ and Director General of MI5 publicly wrote to the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary on 20 January making clear that “the package of mitigations deals acceptably with a wide range of sensitive national security issues, including cabling.