Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has said the targeting of MPs by suspected Chinese agent Christine Lee was ‘just the tip of the iceberg’.
In an interview with Sky News‘ Trevor Phillips On Sunday programme today, he said that ‘successive governments have been completely asleep at the wheel’ over the issue.
‘China, over the years, has so dominated us in a way that we are now completely dependent on them on a whole series of items and articles.
‘Far too many officials and ex-ministers then left and retired and gone and taken money from China, so the very fact that they are in trying to persuade and infiltrate and subvert people within our political system is nothing new at all, but the worst bit about it is that too many governments seem too cautious about calling it out.’
Mr Duncan Smith said it was ‘very important that we recognise China as a threat, not as a competitor’.
He called China’s ruling communist party a ‘brutal, dictatorial, ghastly regime’.
