Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, tells the Observer he advised Tories to criminalise foreign agents in 2019
Ministers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting
On 13 December, court papers revealed that a businessman accused of being a Chinese spy had become “a close confidant” of the Duke of York, Prince Andrew. It emerged that Andrew hadIn 2019, the ISC recommended ministers make it a criminal offence to act as an agent of a foreign power without disclosing that fact. If parliament had adopted the new law, foreign agents could be arrested.
This makes him vulnerable to such approaches, according to the author Andrew Lownie, who is writing a biography about Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.The Duke of York’s tangle with an alleged Chinese spy comes a month after Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the UK needs a “strong UK-China relationship” after meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, at the G20 summit.
He said: “For too long royal finances have been shrouded in secrecy. It is clear from the various scandals surrounding not just Andrew but other members of the royal family they cannot be trusted to police themselves.
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