MI5 and the police have been working hard to close down Chinese and Iranian spying operations, security minister Tom Tugendhat has said.
He told GB News: “So [MI5 Director General] Ken McCallum has been very clear for a long time now that Iranian activity in the United Kingdom has been at best deeply unhelpful, at worst actively threatening and it has been a problem now for a number of years.
“And what he has done and what police officers have done is close down Iranian actions here in the UK and I’m very proud of their work.
“He also warned, quite rightly, about Chinese espionage inside the United Kingdom. And again, we’ve been working to close down those routes and those avenues extremely quickly.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Stephen Dixon and Isabel Webster, he continued: “What he’s also pointing to is the fact that tensions around the world can increase tensions at home and can lead to radicalisation and that’s really a matter for JTAC, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre.
“Because what they’ll do is they’ll look at the various different feeds, the intelligence feeds, the police feeds, community feeds that they have to make sure that we are postured correctly to respond.
“And that’s where I’m not going to get involved in that because it’s quite clearly a very technical decision. But what I am doing is keeping a very close eye on it and making sure the right questions are being asked.
Asked if the BBC’s reporting has increased tensions, he said: “I’m saying that speculation at various different points can lead to an increase in tensions and certainly everybody is very emotional about this.
“Many different people are very emotional and quite rightly [and] feeling very alert because of the events in the Middle East. And fanning those flames helps nobody.”
