Lammy Needled for Refusing to Publish Labour’s China Surrender Audit – Guido Fawkes

WATCH: Lammy Needled for Refusing to Publish Labour’s China Surrender Audit

David Lammy is currently in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, with committee chair Emily Thornberry taking him to task over the secret ‘China Audit’. Labour refused to publish the audit – despite promising to. Instead MPs and the public were only given three paragraphs in the National Security Strategy on the UK’s relationship with China…

Thornberry said:

“We are operating in the dark. Presumably there isn’t just an audit, there is a strategy coming from that. We haven’t seen the audit and we don’t know what’s in the strategy – which should apply to government, local government, business, universities and particularly the technology sector.”

Lammy refused to provide a clear reason as to why we know so little about the audit. Instead he said it is:

“Underpinned by several reviews including the national security review, the defence review and the industrial review. Three strategies all of which of course China runs across all of that. What I said to the House of Commons was that I do think we need more capability in the China area.”

Asked what percentage of staff within the FCDO would be focusing on the China “strategy” in the next few years, Lammy again refused to answer, instead saying that anything on “staffing matters” was a question for the Permanent Secretary. Golden Keir-A going pretty much as expected…