On 18th November, Britain, through its MI5 security agency, alerted members of parliament against efforts by Chinese agents to gather information and influence operations, which is contained in an email sent to lawmakers by the agency, which was accessed by Reuters.

The caution follows prosecutors who, in October, declared they had to give up an experiment of two British nationals accused of spying on parliament members on behalf of China since the British government had not supplied them with proof that Beijing threatened its national security.

A fresh House of Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, and his Lords equivalent issued an additional alert on the subject of espionage by the security agencies that they were facing due to the threat of Chinese spies.

Hoyle said, “The Chinese Ministry of State Security was actively targeting people in our community and that they wanted to gather information and prepare to form long-term relationships through professional networking sites, search agents, and consultants as their representatives.”

He cautioned that two persons were both known to be approaching LinkedIn to carry out outreach at scale on behalf of the Chinese government.

A request to comment was not an immediate response to which the Chinese Embassy in London did not react.