MP Neil Coyle has claimed that Chinese tech giant Huawei lobbied him, suggesting it would fund projects in Southwark.
The Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark since 2015 says he has reported Huawei to the Parliamentary Director of Security. Mr Coyle says a lobbying firm employee invited him to a meeting with Huawei with the offer of grants and IT services for children.
The Labour MP told the News: “I reported them because Huawei had just been banned from sensitive infrastructure development in the UK. They are a state-owned company run by an authoritarian regime scrapping democracy and hounding people out of Hong Kong and committing atrocities in Xinjiang.
Hongkongers are the most prevalent foreign property owners in Southwark
In November 2020, the UK banned British telecommunication companies from using Huawei’s 5G equipment over security fears.
Huawei has always maintained it is a private company and not influenced by any third parties, including the Chinese government.
But a parliamentary inquiry in October 2020 found “clear evidence of collusion” between Huawei and the “Chinese Communist Party apparatus”.
A Huawei spokesperson said: “We discussed with Mr Coyle our donations of a small number of recycled second-hand laptops to charitable organisations who distribute them to schools and community projects where they judge them to be most needed, therefore the allegation of targeting MPs in return for favour is absolutely groundless.”
Mr Coyle recently criticised the Chinese government when asked about the high number of Southwark property owners hailing from Hong Kong. He said Hong Kongers were justified in buying Southwark properties because they were “fleeing persecution and the end of democracy under authoritarian rule from the People’s Republic of China”.
The Parliamentary Director of Security declined to comment.