{"id":457741,"date":"2026-03-04T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/457741\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:32:08","slug":"uk-lawmakers-partner-arrested-over-china-spying-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/457741\/","title":{"rendered":"UK lawmaker’s partner arrested over China spying allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

The partner\u00a0of a sitting Labour member of parliament was one of the three men arrested by British<\/a> police on Wednesday, media reports say.<\/p>\n

British police\u00a0said in a statement<\/a> that three men were arrested on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service.<\/p>\n

That stood in violation of\u00a0section 3 of the National Security Act, 2023, which was introduced to give authorities greater power to tackle foreign interference.<\/p>\n

In the statement, police confirmed that the country in question was China<\/a>. The statement didn’t name the men, in keeping with UK practice.<\/p>\n

All three men, aged 39, 43 and 68, remain in custody.<\/p>\n

UK media say partner of Labour MP among those accused of spying for China<\/p>\n

According to UK media reports, David Taylor, who is married to Joani Reid, the Labour lawmaker representing the East Kilbride area, was arrested.<\/p>\n

Reid said in a statement to newspapers\u00a0like the Times and Telegraph that she\u00a0had “never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law.”<\/p>\n

“I am not part of my husband\u2019s business activities and\u00a0neither I nor my children are part of this investigation,” it read. “I have never been to China. I have never spoken on China\u00a0or China-related \u200bmatters in the (House of) Commons.”<\/p>\n

Asked about the reports in parliament, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, declined to give any further details. Jarvis said later in a statement:\u00a0“We will always challenge any country, including China, that\u00a0attempts to interfere with or undermine the integrity of our\u00a0democratic institutions.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Britain under pressure to tackle Chinese security threats<\/p>\n

Last November, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency warned British lawmakers that China was using headhunters on LinkedIn and other covert operatives to recruit and compromise them.<\/p>\n

That rare warning bell came two months after a political scandal erupted in the country over the collapse of an espionage case against two British men accused of passing sensitive information to China.<\/p>\n

The new arrests now present a new challenge for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has pledged to reset ties with China after years of mistrust\u00a0complicated ties between the countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Starmer became the\u00a0first UK leader in eight years to visit\u00a0Beijing<\/a>\u00a0in his bid to\u00a0expand economic ties with Beijing and as Washington became harder to depend on.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday,\u00a0China’s embassy in London said it lodged a protest with the British side and condemned what it called attempts to\u00a0“fabricate facts and concoct so-called\u00a0‘espionage cases’ to maliciously slander China.”<\/p>\n

Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The partner\u00a0of a sitting Labour member of parliament was one of the three men arrested by British police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-457741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}