MI5 Wrong to Issue Agent Warning, Christine Lee’s Lawyers Tell Tribunal

The offices of Christine Lee and Co on Wardour Street, central London, in an undated file photo. (Victoria Jones/PA)

An alert warning a London-based lawyer was acting on behalf of China’s communist regime contained “factual errors,” was “plainly wrong,” and should never have been issued, it has been claimed at a tribunal.

In January 2022 MI5 issued an interference alert against Christine Lee, warning MPs she was a suspected Chinese agent who had engaged in “political interference activities” on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

But on Monday at a hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, Ramby de Mello, a barrister representing Ms. Lee and her son Daniel Wilkes, said it was “plainly wrong” for the notice to have been issued.

He said, “Such a notice was unprecedented and as far as we are concerned it was the first time it was ever issued.”

At the time Mr. Wilkes was working for Barry Gardiner, a former member of the shadow cabinet under former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Ms. Lee donated at least £500,000 to Mr. Gardiner, who was chairman of the Chinese in Britain All-Party Parliamentary Group, which has since been disbanded.

MI5 claimed the money was provided by foreign nationals and “undertaken in covert co-ordination” with the CCP.

Ms. Lee denies the allegations and is taking legal action against MI5—which is officially referred to as the Security Service—along with her son, who lost his job as a result of the alert.

The pair claim the alert was unlawful and interfered with their human rights.

Accused of Having ‘Remit to Advance CCP’s Agenda in UK’

The notice said Ms. Lee had been facilitating financial donations to political parties and politicians, and warned anyone contacted by her should be “mindful of her affiliation with the Chinese state and remit to advance the CCP’s agenda in UK politics.”

In written submissions, Mr. de Mello said Ms. Lee had travelled to China and Hong Kong for business, met Chinese officials, and made speeches which “criticised the protesters in Hong Kong for using violence.”

But he said she “did not know at the time, and had no reason to believe” her activities “could fall foul of national security measures based on unacceptable business or political activities connected with China or UK MPs.”

Her legal team told the tribunal the donations to Mr. Gardiner came “overwhelmingly” from “profit costs” of her law firm.

Detail of an MI5 Security Service Interference Alert identifying Christine Lee as "an agent of the Chinese government” operating in the British Parliament, issued by the Office of the Speaker of the House of Commons on Jan. 12, 2022. (House of Commons/PA)

Mr. de Mello said Ms. Lee received “sustained abuse, threats of death, and rape” after the alert was issued and has been “in hiding” for long periods.

Monday’s hearing heard Mr. Gardiner told Ms. Lee it had been suggested to him MI5 had produced the alert on Jan. 13, 2022 to “detract attention” from then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s apology to Parliament over the so-called Partygate scandal the previous day.

‘Detract Attention’ From Partygate

The tribunal heard on Monday that Mr. Gardiner sent a text, which was forwarded to Ms. Lee by a friend, which said, “Many people have said to me that they believe the reason for putting out the story when they did was to detract attention from Boris’ Partygate apology which was announced the day before at [Prime Minister’s Questions].”

“I had never believed that the Security Services [sic] would be overtly party political in that way,” he added.

Mr. Gardiner then wrote, “What has also been suggested to me is that the Security Services may have wished to ‘pick a fight’ or to ‘detract attention’ from something else and that we were simply collateral damage.”

“The fact that they have apparently failed to take any further action for the supposedly ‘illegal’ activity which they alleged had taken place, leaves me deeply sceptical,” he added.

On Jan. 12, 2022 Mr. Johnson apologised to the House of Commons for breaching lockdown rules, but refused to resign.

He eventually resigned in July 2022 after several members of his Cabinet, including then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak, quit when it emerged he had kept Chief Whip Chris Pincher in his job despite sexual misconduct allegations being levelled against him.

In written submissions Victoria Wakefield, KC, representing MI5, said, “The decision to issue the interference alert was made in the discharge of the respondent’s statutory function to protect national security, in particular, its protection against threats from the activities of agents of foreign powers and from actions intended to undermine parliamentary democracy by political means.”

MI5’s Actions ‘Rational and Lawful’

“The respondent assessed that Ms. Lee posed a risk of this nature, and its judgment was that the issuing of the interference alert was the most effective and proportionate means to address that risk. Those assessments were rational and lawful,” she added.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal is an independent judicial body which provides “the right of redress to anyone who believes they have been the victim of unlawful action by a public authority using covert investigative techniques.”

The hearing is expected to conclude on Tuesday, with a judgment expected later in the year.

PA Media contributed to this report.