Report: Beijing behind cyberattacks on UK MPs and peers, deputy PM to warn

A group of British politicians has been targeted by Chinese cyberattacks, U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden will tell parliament on Monday, according to the Sunday Times.

Alison Giles, the parliament’s director of security, has called a group of MPs and peers, who are all members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), for a briefing on the matter, the newspaper said. The group comprises ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith; Tim Loughton, a former Conservative education minister; Lord Alton of Liverpool, a crossbench peer; and Scottish National Party MP Stewart McDonald, according to the report.

In 2021, Duncan Smith, Loughton and Alton were hit with sanctions by Beijing in a presumed act of retaliation after IPAC highlighted China’s “gross human rights violations.”