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The government has delayed its decision on whether to approve China’s super-embassy in London until January, when Keir Starmer is expected to visit Beijing.
Ministers are expected to greenlight the controversial plans after formal submissions by the Home Office and Foreign Office raised no objections on security grounds.
The Guardian reported last month that the security services had signalled to ministers that they could handle the security risks of the embassy, which would be China’s biggest diplomatic outpost in the world. A government spokesperson said on Tuesday that consolidating China’s seven existing diplomatic sites in London into a single embassy “clearly brings security advantages”.
The Chinese government has agreed to combine all its diplomatic premises in London into the Royal Mint Court site, which spans 20,000 sq metres near Tower Bridge in London.
The final decision on whether to grant planning permission has been delayed to 20 January, around the time when the prime minister is planning to travel to China for bilateral talks. It is the third time ministers have deferred the decision.
Starmer would be the first prime minister to visit Beijing since Theresa May in 2018. In a speech on Monday night, he argued that the government could not continue to blow “hot and cold” on China and needed to strike a balance.
“We had the golden age, which then flipped to an ice age. We reject that binary choice,” he said, describing China as a “nation of immense scale, ambition and ingenuity” and “a defining force in technology, in trade and global governance”.
“Our response will not be driven by fear, nor softened by illusion. It will be grounded in strength, clarity and sober realism,” Starmer said.
In a letter sent to concerned parties and released by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said their departments had “carefully considered the breadth of considerations” related to the proposed embassy.
They said they had worked with police and others to ensure national security issues had been addressed and recognised “the importance of countries having functioning diplomatic premises in each other’s capitals, whilst maintaining the critical need to uphold and defend our national security”.
The plan has met fierce opposition from some local residents and campaigners who are concerned about Beijing’s human rights record in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang region. Several protests have taken place near the site in recent months.
A government spokesperson said: “An independent planning decision will be made by the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government in due course.”
“The Home Office and Foreign Office provided views on particular security implications of this build in January and have been clear throughout that a decision should not be taken until we had confirmed that those considerations had been completed or resolved, which we have now done.
“Should the planning decision for a new embassy in the London borough of Tower Hamlets be approved, the new embassy will replace seven different sites which currently comprise China’s diplomatic footprint in London which clearly brings security advantages.”
China bought the Royal Mint Court site for £255m in 2018, but its plans to build an embassy there stalled after Tower Hamlets council refused planning permission in 2022.
The Conservative government declined to intervene but Labour took the matter out of the council’s hands by calling it in soon after taking power last summer.
