Ed Miliband is ‘appeasing’ China despite the risks it poses to British security because the UK is so reliant on Beijing for the supply of solar panels, security sources have said.
The Foreign Secretary, a zealous advocate of the Net Zero agenda on climate change, is regarded by many senior members of the UK’s diplomatic and intelligence community as ‘weak’ on the security threat posed by China.
Despite mounting evidence of Beijing’s state-sponsored activities in the UK – including cyber-attacks, spying, political infiltration and industrial espionage – Mr Miliband supports building closer ties with the country.
The UK is heavily reliant on solar panels from China, importing more than two thirds of its stock from the country.
In his previous job as energy secretary, Mr Miliband pledged to go ‘further and faster’ on replacing gas and oil with renewable sources such as solar power, by fast-tracking planning approval for solar farms and introducing plug-in equipment for homes.
A security source said: ‘All the noises coming from the Foreign Secretary are about economic appeasement and climate change accords. We don’t hear a lot about national security from him.
‘He is compromised by wanting their panels too much. We worry about all forms of Chinese technology which can potentially be controlled or detonated remotely.’
The panels have been blamed for a number of high-profile fires over the past year, although there is no evidence that the Chinese were responsible.
Britain’s Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Wang Hongzhi, head of China’s National Energy Administration, shake hands at a signing ceremony at the China-UK Energy Dialogue in Beijing in March last year
One of Mr Miliband’s first moves after he was appointed in the summer was to arrange to meet Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.
This month, former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove warned that the loss of British manufacturing left the country dangerously reliant on China for critical technology, and said it had the capacity to plunge Britain into chaos by hacking the National Grid.
Sir Richard said: ‘Such peacetime dependencies give China strategic leverage, and in a crisis it gives them weapons of mass disruption which could literally bring this country to a standstill.’
Mr Miliband’s views on China have compounded tensions with the Trump administration, where officials have dubbed him ‘Ed Miliwatt’ due to his Net Zero beliefs.
Tony Blair has urged Labour to rip up Mr Miliband’s ‘illogical’ Net Zero targets in order to focus on securing ‘cheap energy’ and boost economic growth.
The former PM said: ‘Xi Jinping [the Chinese president] is not sitting there in Beijing saying: ‘I wonder what that Ed Miliband thinks.’ [Net Zero] is a sort of quixotic fantasy…
‘Britain’s emissions are under 1 per cent of global emissions, we can’t solve climate change, and to impose costs on our own businesses and consumers in order to accelerate Net Zero when the rest of the world is not doing so – I don’t understand the logic.’
Last year, Mr Miliband was forced to change solar supply chains after evidence showed that 40 per cent of polysilicon – a key component in solar panels – comes from China’s Xinjiangg region, where widespread use of forced labour has been documented.
A spokesman for Mr Miliband did not respond to a request for comment.
