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UK housing secretary Angela Rayner this week took control of the stalled planning decision over a huge new Chinese embassy in central London, just days before foreign secretary David Lammy travelled to Beijing.
The Chinese government purchased Royal Mint Court, a historic site near the Tower of London, six years ago but has so far failed to gain planning permission to build a new embassy there.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government wrote to Tower Hamlets council on Monday to announce that Rayner was calling in the decision, taking it out of the hands of the local authority.
Rayner, who is also deputy prime minister, has decided to hold a local inquiry into the matter “to consider all the relevant aspects of the proposed development”, the letter said.
Beijing wants to build a giant complex over 20,000 square metres of land, which would be China’s largest diplomatic mission in Europe and far outstrip the size of its current embassy in Marylebone, built on 830 square metres of land.
In December 2022, Tower Hamlets rejected planning proposals for what would have also been the largest diplomatic base in the UK, after receiving objections on security grounds and the impact on residents, including from protests around the site.
China declined to appeal against the decision at the time. UK government officials said their Beijing counterparts were frustrated by the suggestion they should deal with a local authority and annoyed the central British government, then run by the Conservatives, would not intervene.
However, this summer, after Labour had taken power, the Chinese embassy in London confirmed it had submitted a new planning application and publicly put pressure on the UK government to assist it.
“Host countries have the international obligation to support and facilitate the building of the premises of diplomatic missions,” a Chinese embassy spokesperson said in August, adding that China and the UK “should provide facilitation to each other” in this respect.
Tory MP and former UK minister Neil O’Brien questioned whether Rayner’s move was part of a wider plan by the Labour administration to step up engagement with China that included Lammy’s visit.
Lammy travelled to Beijing on Friday to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and was set to go on to Shanghai on Saturday.
“I think a lot of people will look at the timing of this decision and assume it’s part of that operation to suck up to Beijing,” said O’Brien, who had sanctions imposed on him by China after co-founding the hawkish China Research Group in parliament.
Sam Dunning, director of research organisation UK-China Transparency, also said the timing of Rayner’s decision “raises the question whether the CCP [Chinese Communist party] have leveraged Labour’s desire for a visit to exact concessions on something that is a big priority for them — to build a super-embassy.”
The suggestion was denied by a UK official, who said: “The timing of the decision was taken by the Ministry of Housing. It had no relation to the foreign secretary’s visit.”
The official said the planning application raised issues of more than local importance and that it was standard for applications to be called in if they affected other governments or had a national security impact.
Not all critics of the Chinese regime have taken a dim view of Rayner’s move. Luke de Pulford, executive director of the hawkish Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, welcomed the central government’s decision to hold a local inquiry.
“Local campaigners have fought to be heard for more than four years, and more or less single-handedly held back the mega development in a battle of David and Goliath proportions,” he said on X.
While he acknowledged good reasons for moving the embassy from its current site, de Pulford said that moving it to a “residential site of historic and strategic importance where protest would be dangerous is just plain silly”.
MHCLG said: “Applications for a new Chinese embassy in Tower Hamlets have been called in for ministers to decide. A final decision will be made in due course.”
The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to request for comment.