Chinese agents followed us after Parliament visit, says Briton jailed in Shanghai

Peter Humphrey, a former journalist and private investigator, believes a Chinese surveillance team were monitoring his group in a Westminster pub

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A British former journalist and private investigator, once jailed in China, believes a team of Chinese agents tracked him and the group he was with after a talk in Parliament.

Peter Humphrey, 69, said a pair of operatives were monitoring the party, which included Hong Kong and Chinese dissidents, at a pub in Westminster on Thursday.

The group, which included Lyndon Li, a former reporter from China and prominent Beijing critic now exiled in London, had attended an event on transnational repression at the House of Lords earlier that evening.

Mr Humphrey believes a pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) surveillance team trailed them to the pub after they ate in a Chinese restaurant.

Mr Li, 26, reported the incident to both MI5 and the police and says he now fears for his safety in the UK.

The i Paper understands the Metropolitan Police are now reviewing the case and will be checking the pub’s CCTV. An officer is also due to interview Mr Li to establish why he may be a target for the Chinese state.

Lyndon Li, left, and Peter Humphrey, right, believe a Chinese surveillance team were monitoring them at a London bar after they attended an event at the House of Lords

Sir Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned of the “epic scale” of Chinese espionage in the UK in 2023, revealing that more than 20,000 people in Britain had been approached covertly online by Chinese spies.

The i Paper previously shared fears from Hong Kong dissidents who fled to the UK that they were being tracked and monitored by suspected pro-Beijing informants and activists recruited to monitor them.

Mr Humphrey claimed that during the incident on Thursday, two Chinese people came into the pub where he and his group were gathered and sat with a clear line of sight to them after ordering two non-alcoholic drinks.

Their group of six would have been “interesting people for the Chinese security services”, he said.

“I have no doubt that this was indeed a Chinese surveillance team. I’m a professional. I don’t make these judgments casually.“

Mr Humphrey added: “It’s common practice for surveillance to include the tactic of putting a couple out there because couples tend to look less suspicious to most people.

“I know that surveillance operatives in China often put miniature cameras inside baseball caps.

“I was involved in the investigation industry in China and I engaged contractors from Chinese private investigation firms. And some of them were ex-policemen who were using these techniques.”

Lyndon Li, a Chinese law student and vocal critic of the Chinese communist Government, says he is fearful about who may been following him

Last year, Mr Li said he and a pro-Hong Kong democracy campaigner, Simon Cheng, were filmed by Chinese individuals they suspect were pro-Beijing agents in Middle Temple, the heart of London’s legal quarters.

Mr Li, who spoke at the earlier discussion in Parliament, said that during Thursday’s incident, he spotted a third man who appeared to be tracking him as he walked towards Victoria Station.

“I think it’s possible they had followed us from outside Parliament. I was really a bit scared. I was really careful going back home,” said Mr Li, who is training to become a barrister.

“I was not sure who’s following me or not, or what kind of target I am to the state, what kind of action they would do to me.”

Peter Humphrey spent 23 months in prison in China, where he says medical treatment was denied to him despite having symptoms of prostate cancer (Photo: CCTV)

Mr Humphrey, a former fraud investigator, and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, spent 23 months in a Shanghai prison for alleged illegal gathering of personal information after becoming embroiled in a corruption scandal at British pharmaceutical company GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline). They did not plead guilty to the charges.

Although not implicated in the GSK corruption case, he had been hired by the company to investigate the source of a secretly filmed sex video of the firm’s top boss in China and of whistleblower emails.

Mr Humphrey was deported to the UK in 2015 after being jailed in Shanghai in what he described as a “kangaroo court” where he said medical attention for his prostate was withheld in an attempt to force him to “confess”.

After deportation to the UK he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, spending 18 months in cancer treatment. He also underwent treatment for PTSD after his two-year prison term in “squalid” conditions.

In 2021, the regulator Ofcom stripped China’s state-owned TV channel CGTN of its UK licence after it upheld a complaint from Mr Humphrey that the channel had aired “forced confessions” from him and his wife.

He has now called for British authorities to crack down on activity from Chinese agents in the UK.

“The sinister irony is, we had all been attending an event in our Parliament buildings, which was on the subject of this kind of behaviour, ” he said.

“I’m not going to let these people get away with it. We need to make examples of them. We need to arrest and punish these people.”

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “We received a report on Saturday, 17 May of alleged suspicious activity at an address in Westminster on Thursday, 15 May.

“Enquiries are ongoing to establish whether there is a need for a criminal investigation.”

A House of Lords spokesperson said: “We have had no reports of this nature from the organisers or attendees of the meeting in the House of Lords. W

“We would encourage anyone with concerns of harassment or intimidation of the type you describe away from the Parliamentary estate to report it to the police.”