Anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq could lose her job if the investigation into her properties finds she broke government rules, a cabinet member has suggested.

Science Secretary Peter Kyle was asked about Ms Siddiq on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.

She has referred herself to the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministers’ interests, Sir Laurie Magnus, following reports she lived in properties in London linked to allies of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh.

There have also been questions about trips she took to Russia alongside her aunt.

Ms Siddiq insists she has “done nothing wrong”.

As economic secretary to the Treasury, Ms Siddiq oversees anti-corruption efforts in the financial sector as part of her brief.

Mr Kyle told Sky News: “With Tulip, she’s referred herself straight away to this.

“There is a process under way and we know full well it will be a functional process, and the outcomes of it will be stuck to by the prime minister and this government, a complete contrast to what we’ve had in the past.”

He gave this answer after Trevor pointed out Labour would have been calling for a sacking if the roles were reversed and the Tories were in power.

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Mr Kyle contrasted his party’s stance with the Conservative one – saying he called for an investigation into allegations of bullying from Priti Patel, and she “had to be dragged to that inquiry”.

He added that he let the inquiry pan out.

“The results came out, she was found guilty, and no action happened,” Mr Kyle said.

His response came after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for Ms Siddiq to be sacked yesterday.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride repeated the calls today to Sky News.

He said: “What is not right is that the prime minister is not moving her out of that position and getting her to step down

“Because she is the anti-corruption minister, she has serious charges laid against her now, or serious accusations around corruption, and it’s going to be really impossible for her to do that job under current circumstances.

“So she should step down, and the prime minister needs to get a grip of that.”

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The Sunday Times this week interviewed the current leader of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, who called for Ms Siddiq to be investigated.

He said the properties should be handed back to his government if they were acquired through “plain robbery”.

The chancellor has said the budget is “non-negotiable” on a visit to China in the face of volatile markets back in the UK.

Rachel Reeves flew out on Friday after ignoring calls from opposition parties to cancel the long-planned trip because of economic turmoil at home.

The past week has seen a drop in the pound and an increase in government borrowing costs, which has fuelled speculation of more spending cuts or tax rises.

The Tories have accused the chancellor of having “fled to China” rather than explain how she will fix the UK’s flatlining economy, while the Liberal Democrats say she should stay in Britain and announce a “plan B” to address market volatility.

Former prime minister Boris Johnson said Ms Reeves had “been rumbled” and said she should “make her way to HR and collect her P45 – or stay in China”.

However, during a visit to Beijing’s flagship store of UK bike maker Brompton, Ms Reeves said she would not alter her economic plans, with the October budget designed to return the UK to economic stability.

“Growth is the number one mission of this government,” she said.

“The fiscal rules laid out in the budget are non-negotiable. Economic stability is the bedrock for economic growth and prosperity.”

The treasury added that making Britain better off will be at the “forefront of the chancellor’s mind” during her visit.

She said that “action” will be taken to meet the fiscal rules. That action is reported to include deeper spending cuts than the 5% efficiency savings already expected to be announced later this year, while cuts to the welfare bill are also said to be under consideration.

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The chancellor is being accompanied by Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and other senior executives.

She met her counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng, in Beijing on Saturday to discuss financial services, trade and investment, before heading to Shanghai for talks with representatives across British and Chinese businesses.

She will also “raise difficult issues”, including Chinese firms supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and concerns over constraints on rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, the Treasury said.

But it did not mention whether Ms Reeves would raise the treatment of the Uyghur community, which Downing Street said Foreign Secretary David Lammy would do during his visit last year.

On Friday, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy defended the trip, telling Sky News that the climbing cost of government borrowing was a “global trend” that had affected many countries, “most notably the United States”.

“We are still on track to be the fastest growing economy, according to the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] in Europe,” she told Anna Jones on Sky News Breakfast.

“China is the second-largest economy, and what China does has the biggest impact on people from Stockton to Sunderland, right across the UK, and it’s absolutely essential that we have a relationship with them.”

Ed Conway analysis: The chancellor’s gamble with China

Grim economic news raises stakes for embattled chancellor’s controversial China trip

Amanda Akass

Political correspondent

@amandaakass

Rachel Reeves’s trip to China – the first by a British chancellor since 2019 – was always going to be controversial.

In recent years Conservative governments have been keeping Beijing at arm’s length – amid concern about espionage, the situation in Hong Kong, and the treatment of the Uyghurs.

David Cameron’s so-called “Golden Era” of engagement in the pursuit of economic investment, notoriously capped by a visit to an Oxfordshire pub for a pint with President Xi Jinping – has been widely written off as a naive mistake.

There are many – not least the incoming US President Donald Trump – who believe we should maintain our distance.

But in another era of economic turmoil, the pursuit of growth is the government’s number one priority.

This week’s difficult market news – with the cost of government borrowing surging, and the value of the pound falling – has thoroughly raised the stakes.

Read more here

It is the first UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) since 2019, building on the Labour government’s plan for a “pragmatic” policy with the world’s second-largest economy.

Sir Keir Starmer was the first British prime minister to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping in six years at the G20 summit in Brazil last autumn.

Relations between the UK and China have become strained over the last decade as the Conservative government spoke out against human rights abuses and concerns grew over national security risks.

Navigating this has proved tricky given China is the UK’s fourth largest single trading partner, with a trade relationship worth almost £113bn and exports to China supporting over 455,000 jobs in the UK in 2020, according to the government.

During the Tories’ 14 years in office, the approach varied dramatically from the “golden era” under David Cameron to hawkish aggression under Liz Truss, while Rishi Sunak vowed to be “robust” but resisted pressure from his own party to brand China a threat.

The Treasury said a stable relationship with China would support economic growth and that “making working people across Britain secure and better off is at the forefront of the chancellor’s mind”.

Ahead of her visit, Ms Reeves said: “By finding common ground on trade and investment, while being candid about our differences and upholding national security as the first duty of this government, we can build a long-term economic relationship with China that works in the national interest.”

Rachel Reeves’s trip to China – the first by a British chancellor since 2019 – was always going to be controversial.

In recent years Conservative governments have been keeping Beijing at arm’s length – amid concern about espionage, the situation in Hong Kong, and the treatment of the Uyghurs.

David Cameron‘s so-called “Golden Era” of engagement in the pursuit of economic investment, notoriously capped by a visit to an Oxfordshire pub for a pint with President Xi Jinping – has been widely written off as a naive mistake.

There are many – not least the incoming US President Donald Trump – who believe we should maintain our distance.

But in another era of economic turmoil, the pursuit of growth is the government’s number one priority.

This week’s difficult market news – with the cost of government borrowing surging, and the value of the pound falling – has thoroughly raised the stakes.

Both the Tories and the Lib Dems argued the visit should be cancelled.

Prominent China hawk and former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith MP summed up both arguments against it.

“The trip is pointless,” he wrote on X. “As the disastrous ‘Golden Era’ showed, the murderous, brutal, law-breaking, communist regime in China will not deliver the growth the Labour government craves.

“Instead, she should stay home and try to sort out the awful mess her budget has created.”

Yet cancelling the trip would have been a diplomatic disaster and far from adding to economic stability would surely have spread a sense of crisis (with inevitable comparisons to Denis Healey’s abandoned visit to Hong Kong in 1976, months before he was forced to apply from an emergency loan from the IMF to save the pound from collapse).

Instead, the government argues the current market situation is a result of “global trends”, and Reeves insists she will be sticking to the decisions taken in the budget.

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“Growth is the number one mission of this government. The fiscal rules laid out in the budget are non-negotiable. Economic stability is the bedrock for economic growth and prosperity.”

Improving the UK/China relationship should “boost our economic growth for the benefit of working people in both of our countries” she said during her meeting with vice premier He Lifeng.

In a speech to media afterwards, Reeves was delighted to announce a big, concrete number to justify the value of the trip, claiming the agreements reached would be worth £600m to the UK economy over five years.

Pragmatism is the new order of the day. Labour argues re-establishing “pragmatic engagement” with China is in the national interest, and it’s a word Reeves used four times in five minutes during her speech.

Ed Conway analysis: The chancellor’s gamble with China

The government insists this new closer relationship will make it easier for them to raise tricky issues and we did hear the chancellor flagging concerns about Hong Kong and the role of China in connection with Russia’s war in Ukraine – though not the Uyghurs, or the imprisoned British citizen and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai.

The challenge going forward will be to show that cosying up to China is worth it.

There’s a lot riding on it for the chancellor – with questions being openly asked about her economic strategy given the growing likelihood that to meet her fiscal rules on balancing tax and spending she will be forced to make deep cuts to government departments this spring.

We are promised a big speech from the chancellor on the government’s plans for growth in the coming weeks.

In many ways, the trip to China may have been a welcome break from the difficult decisions which await her return.