Alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo says he ‘did nothing wrong’ as he issues statement over links to Prince Andrew
The alleged Chinese spy with links to Prince Andrew has said he did “nothing wrong or unlawful” – as he was named publicly for the first time.
In a statement, Yang Tengbo added that the “widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue”.
Politics live: What we know so far about Yang Tengbo
Mr Yang at a Pitch@Palace event with Prince Andrew
It comes after the High Court lifted restrictions on naming the businessman, previously described as a “close confidant” of the royal, on Monday afternoon.
Until now he was only known publicly as “H6” after a court imposed an anonymity order.
Mr Yang said he asked his legal team to disclose his identity “due to the high level of speculation and misreporting in the media”.
Last week, he lost an appeal over a decision to bar him from entering the UK on national security grounds.
Mr Yang said: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.”
He claimed he was a victim of a “political climate” which had seen a rise in tensions between the UK and China.
“When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK,” he said.
“When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken, and I am excluded.”
Mr Yang has links to the Duke of York
Mr Yang was the founder-partner of Pitch@Palace China. The Pitch@Palace initiative was the Duke of York’s scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Pressure had been mounting for Mr Yang to be named after last week’s court ruling.
Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, had threatened to use parliamentary privilege to reveal his identity in the House of Commons.
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Parliamentary privilege allows MPs to speak freely during parliamentary proceedings without fear of legal action.
Guy Vassall-Adams KC, for Mr Yang, told the High Court that threats to name his client in parliament were part of the reason he decided to apply to lift the anonymity order.
He said: “There has been an enormous amount of media reporting in relation to this story, and particularly in relation to the relationship between my client, H6, and Prince Andrew, as well as a huge amount of speculation about the identity of my client.”
Lifting his anonymity, Judge Mr Justice Chamberlain said: “It seems to me that these proceedings now serve no further purpose.”
Yang Tengbo with Theresa May and her husband Philip
Yang pictured with former prime ministers
Mr Yang was invited to Prince Andrew’s birthday party in 2020, and was told by royal aide Dominic Hampshire he could act on the duke’s behalf when dealing with potential investors in China, a tribunal heard in July this year.
On Friday, Prince Andrew said he “ceased all contact” with the Chinese businessman.
In a statement from his office, the Duke of York said he had cut ties following “advice” from officials but insisted the pair had never discussed anything of a “sensitive nature”.
Mr Yang had previously also been pictured alongside former prime ministers – including David Cameron and Theresa May.
Both Lord Cameron and Lady May’s spokespeople told Sky News at the weekend they meet and are photographed with many people each year.
A spokeswoman for Ms May said: “Baroness May and her husband, Sir Philip, are photographed at numerous events in any given year.
“As such, she doesn’t remember when or where this particular photograph was taken or the man in question.”
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Who is alleged Chinese spy?
A source close to Lord Cameron said: “David Cameron was leader of the Conservative Party for over a decade and PM for six years.
“He met thousands of people in that time at hundreds of functions and events. We don’t have any further information about this individual.”
China ‘UK’s most prominent security threat’
The anonymity lift came shortly before former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith raised an urgent question in the Commons about the Chinese spying group Mr Yang is said to belong to, the United Front Work Department (UFWD).
Sir Iain said Mr Yang was “not a lone wolf” and one of around 40,000 members of the UFWD.
He called for China to be put on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme (FIRS), which was established under the Conservatives but is yet to be implemented.
The scheme would require those involved in promoting the interests of other countries to declare themselves – but it won’t commence until the summer, Home Office minister Dan Jarvis has confirmed.
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Sir Iain said there is “no need for delay”, and that the new Labour government must “accept now that China is our most prominent security threat”.
Mr Jarvis acknowledged the case of Mr Yang “does not exist in a vacuum” and the UK is facing a breadth of “pernicious and complex” threats from foreign states.
He echoed comments made by Sir Keir Starmer earlier, who defended his approach for a “pragmatic” relationship with Beijing despite saying it posed a “challenge”.
Yang statement ‘not worth paper it’s written on’
Professor Anthony Glees, an intelligence and security expert from the University of Buckingham, told Sky News that Prince Andrew “unbeknown to himself” has “been a risk to our national security”.
He said Mr Yang’s statement is “not worth the paper it was written on” and that hostile states using “long-term penetration” lasting decades is common.
He added: “In fact, there is an intelligence law in China that says that every member of the Communist Party of China has a duty to accept intelligence tasking if the state demands it of them.”
Lord Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, also told Sky News he was “not quite sure where cooperation has got us” with regards to the UK’s approach to China.
He said that while he doubted Mr Yang held “huge influence” over anyone significant, his case was nevertheless “an indication of the extent to which” alleged agents can access places of power in the UK.
And he said the UFWD was an organisation that “has got lots of people in this country trying to influence policymakers”.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “China has always acted in an upright and honest manner and has never engaged in any deception or interference, so it is not worthwhile to refute this kind of groundless speculation which is based on one’s own judgement.”
Merseyside Police knows – better than any force, perhaps – that in a social media age, an information vacuum can become a misinformation cauldron.
They have learnt from the aftermath of the Southport stabbing attack, where the force was criticised for being too slow to release information that could have calmed the riots that followed.
So, it feels like things have been done differently this time.
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Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street. Pic: PA
The incident happened just after 6pm on Monday.
Videos – captured by fans on their phones – were online within moments. Shared and speculated upon, with guesses as to the attacker’s identity and motive.
But alongside the huge and immediate police investigation, the communication machine moved equally fast.
Within a few hours, police released a description of the man they had arrested – a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.
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Moment car drives into crowds in Liverpool
A few hours after that, we had an extensive press conference during which police ruled out terrorism as a motive.
Again, they appealed for videos not to be shared online and for people not to speculate.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said Merseyside Police “handled the situation fantastically” given how quickly footage of the incident was shared online.
He told Sky News that online misinformation can set “a lot of false narrative”.
The mayor added: “And we all know that speculation and social media are a wildfire of different vantages, and some of it is for nefarious reasons.
“So, it was right, of course, that the police reacted as quickly as they did to dampen down some of the types of posts that we were witnessing, you know, saying that there were other things happening throughout the city.”
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‘These were utterly tragic scenes’
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Eyewitnesses describe shock and sadness
Police commentator Graham Wettone also told Sky News the force had done well to quickly combat misinformation spreading online.
He said: “That’s always a problem in today’s day and age, social media taking over so much news reporting, with so many people as well present at the scene where that awful incident took place, mobile phones out, people recording it, and then posting it almost straight away.”
Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent, also highlighted it was “unprecedented” that the force “very quickly” gave the ethnicity and race of the suspect.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there’s a conspiracy theory.”
Mr Babu agreed that Merseyside Police appears to have learned lessons from what happened after the Southport stabbings.
He added: “The difficulty we have is in the olden days, when I was policing, you would have a conversation with trusty journalists, print journalists, radio journalists, broadcasting journalists, you’d have a conversation and say look can you please hold fire on sharing this information and people would listen.
“We don’t have that with social media, it’s like the Wild West and anything goes and so puts the police in a very, very difficult position.”
Meanwhile, the police investigation continues.
In central Liverpool, Water Street is cordoned off with police officers and vehicles in place.
Flags, sprays of paint flares and empty bottles still cover the road. Whereas they have been cleared elsewhere along the parade route, here they remain. Chilling symbols of the party, that within moments became a scene of utter horror.
King Charles and Queen Camilla are being urged to use their visit to Canada to seek an apology for the abuse of British children.
Campaigners have called on them to pursue an apology for the “dire circumstances” suffered by so-called “Home Children” over decades.
More than 100,000 were shipped from orphan homes in the UK to Canada between 1869 and 1948 with many used as cheap labour, typically as farm workers and domestic servants. Many were subject to mistreatment and abuse.
Canada has resisted calls to follow the UK and Australia in apologising for its involvement in child migrant schemes.
King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA
Campaigners for the Home Children say the royal visit presents a “great opportunity” for a change of heart.
“I would ask that King Charles uses his trip to request an apology,” John Jefkins told Sky News.
John’s father Bert was one of 115,000 British Home Children transported to Canada, arriving in 1914 with his brother Reggie.
“It’s really important for the Home Children themselves and for their descendants,” John said.
“It’s something we deserve and it’s really important for the healing process, as well as building awareness of the experience of the Home Children.
“They were treated very, very badly by the Canadian government at the time. A lot of them were abused, they were treated horribly. They were second-class citizens, lepers in a way.”
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John Jefkins
John added: “I think the King’s visit provides a great opportunity to reinforce our campaign and to pursue an apology because we’re part of the Commonwealth and King Charles is a new Head of the Commonwealth meeting a new Canadian prime minister. It’s a chance, for both, to look at the situation with a fresh eye.
“There’s much about this visit that looks on our sovereignty and who we are as Canadians, rightly so.
“I think it’s also right that in contemplating the country we built, we focus on the people who built it, many in the most trying of circumstances.”
The issue was addressed by the then Prince of Wales during a tour of Canada in May 2022. He said at the time: “We must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.”
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King Charles and Queen Camilla are on a two-day visit to Canada.
On Tuesday, the King will deliver the Speech from the Throne to open the 45th session of Canada’s parliament.
Camilla was made Patron of Barnardo’s in 2016. The organisation sent tens of thousands of Home Children to Canada. She took on the role, having served as president since 2007.
Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.
A spokesperson for the Canadian government said: “The government of Canada is committed to keeping the memory of the British Home Children alive.
“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada deeply regrets this unjust and discriminatory policy, which was in place from 1869 to 1948. Such an approach would have no place in modern Canada, and we must learn from past mistakes.”
Ministers are considering scrapping the two-child benefit cap, the education secretary told Sky News.
Bridget Phillipson, asked by Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast if the cap should be lifted, said: “It’s not off the table.
“It’s certainly something that we’re considering.”
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The policy means most families cannot claim means-tested benefits for more than their first two children born after April 2017.
Ms Phillipson’s comments are the strongest a minister has made about the policy potentially being scrapped.
Analysis by The Resolution Foundation thinktank over the weekend found 470,000 children would be lifted out of poverty if parents could claim benefits for more than two children.
However, Ms Phillipson said the government inherited a “really difficult situation” with public finances from the Conservative government.
“These are not easy or straightforward choices in terms of how we stack it up, but we know the damage child poverty causes,” she added.
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The education secretary, who is also head of the government’s child poverty taskforce, said ministers are trying to help in other ways, such as expanding funded childcare hours and opening free breakfast clubs.
She said it is “the moral purpose of Labour governments to ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can get on in life”.
Her “personal mission” is to tackle child poverty, she said.
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Sir Keir Starmer is said to have privately backed abolishing the two-child limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so, The Observer reported on Sunday.
The government’s child poverty strategy, which the taskforce is working on, has been delayed from its original publication date in the spring.
Whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap is one of the main issues it is looking at.
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