The Sunday Times reports the suspected Chinese spy who became a confidante of Prince Andrew met two former prime ministers Lord Cameron and Baroness May – on separate occasions. It’s not clear if either was in Number 10 at the time, nor are there any suggestions that either of them knew the spy personally. But the paper says the claim has fuelled concerns about Beijing’s penetration of the British establishment. The meetings came to light in a foreign television profile of the man, known as H6 for legal reasons.
The Sunday Telegraph raises similar concerns, with its front page story that a Foreign Office interpreter also ran a website pushing propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party. It says the interpreter was a translator on UK state visits by Chinese presidents as far back as 1999.
According to the Observer, Labour has been criticised for allowing developers to build a new generation of ‘slum’ homes – by converting office blocks into flats without proper planning permission. A leading planning thinktank says the government is presiding over a ‘free for all’ with its drive to build 1.5m new homes in England. The paper notes that in opposition, Labour vowed to scrap housebuilding schemes which gave developers a certain planning leeway if commercial blocks on industrial estates or business parks were being converted. But the government’s national planning policy framework last week made no reference to banning the developments. The Ministry of Housing said it was keeping permitted developing rights under review.
PAThe Mail on Sunday reports Sir Keir Starmer is accused of forming what the paper calls ‘an EU surrender squad’ to reverse Brexit. It says ‘an all powerful’ team of more than 100 civil servants is being assembled to run the UK’s negotiations with Brussels. Critics are said to have warned that the prime minister could jettison many of the freedoms won by the 2016 Brexit vote – and instead, as the paper says, lash the UK to an EU superstate, returning Britain into a ‘rule-taker rather than rule-maker’. The government said there would be no return to the customs union, single market or freedom of movement.
The leading foreign correspondent Christina Lamb writes in the Sunday Times that the race is on to find the henchmen who implemented President Bashar Al-Assad’s reign of terror in Syria. She quotes one war crime investigator as saying that the ensuing justice programme will be ‘bigger than Nuremberg’, a reference to the Nazi war crimes trials after World War II.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed tells the Sunday Telegraph that the public will be right to be angry when water bills go up later this week. The independent regulator Ofwat is expected to announce rises of more than 20 per cent by the end of the decade to fix Britain’s water infrastructure. Writing in the paper, Mr Reed says the Conservatives had left the country’s water system in ruins.
And several of the front pages feature pictures of that Strictly Come Dancing win by Chris McCausland. ‘It’s for all those told they can’t do something’, the Mail on Sunday quotes him as saying. ‘Christoric,’ says the Sunday Mirror.
