China is a national security threat to UK health data, leaked letter reveals

The Government is moving to protect British DNA data from Chinese hacking attempts amid warnings they pose a risk to national security, a leaked letter suggests.

The correspondence appeared to confirm the UK has concerns about the Chinese BGI Group, following accusations that it has launched multiple hack attempts against Genomics England that were previously officially retracted.

Cabinet Office Minister John Glen, who supports Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden on national resilience, said in the letter that “significant work related to national security” was being undertaken to “minimise the risks” highlighted by an MP who raised concerns about BGI Group, which was reportedly handed an £11m NHS Covid testing contract in 2021.

It comes after MPs raised concerns that Chinese hacking, including alleged attempts by BGI, would allow Beijing to analyse and predict which diseases may impact the British population.

This would allow Beijing to seize exclusive rights to patents and technology which could give China leverage over the UK by creating a dependency in health.

Some have also warned that China could synthesise diseases which would particularly affect the British population due to its genetic makeup.

Mr Glen’s letter, in response to Conservative MP Henry Smith, appeared to reveal for the first time that the Government has national security concerns about BGI and wider China hacking of health data, after confusion was sown last year after a minister retracted comments about the company.

Then-science minister George Freeman told MPs last year that every week “Genomics England was receiving several hack attacks from BGI, and that was a wake-up call for all of us”, only for Government sources to later backtrack on the claims by insisting “there is no evidence of attempted hacking of Genomics England in 2014 from BGI”.

Mr Freeman then issued a correction to Hansard, the official parliamentary record, reasserting that there is no evidence that BGI attempted to hack Genomics England.

The Cabinet has been grappling with how to protect British health data for years in line with a doctrine of being as “open as possible, as secure as necessary”

More recently in debates in the Cabinet’s economic security committee, Security Minister Tom Tugendhat has been pushing for tougher restrictions while Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch has urged restraint, arguing the UK must not deter investment despite concerns about cyber attacks, i has been told.

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In a speech on economic security on Wednesday, Mr Dowden said the UK has decided not to designate genomics as critical national infrastructure, insisting a review of the issue concluded the current system provided sufficient controls.

In his letter, Mr Glen meanwhile also pointed towards the UK’s biological security strategy announced last year to show the Government was looking at how to “minimise the risks from biological data to protect our burgeoning bioeconomy without stifling innovation”.

He also stressed that organisations such as Genomics England “actively consider national security in decision making about partnerships with companies overseas”.

Commenting on the letter leaked to i, Labour MP and Commons Foreign Affairs Committee member Fabian Hamilton said: “The Government must come to the House and address these issues as soon as recess is over.

“This is a credible, serious national security threat that has been raised by MPs from across the political spectrum.

“It should not be a party political issue but the lack of clarity from the Conservatives is making it so.

“We must work with our US allies to tackle this threat immediately.”

Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said: “UK citizens deserve to be protected from exposure to companies seeking to harvest their DNA, especially when those companies are answerable to authoritarian Beijing.”

A Reuters investigation in 2021 found that China’s BGI Group had developed prenatal tests in collaboration with the Chinese military and used them to collect genetic data from women around the world for research on the traits of populations.

BGI says it has never shared data for national security purposes and has never been asked to.

The United States has added three units of BGI Group to its trade blacklist, including the Hong Kong lab where genetic samples from the prenatal tests are processed and stored.

The Cabinet Office declined to comment on the leak.

The BGI Group said in a statement: “The allegations against BGI are not based on facts or evidence, BGI is disappointed that misinformation continues to be circulated.

“On March 9, 2023, the then-minister Freeman corrected his statement by saying that ‘There is no evidence of attempted hacking of Genomics England in 2014 from BGI’.

“BGI Group has never been, and will never be, involved in ‘hack attacks’ against anyone.

“BGI Group’s labs meet stringent standards in information security.

“Our data standards globally include the British Standard Institute’s BS10012, considered the gold standard in personal information protection, compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the ISO27001 standard on information security.

“We will continue to support the UK in improving the health of the people and continue to advocate for open and inclusive global scientific collaboration with the aim of fighting diseases more effectively.”