Fake email claiming to be resignation of foreign affairs committee chair sent to MPs

Tom Tugendhat says: ‘This is what China’s psyops looks like’

A fake email purporting to be from the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee claiming he had submitted his resignation has been sent to journalists and MPs.

Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP who was recently among nine British citizens to be sanctioned by Beijing, suggested no-one on the committee “fell for it”, adding: “This is what China’s psyops looks like”.

The email — sent from an AOL account using Mr Tugendhat’s name — told members of the committee he was notifying them of his “wish to resign” as chair of the body due to the sanctions making his position “untenable”.

Despite his role being elected by parliament, the email, which was also sent to The Independent, went on: “I have tendered my resignation to the prime minister and Boris Johnson has accepted my letter of resignation. An announcement will be made at the next sitting of the prime minister in parliament”.

It added: “At this stage, the sanctions that have been placed upon myself by China makes my position untenable. 

“It leaves me with no other option but to resign as I am unable to effectively operate on an international stage along with our G-20 and United Nations partners in matters of international affairs”.

However, posting on social media, Mr Tugendhat said the email had missed a number of points, including that “sanctions have boosted support for our work” and that India, Japan and the US had recently reached out to him.

He added: “One last point — I chair a committee, I don’t work for the PM so couldn’t resign to him but only to parliament. 

“But you can expect a communist flunkey to understand that democratic power comes from the people through parliament not from the head of government”.

The origin of the email is unknown, but the Labour MP Chris Bryant, a member of the committee who also received it to his parliamentary address, told The Independent: “The Chinese state’s jokesters seem to be up to their usual tricks. Tom’s courageous stance on human rights abuses in China and elsewhere shows precisely why he’s a perfect chair of the committee.”

Last month, Mr Tugendhat was among nine MPs, peers and academics to be hit by sanctions by China after being vocal critics of the country’s approach to Hong Kong and alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur people.

Beijing imposed the measures, which prohibits the parliamentarians from doing business with Chinese citizens and institutions, in a retaliatory move after Britain announced it had sanctioned Chinese officials for abuses against the Muslim minority in the Xinjiang province.

Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has previously denounced the abuses he described as being on an “industrial scale”, citing reports of torture, forced labour and sterilisation of women. 

At the time Mr Tugendhat described the sanctions against UK citizens as a “direct assault on British democracy and an attempt to silence the people that the British public have chosen to speak for them”.