Britain’s pensions agency to remove Chinese-made security cameras, ban new purchases
- Department of Work and Pensions is second government agency to ban new purchases of Chinese-made cameras
- Conservative MPs have called for an outright ban on cameras made by China’s Hikvision, Dahua
In a letter to Big Brother Watch, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it would remove Chinese-made cameras and ban new purchases as part of a three-year programme to upgrade its security systems. Big Brother Watch has been actively campaigning to ban Hikvision-made cameras in the United Kingdom.
“The Department will not be using any security camera equipment manufactured in China as part of this programme,” the agency said in the letter.
The Telegraph reported the ban on Chinese-made cameras earlier.
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“The decision to strip out Chinese state-owned CCTV from the Department for Work and Pensions is an enormously welcome development that could not come soon enough, given the role Hikvision plays in the ongoing brutal repression of Uygurs in Xinjinag,” said Madeleine Stone, Big Brother Watch’s legal and policy officer. “These surveillance companies have no place in the UK and it is an outrage that taxpayers’ money is funding companies so closely linked to genocide.”