British lawmakers have been warned that Chinese spies are posing as job recruiters to target MPs and parliamentary staff in a bid to obtain “insider insights” on behalf of Beijing’s Ministry of State Security.

The warnings from the UK domestic intelligence service, MI5, were relayed in a letter to Members of Parliament by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, on Tuesday.

Two LinkedIn profiles were explicitly identified as potentially being part of the “civilian recruitment headhunters” scheme, to conduct “outreach at scale”.

Named as Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, the warning to MPS said that the purpose was to “collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships, using professional networking sites, recruitment agents and consultants” on behalf of the

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