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CHINA The key issue for the future is the extent to which China will now capitalise on the pandemic as other countries suffer its effects and how the UK Intelligence Community and their allies will stop this growing threat.

In terms of the work of the Intelligence Community generally, while it may have been reasonable for staff to work partially from home during the pandemic, it would obviously not be feasible for organisations that rely on secret material to carry out all their work over less secure systems. Yet even now, with the country having fully reopened, we continue to see the Intelligence Community working partially from home (some more than others). It appears that the response to our requests for information has slowed dramatically as a result: the 'new normal' for some organisations means deadlines have been missed or responses have been sanitised to enable them to be sent from home. This has had—and continues to have—an impact on the Committee's ability to scrutinise security and intelligence issues properly and in a timely fashion.

The pandemic had a notable impact in terms of staff across the Intelligence Community working from home, without continual access to classified systems—other than for those working on the most critical priorities. In this respect we take the opportunity to pay tribute to the Committee's own staff, who have continued to work from the office full time (a rarity in the Civil Service) so as to ensure that the Committee was able to function efficiently and effectively.