A member of the  Foreign Affairs Select Committee in Parliament Alicia Kearns has told Express.co.uk that she is alarmed by attempts by China to stifle free debate around human rights issues such as the mistreatment of the minority Uighur population in Xinjiang.

Kearns told Express.co.uk: "What is ironic about our universities and this is an issue across the piece is that our universities are meant to be campuses of free speech."

"Of debate, of dialogue, of let me be the Devil for a moment and suggest something else," the MP said.

"We have got a massive problem on our campuses where we are self-censoring," Alicia Kearns said.

"But in addition to us self censoring we have got international world powers coming in and buying up academics, buying up research fields, buying up colleges at Universities," she said.

"I am very concerned about the future of our country if universities, the one place where open discussion should be constant and not even up for question, we have foreign powers buying up, and particularly China," she said.