Local government minister Michael Gove has been urged to clarify his position on buying surveillance cameras from tech firm Hikvision.
The biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, Fraser Sampson, warned there were 'serious unanswered' questions about the firm's involvement in human rights abuses.
Cameras and facial recognition technology from Hikvision, which is part-owned by the Chinese state, have been implicated in systematic human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other minorities in the Xinjiang province of China.
Professor Sampson said the firm been 'unwilling or unable' to provide assurances about the ethics of its operations or security concerns for the past eight months.
He has now written to central and local government ministers asking them to clarify their positions on buying equipment from the firm.
Professor Sampson said: 'If companies won’t provide the information needed to do proper due diligence in relation to ethics and security then they clearly should not be allowed to bid for contracts within Government or anywhere else in the public sector for that matter.
'If other areas of national and local government have carried out due diligence in relation to their human rights obligations, I’d be interested to see the information they used; if they haven’t then I’d be interested to understand how the risks are being properly addressed.'