U.K. parliament invites Taiwan envoy to testify on social resilience

London, April 17 (CNA) Taiwan's representative to the United Kingdom Vincent Yao (姚金祥) has been invited by the U.K.'s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) to testify in a hearing scheduled for Monday on societal resilience.

On its website, the U.K. Parliament said that Yao, along with Paul Huijts, the Dutch ambassador to the U.K., will give oral evidence on "their respective approaches to building national resilience, preparing their populations for civil defence and protecting their information environments and supply chains from disruption."

The JCNSS is a committee formed by heavyweight parliamentarians who head the committees in charge of important issues, such as national defense, foreign affairs, business and trade, and home affairs.

Matt Western, chair of the JCNSS, said on Friday that societal resilience is "one of the biggest challenges" the U.K. faces.

"The Committee's new inquiry will consider how we can build national resilience in the U.K. and help the public to understand the threats we face," Western said.

"We will begin by seeing what lessons we can learn from other countries, as we hear evidence from ambassadors from Taiwan and the Netherlands," he said.

It is not often seen that a U.K. committee invites the top Taiwanese diplomat in the country or a senior Taiwanese official to attend a testimony.

According to public records, Chen Liang-gee (陳良基), then Taiwan's Minister of Science and Technology, was invited by the U.K. House of Commons Education Committee in 2019 to testify and share Taiwan's experiences in AI development.

In 2021, former Taiwanese legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁) of the Kuomintang attended an online testimony held by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.