Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Thursday 25th January 2018 Ministerial Corrections

Democracy in Hong Kong

The following is an extract from the Westminster Hall debate on Democracy in Hong Kong on 23 January 2018.

[Mark Field]

Many people will have followed the media coverage last year when three high-profile pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, were sentenced to imprisonment. We were further concerned when we heard that the British national Ben Rogers had been denied entry to Hong Kong in October last year. He is a champion of democracy and human rights, well known to Members of all parties. The Prime Minister spoke about his case in the House, we summoned the Chinese ambassador to the Foreign Office to discuss it and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government raised the issue with the Hong Kong Secretary for Labour and Welfare during his visit to Hong Kong in November.

I wrote to the Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam setting out our position on all four of those cases. Her response was consistent with previous public comments made by the Hong Kong authorities on the issue.

[Official Report, 23 January 2018, Vol. 635, c. 124WH.]

Letter of correction from Mark Field:

An error has been identified in my response to the Westminster Hall debate on Democracy in Hong Kong.

The correct response should have been:

[Mark Field]

Many people will have followed the media coverage last year when three high-profile pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, were sentenced to imprisonment. We were further concerned when we heard that the British national Ben Rogers had been denied entry to Hong Kong in October last year. He is a champion of democracy and human rights, well known to Members of all parties. The Prime Minister spoke about his case in the House, we summoned the Chinese ambassador to the Foreign Office to discuss it and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government raised the issue with the Hong Kong Secretary for Labour and Welfare during his visit to Hong Kong in November.

I wrote to the Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam setting out our position on this case. Her response was consistent with previous public comments made by the Hong Kong authorities on the issue.