British Nationals Detained Overseas

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Hannah Bardell

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am very grateful that my hon. Friend intervened, because I agree, of course, with everything he said. He and I are sanctioned; in our case, it is for raising the genocide in Xinjiang, which is another case altogether.

I agree with my hon. Friend about Jimmy Lai. I will come back to Jimmy Lai, but I want first to say something more widely about the many British citizens who languish abroad. I am afraid that we too often find reasons and excuses to believe that behind the scenes we can somehow do something that will help them without raising the fact that they are British citizens and therefore, under international law, they require full consular access and rights. I simply say that that is a mindset that we need to get out of. We need to say: “If you are a British passport holder—and, most importantly, a British citizen—then you have the protection of this United Kingdom, which is supposed to believe in human rights and freedom.”

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

It is difficult to disagree with anything the right hon. Gentleman is saying. Does he agree with me that a legal right to consular assistance would be one step in the right direction to help to protect our citizens when they get into trouble abroad?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Well, I would not be against it, but if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not go into that now. I am sure she can make her case on that, and I shall be happy to discuss it with her later.

I want to use this opportunity to return to a human being who is now likely—as he must believe, given the way the Chinese authorities are working—never to see the light of day again. He will never see his son or his family ever again, because he took the brave choice: to stay. He did not run away. All those people who have left, quite legitimately, have had their bank accounts frozen and their pension funds frozen illegally—it goes on. But Jimmy Lai stands like a beacon in the middle of this to say, “No. No further. We will not put up with this. Freedom is our right. It is not something that we get given; it is our right, and I am standing up for it.”

Here is what I want to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister, who is going to defend the Government’s position, and I use my words carefully. I noticed that the Foreign Secretary has used this phrase—we had this debate recently, and we did not reach an agreement, so I am going probe that lack of agreement further. He said in connection with his conversations with the Chinese Government that they

“deliberately target prominent pro-democracy figures, journalists and politicians in an effort to silence and discredit them.”

So far, so good. He continued:

“Detained British dual national Jimmy Lai is one such figure. I raised his case”.

Can I just pause there? Jimmy Lai is not a dual national. He has never had a Chinese passport. He has only had a British passport. He is a British citizen, under British law and British protection, and he has appealed for that protection. His own defence counsels have reiterated their inability to mount a proper defence because they cannot get access to him, and now they have been barred from ever seeing him because they were too much trouble and were causing problems.

I say this again: every time we say that Jimmy Lai is a dual national, it plays into the hands of the Chinese authorities, for they know that they can claim rights over his position as a dual national that they do not possess. He languishes as a result, because they do not recognise other nationalities, so they do not allow consular rights of access. Here is a big problem for us. I again call on my Government: please, just get to your feet today, if you might, and say that we believe that Jimmy Lai is a British citizen and a British passport holder, full stop. We do not need to debate it, we just need to agree it. I therefore claim that that is the problem. The UN has made recognitions. The United States has recognised Jimmy Lai as a British citizen. The European Union has recognised him as a British citizen. The only country that I am aware of that does not recognise him as an out-and-out British citizen is—why, that would be the United Kingdom. For some reason, we have reticence.

When the Chinese Government trashed the Sino-British agreement, the Americans sanctioned 12 of the most senior people responsible—and the same with Xinjiang, by the way, when they sanctioned something like that many as well. We have sanctioned nobody in Hong Kong since the start of this saga. Why are we not sanctioning them? Why are we so worried about what they might say or do? If it is to get their help in stopping the Russians in the war, then they are busily supplying them with weapons, parts and all sorts of stuff at the moment. When it comes to net zero, there is nothing zero about their net. It is off the charts, and we are the ones who will pick up the pieces.

To end, I simply say this to my hon. Friend the Minister: please, please, please defend a British citizen. Proclaim it from the rooftops that the British Government stand for freedom and human rights, that when a British passport holder and British citizen is incarcerated, we will move heaven and earth and demand that that individual receives our full support, and that there is no way on earth that the normal access to justice will be blocked, for freedom must prevail.