Journalists Detained or Killed Overseas

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his supplementary question, and he is absolutely right to draw attention to this issue. We recognise the criticisms about the report that he outlined. We want to know what happened. When you lose a member of your family in such circumstances, in the conduct of their work in a dangerous situation, the family is entitled to know what happened. Sadly, I am afraid that I do not have a great deal of optimism about getting another investigation that would be any more credible or shed any more light on what happened. However, I thank the noble Lord for again bringing the House’s attention to Christopher Allen’s case, and we send our deepest sympathies again to his family.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in the second part of the noble Baroness’s very welcome reply to the Question that has been put to her, she referred to providing assistance in cases of human rights violation. I welcome the fact that it was a manifesto commitment to do that. Considering the recent meetings that the Foreign Secretary has had with his Chinese and Egyptian counterparts, can the Minister outline what concrete steps His Majesty’s Government have taken to secure consular access to Jimmy Lai, a British publisher who was unjustly jailed in Hong Kong, and Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a British blogger who has been arbitrarily imprisoned in Egypt for the past 10 years?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

As the noble Lord knows, I believe that we have answered questions on Jimmy Lai very recently, but we continue to raise these cases at ministerial level with the relevant Governments, and we remain deeply concerned that we have been unable to gain the access that we would wish.