China: Human Rights and Security

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate and for all that he said in his opening remarks. His speech was a devastating analysis of the real world. If this Government and this House fail to pay attention to what he said, we are doing ourselves and our fellow countrymen a disservice. This important debate is timely, and I hope it will be influential in shaping our own Government’s thinking, even if we will have little effect on the Government of China.

It would have been a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, whose reputation as a campaigner for human rights is well known, but she apologises, and has asked me to apologise for her, as she has a pressing family engagement that she cannot avoid.

I have two interests relevant to this debate to declare. The first is that I am a trustee of the China Oxford Scholarship Fund, a small charity founded by my friend, the late Tim Beardson, about 25 years ago. He set up the fund to provide postgraduate scholarships at the University of Oxford to students from China, Hong Kong and Macau. Up to 15 scholarships are awarded annually. Preference is given to those who are studying in the United Kingdom for the first time. Successful candidates are those of the highest calibre, studying in any subject. They are chosen for their academic excellence, financial need, leadership qualities and commitment to contributing to the development of China.

Charlie Parton is a former diplomat who spent 22 years working in China and is now a senior associate fellow at RUSI. The Times reports that, at a recent conference, he

“said that on the face of it there was nothing wrong with collaboration and co-operation between British and Chinese universities. A roundtable on education was fine with the right safeguards”,

but he

“warned that the issue was over science and technology, where ‘the distinction between civil uses, military uses and repression uses just melts away’ … ‘That’s where British universities have to be extra careful on co-operation.’ … Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, has previously warned that universities are ‘magnetic targets for espionage and manipulation’ and that China and other hostile states are stealing intellectual property from them with ‘dispiriting regularity’. He said he had no issue with co-operation but said it needed to be done with safeguards and the right level of awareness”.

At the COSF, we are realists and more than aware of the dangers, but we are also not so naive as to think that wringing our hands will release Jimmy Lai.

That brings me to my second interest. I am a member of the Bar who specialises in media law cases and has advised plaintiffs and defendants in Hong Kong, both before and after 1997, on freedom of expression questions. But what is happening in Hong King now concerns me not just as a lawyer but as someone who believes in the rule of law, open justice and the right to say what one thinks and believes within the rule of law.

Those concepts, which we take for granted in this jurisdiction, are all under threat in Hong Kong, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, so powerfully pointed out. That of itself is fundamentally wrong and in breach of all the principles that this Parliament stands for and any United Kingdom Government should stand for, but it is also in breach of the joint declaration made by this country and China exactly 40 years ago today, in 1984, in preparation for the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. That treaty has a 50-year life with 20 years to run. That it will become time-expired does not permit us to let it wither, be ignored or be undermined.

It is not just the national security law, inflicted on Hong Kong in 2000, that evidences the erosion of civil liberties and human rights but the daily conduct of the authorities in Hong Kong in attacking their own citizens and expatriate Hong Kong-UK citizens, making extraterritorial arrests and locking up anyone they find inconvenient or tiresome. House of Lords Library staff—I thank them for their research—tell us that some 304 people have been arrested under the NSL for

“suspected acts or activities that endanger national security”.

As we know and have seen in the press, 45 others have been jailed for “conspiring to commit subversion”. These are all ridiculous and absurd allegations. None the less, this is the daily working of the Chinese and Hong Kong Governments’ way of doing justice.

We know from open source information, and from what we can see and hear for ourselves, that the Chinese Government pay no attention to human rights or the rule of law. They pay no attention to complaints, no matter how politely delivered, by western leaders. The recent statements issued by UK Ministers and the interventions made by the Prime Minister directly with President Xi—I applaud them for making them—must be more than mere formulaic verbiage. With interlocutors who have no regard for, and perhaps do not even understand or still less care about, the concepts we are worried about, we need to use commercial leverage with our allies and be ready to cause China actual economic harm to get our message home. If that costs us as well, it will be a price worth paying, but a China that sees no diplomatic, military or monetary disadvantage in ignoring us and our allies is a China that will continue to push outwards, crush domestic dissent and assert itself at our expense. We have a choice: to act or simply to watch.

Jimmy Lai, an elderly UK citizen incarcerated in Hong Kong for simply expressing his opinion and allowing others to do so through his newspaper, not only suffers as an individual human being but stands as a representative of all those in Hong Kong under its authoritarian and unjust regime. I urge the Government not just to issue statements but to take retaliatory action to ensure that his case is dealt with properly, justly and speedily. He should be released and permitted, if he chooses, to leave Hong Kong with his wife. He should not be in prison for his thoughts and his words. Now is the time. Let us choose to act, not just to watch.

Jailing of Hong Kong Pro-democracy Activists

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I will double-check, but I know of no such arrangement and I would be very surprised if that were the case. As he knows, we do not comment on sanction designations before they take place, and I would be very surprised if we would comment on something like that. I will check and get back to the noble Lord if I am wrong, but I would be very surprised if that report was in any way accurate.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, in the other place, the Minister’s right honourable friend said at the end of her Answer that the United Kingdom Government will always stand up for the people of Hong Kong. Could the Minister explain what she meant by that?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I was among the people in the other place who called for the BNO passport holders to be given the rights that they have, and we will continue to do that. That is one way in which we stand up for the people of Hong Kong. The other way is through using our voice when we can. The view that this Government take—and I appreciate that this is a different take on this from that which the previous Government had—is that, through some engagement, we might be better able to effect the kind of change that we would all wish to see.

China: Human Rights and Sanctions

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, we are concerned about surveillance and threats to, for instance, BNO passport holders or others here in the UK, and we monitor that extremely closely. We take our responsibilities towards human rights, compromises of freedom of religious belief and other issues of privacy very seriously.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, what assessment have the Government made of China’s intentions to act aggressively in a military sense in the western Pacific? Do they agree that it is highly likely to come very shortly? What are we doing about it?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, we take the issues of freedom of navigation on the high seas extremely seriously. These were raised with China by the Foreign Secretary, and we made our position on these issues very clear.

Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on having gone further and faster than they had originally planned once the gravity of the situation became clear. Although this may be the largest ever package of sanctions from the UK, can the Minister explain to the House why there are so few individuals on our sanctions list compared with the EU’s? Why, in a particular spirit of generosity, are we allowing 18 months from when the legislation comes into effect for those who wish to sell their houses and get the proceeds out of the country to do so?

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness’s last remark. I was on the Joint Committee on the Draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, which sat in 2019. Clearly, 18 months is far too long if Clause 3 of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill is to have any immediate effect.

Is there any possibility of having a look at the enemy aliens Act of 1914? Of course, this is not an exact parallel, but there may be suitable provisions within that old legislation, which was renewed in 1919 after the end of the First World War. Could my noble friend’s officials perhaps look at this legislation to see if there are any useful provisions which could be modernised and brought forward to be of value nowadays—accepting that the United Kingdom is not “at war” with Russia?

While the measures which my noble friend has just announced are hugely valuable, there are three groups of people on whom we need to apply pressure, given that the Ukrainians are actuarily unlikely to win a fighting war, brave as they are and incredible as their resistance has been so far.

First, when the ordinary Russian public are queuing for bread in Moscow because the Russian economy has collapsed, they will begin to wonder why and they will begin to ask why Russian state television and other state-controlled media operations have been less than candid about why the Russian army has gone into Ukraine, its level of success and the number of their children who have been killed. I understand that the Russian army moves, when it can, not just with armoured vehicles, artillery and infantry but with mobile crematoriums, so that the soldiers who are killed are immediately disposed of and the Russian public do not get to know about the huge numbers who have been killed.

Environment Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I spoke in support of the amendment in Committee, and I think it is right that I comment on the slightly changed amendment before us. I support it entirely and there are elements in it I would have thought the Government would welcome, particularly proposed new subsection 8A(b), where the court has to have regard to

“the likelihood that the grant of a remedy would cause”,

among other things,

“any detriment to good administration.”

This is a very carefully drafted amendment. It has all the elements one would expect to find in a Bill dealing with the subject we are concerned with. It is also looking at the interests of justice, which any court would want to do in any case. I support the amendment.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, we are all being very diffident this evening. I apologise because I did not speak at Second Reading or in Committee on this Bill, but I am as concerned as my noble friend Lord Duncan and the two noble Lords on the Cross-Benches about the way this Bill is going to deal with this particular subject. Unless this amendment is made to the Bill, we will be the poorer for it.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I spoke to and signed the amendment in Committee. I entirely support the new wording. I said in Committee that the judges could be trusted. The Government might have had a little doubt about some of it but, with the changes to the clause, I cannot see what greater protection any Government could legitimately seek.

Myanmar (Sanctions) Regulations 2021

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend for opening the debate so clearly and with such conviction. I also refer to my interests in the register and, in particular, to my practice at the Bar involving cases to do with international human rights and sanctions law, as well as my recent appointment to the Taskforce on a Transatlantic Response to Illicit Finance, launched by the Royal United Services Institute only today.

These regulations are further evidence of a much-needed new approach to how the United Kingdom deals with regimes abroad whose activities offend the most basic of human rights and rule of law obligations. In permitting the Government to designate particular individuals, as opposed to countries or Governments, and to have a direct impact on their personal finances and ability to travel, they will have a direct effect on the people who lead the Governments or regimes through which and in whose name the abusive and criminal behaviour is carried out.

These regulations also reflect what the United States is doing. The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, is adding regulations to implement a Burma-related executive order introduced on 10 February 2021. OFAC intends to supplement these regulations with a more comprehensive set, which may include additional interpretive and definitional guidance, general licences, and other regulatory provisions.

Clearly, sanctions regimes work better if conducted multilaterally and not just by one country, no matter if that one country is the United States, but it would have been unthinkable to do nothing in the face of the widespread evidence of serious human rights violations perpetrated by the Myanmar security forces following the recent military coup. Prior to the coup in February, the UN independent international fact-finding mission had established consistent patterns of serious human rights violations and abuses in Kachin, Rakhine and Shan states and attributed responsibility to the Myanmar security forces, particularly the military. Atrocities committed by the Myanmar security forces include systematic burning of Rohingya villages, massacre, torture, arbitrary detention and targeted sexual violence.

These regulations give the Government the authority to designate particular individuals and to subject them to the restrictions listed in them; they do not identify the designated people. The sooner that the Government put into the public domain the names of the generals or other government leaders in Myanmar who have been found to have been responsible for the human rights and other abuses, the more effective the sanctions will be. I hope that my noble friend will shortly list the individuals caught by these sanctions so that the people of Myanmar, as well as those outside it, know what we have done and against whom the sanctions will bite. It would also be useful to specify the targeted assets and their value so that we can all see that these people are not only murderers and torturers but kleptocrats as well.

Myanmar is a relatively small country, and its leaders are an easy target. Hitting its generals may cause them some inconvenience—although, like the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, I should be interested to know whether any of them actually has assets or bank accounts in London. However, until China and Russia and a number of other larger countries are persuaded that supporting corrupt and cruel anti-democratic kleptocracies in Asia, eastern Europe, the Middle East or Africa is not good for their economies or the personal fortunes of their leaders, we will make very little progress, welcome as this small step may be. While congratulating the Government on these regulations, I therefore encourage them to do more.

Integrated Review: Development Aid

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate and for the way he introduced it. Since the enactment of the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, the Secretary of State for International Development—and now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Secretary—has been under a statutory legal duty to ensure that the United Kingdom hits the 0.7% of gross national income, or GNI, for official development assistance every year. That target is a relative figure, not an absolute one, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, pointed out.

The Secretary of State also has, by law, to make an annual Statement to Parliament reporting on the previous year’s performance. If it turns out that the 0.7% target has been undershot, the Statement must retrospectively explain why, referring if relevant to the effect of changes in economic and fiscal circumstances of any substantial change in GNI and the likely impact of meeting the target on taxation, public spending and public borrowing, or to circumstances arising outside the United Kingdom.

Until Parliament changes that law on the statutory duty, the Government must aim to hit it. They cannot deliberately aim off or fire blanks. They can say they intend to change the law or substitute another target, but until the statute is repealed or amended the Government are subject to that law. They cannot legitimise failure to hit a target by announcing in advance their intention to fail.

The Government, of course, know this. Speaking on the Statement on the recent spending review, my right honourable friend the Chancellor told the other place that, since the Government

“cannot predict with sufficient certainty”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/20; col. 870.]

what the “fiscal circumstances” will be, they will have to legislate to change the law. The Foreign Secretary said the same thing from the Dispatch Box the very next day. My noble friend Lord Ahmad recognised those obligations in your Lordships’ House and expressed the Government’s intention to remain within the law.

While accepting that for the Foreign Secretary deliberately to breach his statutory duty to meet the 0.7% target will not lead to his prosecution, it would none the less be unlawful and something for which he would be held accountable by Parliament. It would do neither his reputation as a lawyer nor the Government’s domestic or international standing any good to be seen once again to be flouting a clear legal obligation.

If the Government disagree with Prime Ministers May, Cameron, Brown and Blair and are not concerned about: sacrificing the United Kingdom’s moral authority; breaking a promise we do not need to break; presiding over the G7 while breaking one promise to meet another; or whether the 0.7% target is enlightened self-interest, the way forward is clear. I agree with my noble friend Lord Bellingham; the Government should change the law through Parliament and not break it out of convenience. I respectfully disagree with my noble friend Lord Balfe and the late Sir Edward Heath. We not only need to ask these questions, but to be—

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt my noble and learned friend, but we must again be strict with the time limit.

Russia: Alexei Navalny

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness will be aware, the sanctions that have already been imposed on the individuals that I mentioned in my response to an earlier question were done in conjunction with our European Union partners. We continue to sustain those sanctions. I think the fact that Russia has taken note and looks to react to this shows the effectiveness of those tools. I repeat once again, and I know the noble Baroness agrees, that whatever we do with sanctions we must continue to work with our close allies, including those in the EU.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Walney, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. I want to ask a question that is a variant of the one that I asked on Monday about Hong Kong: what practical and effective steps can the United Kingdom take, both alone and with our allies, to ensure that, first, Mr Navalny is not murdered or left to die in prison; secondly, that Russia’s nascent democracy is not snuffed out; and, thirdly, that the Russian Government are not tempted to distract from their domestic, political and economic problems by foreign adventures calculated to destabilise their neighbours?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend raises some important points. I assure him that the United Kingdom is taking actions quite directly, including, as I have alluded to, with sanctions, which include asset freezes and travel bans. We are acting with our key partners to ensure that a clear message is sent to the Russian state, most recently on 19 April. The Foreign Secretary issued a statement asking for the immediate release of Mr Navalny from detention. We are working through key multilateral organisations. The UK led a G7 statement. Today we are awaiting statements due to be issued as a response at the OCPW. There are OSCE statements today on Mr Navalny and media freedom, and a European human rights ambassadors statement today covering this issue.

Hong Kong: Pro-Democracy Campaigners

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, there is no more I can add to what I have already said, but I assure the noble Baroness that the plight of everyone in Hong Kong, including the young generation, is at the forefront of our work and the actions we have taken in partnership with other countries.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, while I appreciate that shouting from the sidelines will not have any effect at all on the Government of China, will the Minister accept that these latest convictions and sentences exemplify the repression of human rights and the rule of law in Hong Kong? What practical and effective steps can we in the United Kingdom take, both alone and with our allies, to ensure that the position for the people of Hong Kong is improved?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble and learned friend. Freedom and human rights, including the right to protest, continue to be suppressed in Hong Kong. On the further actions we can take, I believe it resonates with the Chinese authorities when we act in concert with our key partners, not least because they respond accordingly to the statements being made. While the impact of those actions might for the medium to long term, they are noticed not just in Hong Kong but in Beijing.

China: Convictions of Democracy Campaigners in Hong Kong

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I will first share with the noble Baroness that the BNO passport route and applications for BNO are functioning smoothly and effectively. On her second point about those who do not qualify for BNO status, if there are specific individuals who raise issues of concern and security and claim asylum within the confines of the United Kingdom, we look at those cases directly and individually.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, whose work in this field is hugely appreciated and acknowledged. Will the Government not only to make representations but, with our allies, to take real and practical steps to bring home to the PCR and the Carrie Lam Administration in Hong Kong that repression will not work? It makes them look ridiculous and should not be pursued.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I totally agree with my noble friend’s second point and I assure him that we are working directly with partners. He will be aware that on 9 January the Foreign Secretary released a statement with Australian, Canadian and US counter- parts on the mass arrests. On 13 March the Foreign Secretary issued a statement declaring a breach of the joint declaration. We continue to work with partners on further steps we may need to take.