Transnational Repression in the UK (JCHR Report)

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. In the short time we have, I will take up and apply what she has been saying in relation to one country and one subject. The country is China and the subject is our universities.

I know Chloe Cheung, for example, and these individual cases are appalling, of course. However, they are described as TNR “events”, and I think what is underrated by the Government is the systemic quality of all of this. It is not just one or two, or even several, horrible events: it is working right through the system. Above all, in this country, it is working right through our universities because of the whole-of-state approach that China has to its engagement with this country and other foreign countries.

The problem arises here partly because our universities are so incredibly dependent on Chinese money for their survival and are therefore uncritical of the terms on which they receive that money. Recent figures obtained by UK-China Transparency show that, in Russell group universities, Chinese postgraduate students in STEM subjects now outnumber British postgraduates. Our universities are a very rich ground for CCP intervention. Chinese and now Hong Kong students are incentivised to report dissident fellow students. Those who report the dissidents are rewarded with a leg-up in their educational careers. In the past five years, 260 Chinese students in this country have applied for asylum because of the problems they faced in this way. I would be very pleased to be corrected if I am wrong, but I have seen no admission of this problem by any vice-chancellor in this country, and that, it seems to me, amounts to complicity.

I will quote a recent article in Times Higher Education by Dr Michael Spence, the provost and president of UCL, where more than 10,000 China nationals are studying. He spoke of the idea that Chinese students might be persecuted in the way that I have described, but, in his view, it is only an idea rather than a reality. He went on to say:

“Ironically, the experience of many of our Chinese students is that anti-China sentiment in the UK has an impact on their ability to speak freely about the positives they see in their country and its culture”.


Well, I think that Dr Spence is setting up an utterly false moral equivalence. It may be true that people here criticise some Chinese attitudes, but they do not threaten them with arrest by national security police and imprisonment back home, or with financial penalties being inflicted on their families. That is what China does to the students that it disparages. I am sorry, I should have said earlier that I should like to join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Isaac, particularly in this context, because he of course has great experience of universities.

In the article, Dr Spence said his university was

“stamping out a culture of fear”.

I am sorry to say that I think that is almost the reverse of what is going on, and this will continue unless it is, as people now say, “called out”. This is where I beg the Government to give a lead, particularly in light of this report. It is very important that the report’s recommendation of raising China to the enhanced tier happens. However, I am not very optimistic about this, because I have noticed that, with the Government’s mantra of “challenge, compete and co-operate”, the power of money constantly means that the idea of co-operating is always preferred to the idea of challenge.

Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has said what he said. I have heard it and do not agree with much of it. The Prime Minister has a strong record, as DPP and as a political leader, of tackling this issue, and a strong record of supporting my honourable friend Jess Phillips, who has a strong record of tackling this issue. Why this is being politicised is that some people are using it to attack the Government for a range of reasons. I want to focus on the issue at hand, and that is how we prevent child sexual abuse. The measures in the recommendations of the report to date will be looked at. We have already said what we are going to try to implement, and that is the important thing to focus on.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, one of the issues that arises in this long and sad saga is the difficulty of arriving at truth and the associated possibility of false accusation. Indeed, the IICSA inquiry was set up in the first place on, in one sense, a false premise—a whole load of utterly untrue accusations against prominent people. That was why it began. Operation Midland showed the accusations against Ted Heath, Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan to be absolutely untrue. There are many such occasions on which false accusations are made.

The reason this is relevant is that, first of all, it is a terrible thing to accuse people falsely, and, secondly, it can produce an extraordinary waste of time, effort and money, instead of finding out what really is true. In this respect, I very much endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said about mandatory reporting. We need to work out what it would actually do and what effect it would have. It is proposed by Professor Jay in the IICSA recommendations, where she says that, on the disclosure of child abuse, reporting is mandatory. But what is the disclosure of child abuse? Is it simply somebody saying that somebody has behaved badly? Is it a direct accusation? Does it exonerate the person receiving that from investigating themselves and thinking hard about it? Do they exercise judgment? Are they just complying rather than exercising their conscience? These are serious questions that need to be asked about this subject.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am conscious of the time, but I will try to give the noble Lord a response to that. On mandatory reporting, we are focusing on two specific issues. First, if a person, whoever that person is—a teacher, social worker, police officer or whoever—has a disclosure from a victim to them, they have a mandatory duty to feed that in to the law enforcement agencies for investigation. That creates a dynamic, first and foremost, that if a child goes to an adult who is in a responsible position and says, “I have been abused”, the adult does not make the judgment of “Yes, you have” or “No, you haven’t”, the adult says, “I have to report that now to an appropriate authority”. Secondly, and this is a more difficult side of this case, if somebody who has committed abuse goes to their MP and says that—I had a case once where that happened to me as a Member of Parliament—or they go to a priest or another individual and confess to a crime, they also have the statutory duty to report the issue to the authority at hand.

I think that is an important issue. It is about disclosure, it is about action. I withdraw what I said about the priest: I may have overstepped the mark there, and I wish to keep the House embedded in truth and fact. The essential point is that if an individual—a child or an abuser—reports that, the person they report it to has the ability to disclose that information to the police, who will then investigate and action it accordingly. I think that will help a dynamic of reporting and surfacing of information. I note the noble Lord’s points on historical abuse. We have had much discussion in this House, and I am willing to have further discussion accordingly when it is raised.

Ukraine: Small Boats

Lord Moore of Etchingham Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Moore of Etchingham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how many small boats impounded from illegal migrants they have in their possession, and whether they plan to grant requests from the Ukrainian authorities to contribute these to the Ukrainian war effort.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, no such request by the Ukrainian authorities has been received by the Home Office. These boats, which are not manufactured to commercial standards, are completely unsuitable for anything other than endangering those who use them. Border Force has seized and disposed of hundreds since 2018.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

I thank the Minister for his reply, but I think it is ridiculous to tell the Ukrainians what is safe for them to use in the situation they are in. They want these boats because they are the only way they can get across the Dnipro to their bridgeheads on the other side, and ferry men and munitions in and the wounded out. The Ukrainian authorities have asked for them; I am afraid it is a mistake to say that they have not. The Ukrainian embassy asked for them twice in February, and I have heard today that the Ukrainian ministry of defence is about to ask for them again now. I find it very puzzling. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why there is such reluctance to help—particularly as, at last, the American aid has come through—Ukraine get on the front foot, doing something incredibly brave, with these tiny boats, to get across the Dnipro and progress. They know more about what craft are seaworthy; they will repair these craft, because they need to—because they use them in matters of life and death.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, there are a number of questions there. First, just to repeat, the UK’s total committed military, humanitarian and economic support for Ukraine now amounts to almost £12.5 billion. As recently as 23 April, the Prime Minister announced that the UK will send our largest ever package of equipment from the UK, which is designed to help push back the Russian invasion on land, sea and air.

I go back to my initial Answer: these craft are unseaworthy. It is for us to determine their seaworthiness. They are built to extremely poor standards; they do not really even make it across the channel. They are not worth sending to Ukraine. As far as we are aware, the Ukrainian authorities have yet to ask for these boats. If they do, they should approach the Home Office and we will certainly come up with some other solutions.