Human Rights in Hong Kong

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

Without being as parochial as to mention every one of the 191,000 applications for the BNO visa route so far, this is a subject that has been raised. It was also raised in the Home Affairs Committee, which I sit on, and we had a private session with people from Hong Kong who were escaping the clutches of the Chinese Government. I am well aware, and have made representations, that we need to ensure that people who technically have not been included in that net, although it has been broadened, can be given those protections as well. The hon. Lady makes a valid point, but I cannot comment on her particular district councillor.

The mass exodus has amounted to over 500,000 residents leaving Hong Kong since the beginning of 2021. As I have said, there have been 191,000 applications for the BNO visa route. According to the Home Office, 144,500 Hongkongers have already moved to the UK, and that last figure is rising as we speak. Hong Kong’s population has therefore experienced a net loss since the introduction of the national security law and is in decline for the third year in a row. Hong Kong used to be a colony that was ever-expanding and where everybody wanted to go to have an exciting future, but it is now shrinking; it is a shadow of its former self.

Since the implementation of the NSL, Hong Kong has seen a marked decrease in various world rankings of liberty—most noticeably in Freedom House’s global freedom ranking, where it has dropped 17 places. Hong Kong has seen significant declines in the rule of law, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, with think-tanks citing China’s increasing restrictions on civil liberties as a factor. After Myanmar, Hong Kong experienced the steepest drop in such rankings. It ranked 140 out of 180 locations for international press freedoms, according to Reporters Sans Frontières, which leaves it trailing behind Colombia and Cameroon.

We have also seen the forced closure and hounding out of many civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations and charities. It has been calculated that as of December 2023, no fewer than 800 such organisations had been forced to close, with over 285 people arrested—172 of whom were prosecuted for allegedly endangering national security.

In 2021, Amnesty International had to close two of its offices in Hong Kong. The Apple Daily Charitable Foundation was removed from the list of Hong Kong registered charities. The New School for Democracy, which was founded by Wang Dan, an exiled student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has had to move to Taiwan following the implementation of the national security law. The Global Innovation Hub—a German think-tank that was expelled from China in 1997—has moved from Hong Kong to Taiwan, also citing the national security law.

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions was dissolved in 2021; the Civil Human Rights Front, a pro-democracy group that organised some of Hong Kong’s biggest protests, said it had no choice but to disband; and human rights lawyers based in Hong Kong are fleeing abroad amid China’s effort to cleanse the city of dissent. In 2021, the Progressive Teachers’ Alliance, Hong Kong’s largest teaching union, was disbanded; that same year, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was among other unions dissolved amid national security fears; and recently the 4 June vigil to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has been banned.

Press outlets have also been closed down, and not just Apple Daily—Jimmy Lai’s paper, which we hear so much about—and its sister publication, Next Magazine: Stand News closed after being raided by police, and senior staff were arrested; Citizen News was forced to shut down amid the Government crackdown; and FactWire, an investigative news outlet, closed down, with its leaders citing safety concerns for staff.

Many of the guardians of free speech in Hong Kong have been arrested, prosecuted and jailed, if they were not able to flee. We particularly think of those, like Jimmy Lai, who stayed and made an honourable and brave stand to face up to the intolerance. That led to the prosecution that is going on now—the biggest pantomime in the far east.

Before 2019, the number of political prisoners went from nought to 1,775. Hong Kong now has one of the fastest growing political prisoner populations in the world, rivalling authoritarian states such as Cuba, Myanmar and Belarus. Further, Hong Kong has the highest number of female political prisoners in the world, at approximately 1,347. Many famous people have been incarcerated along with Jimmy Lai. They are, undoubtedly and without dispute, political prisoners in a place that used to boast of freedom of speech, democracy and all the liberties that we in this country take for granted.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

This is possibly the most important part of the many aspects of the destruction of freedom and liberty in Hong Kong: the absence of a free and fair court system. It shows why Jimmy Lai’s case is so important, as the one that we can hear about most easily in this country when there are so many hundreds of others. Does the hon. Gentleman share my frustration that, after all this time, seeing what we can now see about what the court system has come to in Hong Kong, there are still retired British judges operating in that jurisdiction?

Uyghur Tribunal Judgment

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Tim Loughton

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Leadership from the Government is essential. All of us—certainly the three musketeers on the Conservative Benches who are sanctioned—have asked repeatedly for a proper audit of the tentacles of the Chinese Communist party, which extend into our boardrooms, our university campuses, our schools, our businesses and Parliament, as we saw with the exposé earlier this week. The Government must take a lead in the country and for other like-minded nations, which need to be able to act together. Through the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which my right hon. Friend admirably co-chairs, bringing parliamentarians together who are now prepared to speak out and act in unison across the world will have and is having an impact.

We must redouble those efforts after all the revelations that we have heard about the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Government across the world, culminating in the recent speech by Richard Moore, the head of MI6, about the China threat that we all face.

What is to be done? Today, we need to get the Government to face up to, acknowledge and agree to our international obligations under the law of genocide. To repeat the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden made, the United Kingdom is a party to the genocide convention. All state parties to the genocide convention are under an obligation to refrain from taking an active part in the crime of genocide and, additionally, to prevent the commission of genocide by others, using all means reasonably available and within their power. That includes situations in which one state alone would be unable to prevent genocide but in which its actions in combination with the efforts of other states may do so.

The obligation to take concrete steps to prevent genocide is triggered

“at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed”

or is already being committed. The UK is on notice and has the requisite awareness of the serious risk that genocide is being committed or will be committed against the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of China and is therefore under an obligation to act to prevent that genocide. It could not be clearer.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman comes to the nub of the matter. This is an appropriate moment to remind ourselves why the genocide convention is framed in such a way: because throughout history, when genocide has happened, we have always played catch-up and said that we did not know. We live in a very different world now, in which we do know; that is why we have the obligation, which has now been triggered, to act. We can call it out in the House, but only the Government can act.

[Tim Loughton]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and has been a doughty champion of the cause. We cannot stand by and wait for further atrocities to happen. We are under a duty to trigger the processes that recognise that genocide has been and is still being committed, and to take appropriate actions to counter it. That is absolutely clear. I cannot envisage anything the Government could say in response today that would get them out of that obligation, now that the evidence has so clearly, so starkly and so skilfully been put forward by Sir Geoffrey Nice.

That is our first requirement, but there are other things that the Government can do. Following the lead taken in the United States with the recent Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden mentioned, we have a Bill on the Order Paper: the Tibet and Xinjiang (Reciprocal Access) Bill, which has specific sanctions that we can bring to bear against Chinese Government officials to reinforce the point that we are absolutely serious. We need further high-ranking officials, starting with Chen Quanguo, to be sanctioned to show that we are absolutely clear about who is responsible for the ongoing haranguing and victimisation of the Uyghur people.

This must happen. I have no doubt that at the end of the debate we shall all will it to happen, with no votes demurring, but the Government must take the lead. They must do what they are required to do under international law and under the moral duty that we have all recognised today and stand up for those people who are still being victimised by the horrendous torture meted out by the Chinese Communist party Government.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Tim Loughton

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

That is indeed the case. However, the rhetoric and the reality do not always provide a perfect match in this regard. But in fairness, and at the risk of playing with semantics, it would not be that difficult to achieve a more compassionate system because we are currently starting from an exceptionally low base. At the end of June this year, even in the midst of the pandemic, there were 40 people who had been in detention for over a year and four people who had been in detention for more than two years. This has particular importance when one considers the other areas that we have discussed, such as the right to family reunion for child refugees. To pick up the point from the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) in relation to amendment 9, I endorse his views on human trafficking. The problem in all these cases is that we do not get upstream because we do not get the necessary co-operation from the victims themselves. If the focus in our system was on catching those who are responsible for the trafficking, and not those who are the victims of it, we would be in a much stronger position. The issue of unlimited detention goes right to the heart of that. It is about which end of the telescope we see the problem through.

The amendments that are before the House this evening are all significant improvements. I hope that the Government, on reflection, will find a way to engage with this in a more constructive and compassionate way.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is difficult, in six minutes, to do justice to such an important piece of legislation, with such a diverse set of amendments. I want to speak primarily to Lords amendment 3—the old new clause 2 that I proposed on Report—and Lords amendment 4, which is the old new clause 29 on the Dublin replacement. However, I also support Lords amendment 6, previously proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), and Lords amendment 9, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) spoke so eloquently about.

On Lords amendment 3, we had previous arguments about lots of children in care going under the radar. There are now just eight months to go until the end of the EU settlement scheme. The Home Office originally told us that it estimated that there were some 9,000 EU children in care and care leavers in this country, but now, after a survey completed by 90% of local authorities, it suggests that the figure is under 4,000. Why the drop? At a similar time, it estimated that the number of EU adults who would register to qualify for the EU settlement scheme would be 3 million, but it has turned out to be over 4 million. Why does the number for children in care go down and yet the number for adults has gone up?

These children are of course already in this country. Not a single additional child will be brought into this country under this legislation. It is about regularising status and giving those children safety and giving confirmation to children already in this country. That is why the amendment is still very important. We risk another Windrush scandal for a particularly vulnerable set of children growing up in care who inevitably have more chaotic lifestyles than most people.

Recent research by the charity Coram, “Children left out?”, highlighted the mixed practice among local authorities in identifying and supporting children in care through the EU settlement scheme, with fears that some authorities are making no attempt to identify children in their care who need to regularise their status. Of course, there is no incentive for authorities to regularise that status through citizenship when it costs £1,012, for every child, to do that.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Tim Loughton

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 18th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Tim Loughton]

I shall speak to new clause 1 and amendments 16, 11 and 13, which are in my name and that of the Minister. No doubt the hon. Member for Harrow West will then want to speak to his amendments (a) to (c) to new clause 1, and I will be happy to comment on them after he has done so.

New clause 1 replaces clause 2, but of course it still only obliges the Secretary of State—the Minister for Women and Equalities, who is now my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt)—to prepare a report on how to bring about civil partnership equality, which is perhaps the meatiest part of the Bill. We know that there are two ways to achieve equal civil partnerships. One is to abolish existing civil partnerships for same-sex couples. That would leave just straightforward marriage, which is now available to all couples. The other—I hope the Government take this route, in accordance with the clear will expressed by the House in our many debates on this issue—is to extend civil partnerships to all, so they are available to same-sex and opposite-sex couples equally. By doing that, we would achieve equality in marriage and civil partnerships.

That is the unfinished business left over from the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which I tried to amend while it was still a Bill and subsequently through two private Members’ Bills—a ten-minute rule Bill and a presentation Bill. I am pleased that the Government agreed on Second Reading to look at this issue again, and I was pleased with the urgency the Minister showed at the Dispatch Box. Indeed, she actually issued a letter to hon. Members, announcing that she would start the consultation she said was required straightaway, before she had said that at the Dispatch Box, and she had to quickly reel that in again. She might like to give us some details about that.

I was also pleased that the Prime Minister appeared to support my Bill and endorse a change in the law when I challenged her at Prime Minister’s Question Time on 27 June, although I gather there was some hasty backtracking at the subsequent press conference about what she actually said. I was less pleased with the Command Paper, “The Future Operation of Civil Partnership: Gathering Further Information,” which was issued back in May and gave details about how consultation would take place. In particular, paragraph 17 states that questions about consultation

“will be included initially in the May 2018 ONS survey and will be repeated in subsequent surveys for approximately 10 months to secure a big enough sample,”

and that the Government intended to analyse findings no sooner than summer 2019 and, at some stage after that, come back with suggestions.

That rather kicked the issue into the long grass, so I was relieved that the new Minister for Women and Equalities indicated that we will not have such a long-drawn-out consultation, and that whatever work she thinks still needs to be done could be completed no later than this autumn. I will suggest how that work might be brought forward even further. I am particularly pleased that she indicated publicly that she is in favour of achieving equalisation by extending civil partnerships for all, and that she does not support scrapping existing civil partnerships to achieve equality through marriage only.

The Minister for Women and Equalities confirmed that—it is on the record—in an interview with Stonewall. I was pleased to see Stonewall support the extension of civil partnerships. In so doing, it followed in the footsteps of many others, including the Church of England, as the Second Church Estates Commissioner, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden, will confirm. The Church announced as long ago as April 2014 that it did not want same-sex civil partnerships to be abolished and it supported equalisation by extension. And as of this morning’s count, 139,593 people have signed the petition, organised by the Equal Civil Partnerships group, in support of extending civil partnerships. This measure has huge support.

Of course, things have moved on considerably with the unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court on 27 June 2018 in the case of Steinfeld and Keidan, of whom one and a mini one are not far from our proceedings today. I attended the opening of that hearing on 14 May and also went to the judgment. It was a unanimous five-nil judgment, and the terms used in the judgment were absolutely categorical; it was absolutely clear.

Let me pull out some quotes. The judges stated that

“to create a situation of inequality and then ask for…time—in this case several years—”

which is what happened by creating same-sex marriage but not equalising civil partnerships at the same time—to determine

“how that inequality is to be cured is…less obviously deserving of a margin of discretion.”

That is their lordships’ discreet way of saying, “Get the heck on with it.” They also said in the judgment that there was no end point “in sight” for the present inequality of treatment, and therefore they found in favour of Steinfeld and Keidan, because the situation was incompatible with article 14, taken in conjunction with article 8, of the ECHR. They could not have been clearer than that.

The written findings refer to my Bill in paragraph 8. In fact, there is a whole chronology of the various Bills that I have brought forward on this subject in that paragraph. Towards the end of the judgment, it says:

“The amendment to Mr Loughton’s Bill which the government has agreed does no more than formalise the consultation process to which it was already committed. It does not herald any imminent change in the law to remove the admitted inequality of treatment.”

Basically, the judges are saying that this Bill, or Government action in lieu of this Bill, needs to go a lot further.

The Government have not yet by any means discharged their duties, according to the findings of the Supreme Court, so it will be interesting to hear the Minister’s take on those findings. They came out three weeks ago, but so far we have had no detailed statement from the Government as to what their response is likely to be. Clearly, work needs to be done; preparations need to be made, but the Government have had several years. This was not a bolt out of the blue. Most people thought that the judgment would find as it did—I do not think most people thought it would find quite as forcefully as it did—so the ball is very much in the Government’s court to change the law and, crucially, to get on with it.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful case. May I remind him and others of the genesis of the current inequality? It was not a point of great principle; it was essentially a point of raw politics. At the point when the marriage equality measure was going through the House of Lords, there arose within No. 10 Downing Street a certain nervousness, shall we say. It was felt at the time that it was more important than anything else that we should preserve marriage equality, and it was for that reason, and that reason alone, that the defect that we seek to rectify today was allowed to go ahead. I do not know what is in the judgment, but I suspect that that would have weighed very heavily with their lordships in their consideration of the Steinfeld case.

Looked-after Children/Social Work Reform

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Tim Loughton

Thursday 20th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Does my hon. Friend share my frustration that too often there appears to be an obsession with changing structures, titles and the nature of the vehicles delivering children’s social care, when what really makes a difference are some of the things that he has already mentioned, such as making sure that we do not have 20% vacancies for social workers in certain parts of the country—that is why there is such a huge variance in the number of children taken into care in different local authorities—and looking at the quality of the outcomes for these children? We should do that, rather than obsessing about the system, which is supposedly there to help these children. It is the people on the ground and to whom my hon. Friend quite rightly paid tribute—the too-often maligned social workers—who really help, but they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

[Mr Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for making some really strong points. He is absolutely right about the obsession with structure, as opposed to the importance of the people operating within it. That is why I first of all pay tribute to social workers, and believe that their leadership and reputation need to be enhanced and protected through a professional body; that is something that the Government have to think about carefully.

Although we are happy to hear that the Government plan to consult on many of their reforms, we still believe that there is a lack of detail on how to tackle some of the trickier issues, such as the retention of social workers. Moreover, there is a lack of detail on how some of the proposals are to be taken forward, and how extensive and binding the consultation exercises are likely to be.

The Government said in their response to our report:

“We agree that the development of a strong professional body for social work is important.”

However, they also said that they thought such a body

“would be one established by the…profession.”

We are a bit disappointed about that, because we believe that the Government need to be much more proactive in their efforts to replace the College of Social Work. I hope that the Minister will address that point when he rises to his feet.

The sector needs to be more heavily involved in this area, of course, but the Government have previously invested in the College of Social Work, and there is still a key role for them to play in the creation of a new professional body; it is not sufficient for them to say that the profession needs such a body while doing nothing to encourage its creation. The establishment instead of a Government-controlled regulator seems to suggest precisely the opposite: that the task of defining social work, and good social work practice, is being taken out of the hands of social workers. That is the opposite direction of travel to the one that we recommend. That is worrying, and we are concerned that the Government have not fully understood the significance of the move towards regulation, and away from supporting the creation of a professional body.

Social workers face pressurised working conditions, and the Government response suggests that action on that issue is not being taken quickly enough. Our recommendation that social workers nationally have manageable case loads was rejected. That was despite Ofsted saying that the local authorities that were judged to be good had almost always set manageable limits for their social workers—something we picked up on in Trafford. A recent National Audit Office report that was very critical of the Government’s action on improving children’s services also raised the issue of social worker case loads. We are disappointed that no immediate action on this front is planned.

In some cases, the Government’s response was to reject our recommendations without sufficient justification. For example, despite agreeing that the assessed and supported year in employment was important for newly qualified social workers, they rejected the recommendation to make it mandatory. We are unclear as to why they did that.

Both our inquiries revealed the pressures that children’s services are under. Our inquiry on the mental health of looked-after children found that CAMHS are overwhelmed, and that many specialist teams that offered targeted support for looked-after children have been abolished due to financial pressures. In some areas, children’s social workers face having unmanageable case loads, which is leading to low morale and poor working conditions, as was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

Experienced social workers are exiting the profession in record numbers. As I have said, Ofsted has found that the local authorities that are judged to be good tend to be the ones that give their social workers manageable case loads; the Government must take account of that.

We also found that services were inconsistent across the country. I have already said this, but it is important to note that initial mental health assessments are highly variable. Many local authorities are not meeting their statutory requirement to ensure that all children are properly assessed on entering care. I would have thought that was of fundamental importance. While there are some good authorities—we cannot deny that, and we should always support those that are good—that support their children’s social workers with good leadership, access to continuing professional development and manageable case loads, far too many are still not in that category, or even in the vicinity of it. There are regions with significant retention problems, and it is clear from Ofsted reports that plugging the gap with agency workers does not bring about a satisfactory solution.

Both inquiries found that training and development for professionals in children’s services are poor. Children’s social workers lack a professional body, and their access to CPD is inconsistent and inadequate. Put simply, it is not good enough. A new professional body for social work, created with help from the Government, could define professional standards for qualifying and post-qualifying practice, and be given a mandate to define the CPD and post-qualifying pathways for the children’s social work profession. This debate is about a profession and the people within it, and we believe that they should have an appropriate body.

Training and support for foster and residential carers is highly variable, and many local authorities fail to equip carers with the knowledge and skills needed to support looked-after children with mental health difficulties. Foster and residential carers are professionals who need comprehensive and regular training in how properly to support children and young people in their care. We have recently launched a further inquiry on fostering, and we will look in more detail at the issues in the coming months.

Despite the Government agreeing with much of our thinking, the responses to both reports lacked the determined aim to implement change in an urgent fashion. It is hugely disappointing that the Government referred so many of the recommendations to an expert working group. On such an important and pressing issue, delaying action and effectively passing the buck is not helpful.

[Tim Loughton]

I share my hon. Friend’s frustration, but the frustration is worse than that: some of the recommendations in his Committee’s excellent reports relate to recommendations made in the Munro review, which reported in 2011. Since then, very little progress has been made on those recommendations, which have been looked at, researched and looked at again, and they remain unimplemented.