Trial of Jimmy Lai

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his words. On his first point about the Magnitsky measures that were included in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act, I was involved in that process. They are robust and they stack up with similar measures that have been brought in by so many countries through the hard work of a great many people but particularly Bill Browder. They have applications right across the civilised world against acts of gross human rights abuse. We will continue to consider designations under the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations. We do not speculate about those, and is quite right that we do not. On 6 July 2020, the then Foreign Secretary announced the global human rights sanctions regime, allowing the UK to target human rights violators directly for the first time.

The noble Lord also asked about our China strategy. I refer him to the integrated review refresh, which has a very clearly set out approach to China—to protect, to align and to engage. Examples under protection are the National Security and Investment Act, removing surveillance equipment from sensitive government sites, and banning TikTok on government devices. Examples under alignment are deepening co-operation with core allies and a broader group of partners, G7 leaders and the like.

On engagement, we are strengthening contact with China. We invited China to the AI Safety Summit, we deliver messages on those occasions on human rights, and we press China not to support Russia. We will continue that kind of engagement, which we think is the right approach. It is all set out in the integrated review.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, it is good to hear that the Foreign Secretary is supporting the rights of Jimmy Lai. Can the Minister tell the House what His Majesty’s Government are doing in practical terms to try to re-engage China on the Sino-British agreement? In the other place yesterday, the Minister of State, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, simply said that

“the breaching of the Sino-British joint declaration is a great tragedy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/12/23; col. 1126.]

That sounds a bit like hand-wringing. Is any more being done?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Sino-British declaration is a bilateral agreement registered with the United Nations. It is vital that we continue to raise it when we think it is being abused or when measures are being taken that are not in keeping with it or the values that underpin it, and we do that regularly. I have a list—I do not have time to relay it to the House now—of the times when we have raised these issues and examples of our continuing to raise them both bilaterally and multilaterally. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness that words are just that: words. The actions one can take when one side of a party is failing to sustain a bilateral agreement are very difficult to take, but we will continue to find all methods to raise the importance of this declaration.