China: Liu Xiaobo

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend puts it extremely well. I have a long list here of individuals whose particular problems have arisen and whose instances have been raised by our ambassador and our representatives at different times. We will continue to press for an enlargement of freedoms and human rights with the Chinese, but there are different ways of doing it and my noble friend is right: some are best done publicly while some are best done in a more sensitive way.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask two questions. First, have the Prime Minister or any member of his entourage met any Chinese dissidents in the past few days while they were in China? Secondly, does the Minister agree that members of the public who are interested in human rights in China might look at the human rights overview on the FCO website? That is exactly what I did today, and I was interested to see that the latest update was that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has discussed human rights with China’s Premier and that Foreign Secretary David Miliband has spoken to his counterpart on the same subject. Does the Minister think that that really is prioritising human rights in China?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I do not know whether the noble Baroness slipped into a time warp; it sounds as though the website did. I will look into that. When I glanced at the site this morning I thought that I saw a more up-to-date version, but strange things happen in the cyberworld of the internet. It may be that the noble Baroness was misled by the machinery of the FCO’s website. I will examine it to see what went wrong.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, the first question was on meeting dissidents.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I do not have any information on meeting dissidents. The visit is continuing and I do not know what the rest of the programme will involve. However, I will write to the noble Baroness when I have precise information on that, as opposed to the other official-level meetings about which we have already heard.