British Nationals Detained Overseas

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Ms Ali. Others wish to speak so I will try to keep my comments brief.

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) on securing this vital debate. We should hold such debates regularly because there is so much to be done in this policy area. British citizens carry British passports, and those British passports have a clear statement at the front that none should let or hinder those who hold that passport, yet too often we find ourselves apologising and running around that major statement at the front of the passport.

I want to focus carefully on the case of Jimmy Lai. I had the privilege of meeting the international team of lawyers who are attempting to defend him, even though they have now, appallingly, been barred from Hong Kong by the Chinese authorities, such is their approval. Nevertheless, I congratulate his team on the huge efforts they are making around the world to draw attention to the plight of a man whose only crime is to cry freedom for all those he lives with.

The point about Jimmy Lai’s case is the reality of the change in Hong Kong. The Chinese authorities have trashed the Sino-British agreement that protected people’s rights in Hong Kong as a special case, once it was all agreed. That agreement is an international treaty. The problem we have is that the authorities can now proceed against people such as Mr Lai for sedition and other appalling charges. He has already been forced to lose his company, and the assets of Apple Daily have been seized. It is unprecedented and could not happen here in the United Kingdom.

Here is the point: Hong Kong is still meant to be a common-law area, but it cannot be a common-law area if people can have their assets seized on charges that have not yet gone through the courts. It is a peculiarity that we go on pretending, as do some of our justices who serve out there. It is no longer really a common-law jurisdiction because it has the national security law over it. People such as Jimmy Lai will now suffer under the national security law without any redress or protection, as would normally be the case here in the United Kingdom, for example, where English common law protects our normal and natural rights. Those rights have been completely decimated in Hong Kong.

The interesting part is that Jimmy Lai has been prosecuted in four separate sets of criminal proceedings arising from his peaceful participation in the high-profile pro-democracy protests in 2019 and 2020, which were organised by civil liberties groups. His crime, therefore, is to have attended the protests; that alone, apparently, is the key. The thing is that he has already been prosecuted and found guilty. One of the charges against him was eventually dismissed on appeal—others were upheld—but he had already served his sentence when that happened. He now faces even more serious charges. He has faced spurious prosecution on charges of fraud, which is why his equipment was seized. He was convicted in October 2022, and in December 2022 he was sentenced to five years and nine months’ imprisonment.

The conviction has meant that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) said, Jimmy Lai has spent some 1,000 days incarcerated on trumped-up charges. But worse is to come. Those charges were all precursors, giving the authorities time to build a case that, under the national security law, will put him inside for a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life.

The point that I want to make about Jimmy Lai, which is very important, is that he could have fled Hong Kong. He had made enough money to leave Hong Kong and go elsewhere, and complain about the Hong Kong authorities and the Chinese authorities from outside. But he did not. He chose to stay in Hong Kong, because he knew that if he fled then a lot of the hope about what they might eventually be able to achieve would also go. He is a beacon of freedom, and freedom of speech, in a way that no other that I know of globally is at present. I do not decry others; I simply say that he is remarkable.

Jimmy Lai’s choice to stay put in Hong Kong came with the full knowledge that he would not enjoy freedom for long. That has been realised, with these trumped-up charges, and now he faces a full prosecution—it has been delayed, but is likely to happen towards the end of this year, maybe in October—under the national security law.

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

My right hon. Friend, I and indeed you, Ms Ali, attended a conference in Prague over the weekend that was full of parliamentarians from around the world, many of whom, including my right hon. Friend and I, have been sanctioned by the Chinese authorities. The whole subject of Jimmy Lai was very much the focus of that conference.

However, does my right hon. Friend agree that the issue of Jimmy Lai is not just about Jimmy Lai himself but about what this country stands for? In the case of Jimmy Lai, the Chinese Communist party has enacted two criminal acts, one of which is breaking the Anglo-Sino agreement over Hong Kong, an international treaty to which we are a signatory. As a result of its trashing of that treaty, all the protections under the rule of law that might have applied have been swept away. That is why Jimmy Lai, one of the most successful businessmen and whose company was the largest quoted on the Hong Kong stock exchange, is now facing this prosecution.

Jimmy Lai is a British citizen—there is no doubt about that—and therefore he is entitled to the full force of the British Government’s protection. Why has that not been shown and why have there been no consequences, despite the warm words from the Foreign Secretary and others, for the fact that my right hon. Friend and I, along with five other parliamentarians, remain sanctioned and Jimmy Lai continues to be denied the basic justice that we take for granted in this country?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am very grateful that my hon. Friend intervened, because I agree, of course, with everything he said. He and I are sanctioned; in our case, it is for raising the genocide in Xinjiang, which is another case altogether.

I agree with my hon. Friend about Jimmy Lai. I will come back to Jimmy Lai, but I want first to say something more widely about the many British citizens who languish abroad. I am afraid that we too often find reasons and excuses to believe that behind the scenes we can somehow do something that will help them without raising the fact that they are British citizens and therefore, under international law, they require full consular access and rights. I simply say that that is a mindset that we need to get out of. We need to say: “If you are a British passport holder—and, most importantly, a British citizen—then you have the protection of this United Kingdom, which is supposed to believe in human rights and freedom.”

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

It is difficult to disagree with anything the right hon. Gentleman is saying. Does he agree with me that a legal right to consular assistance would be one step in the right direction to help to protect our citizens when they get into trouble abroad?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Well, I would not be against it, but if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not go into that now. I am sure she can make her case on that, and I shall be happy to discuss it with her later.

I want to use this opportunity to return to a human being who is now likely—as he must believe, given the way the Chinese authorities are working—never to see the light of day again. He will never see his son or his family ever again, because he took the brave choice: to stay. He did not run away. All those people who have left, quite legitimately, have had their bank accounts frozen and their pension funds frozen illegally—it goes on. But Jimmy Lai stands like a beacon in the middle of this to say, “No. No further. We will not put up with this. Freedom is our right. It is not something that we get given; it is our right, and I am standing up for it.”

Here is what I want to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister, who is going to defend the Government’s position, and I use my words carefully. I noticed that the Foreign Secretary has used this phrase—we had this debate recently, and we did not reach an agreement, so I am going probe that lack of agreement further. He said in connection with his conversations with the Chinese Government that they

“deliberately target prominent pro-democracy figures, journalists and politicians in an effort to silence and discredit them.”

So far, so good. He continued:

“Detained British dual national Jimmy Lai is one such figure. I raised his case”.

Can I just pause there? Jimmy Lai is not a dual national. He has never had a Chinese passport. He has only had a British passport. He is a British citizen, under British law and British protection, and he has appealed for that protection. His own defence counsels have reiterated their inability to mount a proper defence because they cannot get access to him, and now they have been barred from ever seeing him because they were too much trouble and were causing problems.

I say this again: every time we say that Jimmy Lai is a dual national, it plays into the hands of the Chinese authorities, for they know that they can claim rights over his position as a dual national that they do not possess. He languishes as a result, because they do not recognise other nationalities, so they do not allow consular rights of access. Here is a big problem for us. I again call on my Government: please, just get to your feet today, if you might, and say that we believe that Jimmy Lai is a British citizen and a British passport holder, full stop. We do not need to debate it, we just need to agree it. I therefore claim that that is the problem. The UN has made recognitions. The United States has recognised Jimmy Lai as a British citizen. The European Union has recognised him as a British citizen. The only country that I am aware of that does not recognise him as an out-and-out British citizen is—why, that would be the United Kingdom. For some reason, we have reticence.

When the Chinese Government trashed the Sino-British agreement, the Americans sanctioned 12 of the most senior people responsible—and the same with Xinjiang, by the way, when they sanctioned something like that many as well. We have sanctioned nobody in Hong Kong since the start of this saga. Why are we not sanctioning them? Why are we so worried about what they might say or do? If it is to get their help in stopping the Russians in the war, then they are busily supplying them with weapons, parts and all sorts of stuff at the moment. When it comes to net zero, there is nothing zero about their net. It is off the charts, and we are the ones who will pick up the pieces.

To end, I simply say this to my hon. Friend the Minister: please, please, please defend a British citizen. Proclaim it from the rooftops that the British Government stand for freedom and human rights, that when a British passport holder and British citizen is incarcerated, we will move heaven and earth and demand that that individual receives our full support, and that there is no way on earth that the normal access to justice will be blocked, for freedom must prevail.

--- Later in debate ---

[Leo Docherty]

I am grateful for the opportunity, and I will reiterate the language used by the Foreign Secretary and referred to by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith): Mr Lai is a dual British national born in China, and the reality of the matter is that Chinese nationality laws are very clear in that they do not recognise dual nationality and therefore have not allowed us consular access to Mr Lai. We are therefore using our channels with the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities to continue to raise his case.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

May I ask my hon. Friend something very clearly? The question was: do the British Government recognise Mr Lai as a British citizen and passport holder? The answer came back that he is a dual national. The Chinese Government say that he is a dual national and do not recognise it, so what do the British Government say? Is he a British citizen and a British passport holder? That was the question.

[Leo Docherty]

Mr Lai has a British passport. He is a dual British national born in China.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

He is not a dual national; he never was!

[Leo Docherty]

He is a dual British national and we will continue to look at this case. We will continue to use our channels with the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities to raise his case and call for his release.