Foreign Affairs Committee (Hong Kong Visit)

John Stanley Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am glad to follow the excellent opening speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I have been a member since 1992.

When you, Mr Speaker, gave your most welcome consent to this debate yesterday, you were entirely correct in stating that the situation we face is entirely unprecedented. The Foreign Affairs Committee, during the long period in which I have been privileged to serve on it, has never before been refused entry to any country in the world. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee has already pointed out, this is a dangerous precedent for other Committees in the House and for the House as a whole.

In a previous visit to China in the last Parliament, we were subject to threats and a degree of intimidation, as the authorities tried to deter us from going to Tibet. I was privileged to lead the group that eventually went to Tibet, and we faced down those threats and attempts to intimidate us. At the end of the visit, we faced further intimidation and threats from the Chinese authorities when they found out that we were going from mainland China to Taiwan. That difficult situation was admirably handled by the then Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). Again, we faced down the Chinese authorities and went to Taiwan as planned.

I am sure that all parts of the House would regard this unprecedented situation as wholly unacceptable. What the Chinese are seeking to achieve by barring the FAC from Hong Kong escapes me. As the Chairman of the Committee made clear, we will not be deflected from our inquiry. We shall continue to take evidence for our inquiry, including from people in Hong Kong—we are capable of doing that without actually going to Hong Kong—and we shall make our report to the House in due course.

In political terms, the Chinese authorities have scored a spectacular own goal. They could not have given more eloquent credence to the case being made by the pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong that the joint declaration is under threat; they could not have made it clearer by the way in which they have dealt with the House of Commons’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Notwithstanding that, the issue of how the British Government respond is of key importance.

I must say to the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), and to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary that I have, thus far, been very disappointed with what I have seen in the public domain from the Foreign Office in its response to the situation in which this House and the FAC have been placed. As far as I can see, all they have said is that the Chinese authorities’ response and ban on the Foreign Affairs Committee is “regrettable”. That is nothing like good enough. The House and democracy in this country have been treated with contempt. I hope that the Minister of State will give us a robust response when he ends this debate.