Chinese Consulate: Attack on Hong Kong Protesters Debate
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Kate Green
Main Page: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)Department Debates - View all Kate Green's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Chinese Consulate: Attack on Hong Kong Protesters
Kate Green Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Jesse Norman
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I do not think that I should comment on the activities of the consulate, with which I am not personally familiar, but he is right that the fundamental consular activity is extremely straightforward, in terms of the support of one’s own people in a foreign country. One would not think that an enormous infrastructure is needed to do that. His point could be applied not just to consulates, but to other potential institutions around the country and around the world, and I thank him for that.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Trafford has been pleased to welcome many Hong Kong BNO families and we are very proud in my constituency to be the new home of the Manchester Taiwanese Association. Those communities will need considerable reassurance from the Government that they will be safe and secure in our country. Will the Minister give an assurance that if, as reports suggest, some of the activity—the abuse and violence—was conducted on consular premises, that will not preclude full investigation and full consequences being waged against those who conducted such activity?
Jesse Norman
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that question. We would expect the independent police and other authorities to make as thorough an investigation as they can, given the circumstances, and we would expect to be sensitive to areas where they have not been permitted to undertake the level of scrutiny that we would expect under such circumstances.