Hong Kong National Security Legislation: UK Response

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. Of course, we are dealing with a major economic power that relies on all its economic and political leverage and, indeed, other means, to bring different countries and Governments to its way of thinking or just to quieten them down. Our approach—as I have described, based on principle and international law—is therefore the most likely to be effective in building up that groundswell of support that has the best chance of changing China’s behaviour.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

As far back as 1989, the late, great Paddy Ashdown called on the Government to institute safeguards just in case one day China not just overreached but breached the joint declaration. We now potentially find ourselves in that position. Hongkongers are finding that the world is shifting beneath their feet, with nowhere to go. I understand that former Foreign Secretaries have written to the current Foreign Secretary, asking him to set up an international contact group to look at international human rights and also a lifeboat policy for Hongkongers. Has he considered their call and will he set up such a group?

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to the late Lord Paddy Ashdown for all his work. The UK is in the vanguard of the international response on Hong Kong. I am not sure that we are quite in the same situation with China and Hong Kong as we were with the former Yugoslavia, on which I worked as a war crimes lawyer in the early 2000s. None the less, the spirit of the hon. Lady’s question is absolutely right. As I have described, we want to build up a groundswell of those who share our commitment to the basic tenets of international law. That is most likely to be effective in getting China to think again about Hong Kong and all those other areas. We have raised China’s conduct on human rights issues in the Human Rights Council and the United Nations Security Council, and we will raise Hong Kong in every appropriate forum that we conceivably can.