Lincoln Jopp
Main Page: Lincoln Jopp (Conservative - Spelthorne)Department Debates - View all Lincoln Jopp's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the hon. Member, as I always am. He has a very long and proud record of standing against terrorism—he knows a lot about it from his experiences in Northern Ireland—and he is also right to pay tribute to those who serve in our police forces and our intelligence services, who work tirelessly around the clock to keep us safe. We all owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
The hon. Member is right to highlight a number of concerns. I can assure him that we take these matters incredibly seriously; he will have seen the measures that were announced in the King’s Speech yesterday, which will complement our existing legislative framework. However, I give him an assurance that if there is a requirement to do more—to add to our toolkit, to make sure we are best prepared to guard against the nature of the threats we face—we will not hesitate to act.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
I thank the Minister for his statement today, and for the gravity with which he has approached this statement and his job while others in Westminster are being distracted by noises off. I completely agree with him that it is totally unacceptable for a foreign state to be conducting shadow policing operations on UK soil, and I welcome that he said that the Foreign Secretary has called in the Chinese ambassador. However, he will also be aware that, if press reports are to be believed, the Chinese embassy in London issued a statement on Sunday in which it called on the UK Government to
“stop wantonly arresting and convicting Chinese citizens”
on “trumped-up” charges. It is clear that we are miles away from one another, so will the Minister encourage the Foreign Secretary to throw the book at them?