UK-China Relations

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) for securing this important debate. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I concur with the view expressed in the integrated review refresh 2023 that China represents a strategic challenge to the UK,

“across almost every aspect of national life and government policy.”

This debate has been a chance to consider how the Government are focusing on meeting that challenge. Suffice to say, from my and my party’s perspective, at this stage it is disappointing. I accept that it is not easy, as the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) just set out; the Conservative party lurched from sharing pints with the President of China to in 2021 designating China as,

“the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security”.

Xi is able to think strategically over many years, now that he has such great control of the Chinese apparatus, so the UK needs to do better and be more constant.

First, we need to be more clear-sighted about the threat that China poses. Secondly, we need to make use of the full apparatus available to us. Thirdly, we must set out some red lines, and show the Chinese Government that breaching them will have consequences. The hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe is right to highlight the scale that China has when it comes to the global economy, but the hon. Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald) is also right to point out, from his position of experience, the importance that that has for UK industry. However, we must balance those economic interests with the threat, and it is my view that, at the moment, the Government’s position is too accommodating and not sufficiently robust.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

We may disagree about what we heard earlier on today in the spring statement about whether the economy is growing, but we are certain that this Government will grasp ever more desperately at the will-o’-the-wisp of growth in the months and years to come. Does he agree that—unlike the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who said he went to China with his eyes wide open—we might as a country end up turning a Nelsonian eye to human rights abuse, to the fact we are exporting our net zero to a highly carbonised economy and to the cyber-attacks we experience daily from China in order to chase after growth that is not coming?

[Calum Miller]

I agree with the hon. Member on two fronts. First, he and I agree more on our disappointment with today’s growth figure than he gives me credit for. Secondly, the Government have set out that they wish at times to challenge, at times to co-operate and at other times to compete with China, but it is my contention that, as he set out, they are too intent on co-operation and not sufficiently intent on challenge.

I will briefly set out three areas of threat, starting with security and echoing the comments made by others. We face direct threats in the form of cyber-attacks, the threat of China as an ally to our enemies and see China threatening some of our own allies, including Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Secondly, we face threats in terms of economic vulnerability. Many other Members have spoken about our dependency. In addition, the Government’s regrettable decision to cut the UK’s overseas aid budget creates an opening space for China in the global south, through its belt and road initiative, to increase the debt dependency of countries on itself, and therefore to increase its influence in the world. On the economic side, there are credible reports of China’s attempts to steal intellectual property from the United Kingdom’s university and tech sectors, and I am concerned that the Government are not doing enough to stop that.

Chagos Islands

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Doughty]

I can tell the hon. Lady that the figure that she pulled out is categorically untrue. She had the answer in her question: she said “speculation”. There is a huge amount of speculation, and I would take the vast majority of it with a pinch of salt.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) spoke incredibly slowly and incredibly clearly—so much so that even I understood his question. However, the Minister did not actually give him an answer. When we joined the ICJ, we did so on the basis of a carve-out that meant that no ruling by the ICJ in respect of Commonwealth or former Commonwealth countries could be binding on His Majesty’s Government. Is it the ICJ that he is concerned about, or another court?

[Stephen Doughty]

As we have said repeatedly, the base was not on a sustainable footing. This deal puts it on a sustainable footing.

UK-US Bilateral Relationship

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) on securing the debate at this pivotal time. It is typically prescient of him to have done so.

When considering my remarks, my first thought was to try to embarrass the Government by replaying all the disgraceful, disobliging and damaging comments that members of the Labour party have made about America, and particularly about President Trump. It might be fun, I thought, to see Government Members squirm, particularly if I could find some choice comments by the Minister himself. However, having researched the dreadful, embarrassing comments, I cannot in good conscience replay them here.

I am a patriot. I have fought for my country all over the world, often alongside our American cousins and usually with an American as my boss. I served for General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf war, on the staff of the superb General David Petraeus in the second Gulf war and under Marine Corps General Richard Mills in the Helmand river valley of Afghanistan. In Sierra Leone, my bacon was well and truly saved by the USS Kearsarge and its embarked port of marines. I cannot replay Labour’s embarrassing catalogue of errors or risk making our relationship with the United States any weaker than it currently is.

Indeed, in my own small way I have been doing my own bit to strengthen Anglo-American relations by employing as my senior parliamentary assistant a no-nonsense native New Yorker from Queens. When Gloria tells me to jump, I do not ask why; I simply ask, “How high?” But my relationship with my parliamentary assistant should never be replicated at a national level. We need to be a strong nation and to conduct our relations from that position of strength.

Of course, much of what we contribute to this relationship we cannot talk about, because it is secret and long may it remain so, but in the public realm it is very clear that the Government are playing for time with their strategic defence review, which is primarily there to produce the political cover for increasing defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP. That is a mistake being played out in public. By not having a threat-based and foreign policy-led review, we are missing a huge opportunity to face down the real-world threats that we see today. Everyone in Government seems to have forgotten the old adage: “Prepare for the war you don’t want to have to fight.” The answer, instead, seems to be “2.5% of GDP—now, what’s the question?”

America has a clear-eyed view of its national interest and we should have one of ours. It has been striking to see the speed with which the Trump Administration has hit the ground running. Not for him the interminable list of reviews, taskforces and consultations that our own Government prefer.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the Chagos islands, which our Government propose to give away the sovereignty of, only to lease them back at vast expense for the British taxpayer. That is surely the worst plan since the Prime Minister hired a voice coach. He must rethink the proposed course of action and not simply hope that it never reaches the top of the President’s in-tray. I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) in that regard. It will reach the top of that in-tray, and this Government will be embarrassed at how cackhandedly this fiasco has been handled. The Government should climb down, and climb down quickly.

In the late 1950s, the French were demanding that all US forces leave French soil and Dean Rusk asked pointedly, “Does that include the dead ones in the military cemeteries?” The UK’s relationship with the US was probably at its lowest ebb following Suez. It has improved since and is strong today. Much of that strength was paid for by the sacrifice of our own troops, serving alongside and indeed for our American cousins. The Government must not squander that inheritance. Instead, they will honour our fallen by making this country stronger and by forging a stronger special relationship with the United States.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Members can see that we have about 11 minutes left for Back-Bench speakers, so let us divide it between the three remaining Back-Bench speakers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend will be pleased that I raised this issue directly with the Israeli Foreign Minister yesterday. He wanted to emphasise that this is a temporary measure in Israel’s national interests, and I emphasised that the Syrian Foreign Minister had made it clear to me that the Syrians stand by the 1974 commitment and do not want to seek any escalation with their Israeli neighbour.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

T8. Tower Hamlets planning officers have rejected China’s application to build a super-embassy there, but rather than put this through the appeals process that anyone else would have to go through, the Foreign Secretary has got the Deputy Prime Minister to call in that application. My question to the Foreign Secretary is: why the special treatment? Does he not realise how dodgy it is going to look if she does finally decide for China?

[Mr Lammy]

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that all due process has been followed in the normal way. This is the same as any planning application, and the implication of what he has just said in relation to the Deputy Prime Minister is quite unsavoury.