Foreign Policy

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and others in thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this important debate. This year is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the convention on the crime of genocide, and today is World Press Freedom Day. It makes this debate particularly timely.

As the noble Baroness predicted, I shall concentrate my remarks on China, including Hong Kong, but I shall also make reference to North Korea and Iran. I refer to my non-financial interests in the register as well as to the sanctions which have been placed on me and other parliamentarians by those regimes.

As the noble Lord, Lord Frost, reminded us, a week ago the Foreign Secretary delivered a speech at the City of London Corporation. It was trailed in advance as his major China policy address. Given the scale and breadth of the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party regime—not, I emphasise, by the people of China, but by the regime currently led by Xi Jinping—I could see no coherent strategy. That is exactly the criticism levelled in two House of Lords Select Committee reports. The tone suggested that rekindling friendship with Beijing in pursuit of something resembling the “golden era” trade and investment opportunities was now a government priority. The Foreign Secretary argued that isolating China would be counterproductive, but I know of nobody—including our own Select Committees—who has suggested that the UK disengage from China. The question surely is not whether to talk to China but how, about what, with what objectives and on whose terms we should engage.

By way of example, I invite the Minister to tell us what the Foreign Secretary will be talking about with the Vice-President of China, Han Zheng, during his coronation visit to London over the next few days. Will he be raising the trashing by Han Zheng of the 1984 Sino-British declaration or his role in the imprisonment of 1,400 political prisoners in Hong Kong, specifically the imprisonment of British citizen, Jimmy Lai—referred to by the right reverend Prelate—and other breaches of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to media freedom in Hong Kong? Will the Foreign Secretary raising this week’s announced decision—a breach of the Sino-British joint declaration—to reduce the direct election of district councillors in Hong Kong to just 20%, in a further emasculation of Hong Kong’s freedoms?

Will the Government be raising the Motion passed in the House of Commons on 22 April that declared events in Xinjiang against Uighur Muslims to be a genocide; or the UK prohibitions on the purchase of goods made in China by slave labour; or recent reports that Uighur Muslims were banned from offering Eid prayers at mosques or even in their homes during Eid ul Fitr, as well as the reported persecution of people with religious beliefs, including Buddhists and Christians in China and other Article 18 violations; or the continued imprisonment of Zhang Zhan for reporting on the origins of Covid in Wuhan? Will the Government be raising the forced organ harvesting, which the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, has raised in your Lordships’ House, along with Members from all sides, on a number of occasions; the persecution of Falun Gong; the crackdown on civil society, lawyers, bloggers and dissidents across China and the alarming threats to Taiwan whose almost 24 million people face increasing dangers and, indeed, an existential threat to their vibrant democracy and self-determination? Perhaps the Minister could also explain why Han Zheng is being welcomed at the Coronation at all instead of being sanctioned.

I also have questions about the recent visit to London of Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Services, Christopher Hui. Will the Minister tell us whether the three Government Ministers who met him raised with him the case of Jimmy Lai; the seizure by the Hong Kong Government of more than £2.2 billion of Hong Kong BNO pension savings, as reported by Hong Kong Watch, of which I am a patron; the destruction of Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy; the breach of the joint declaration; the genocide that I have referred to of the Uighurs; and the threats to Taiwan? If those three Government Ministers did not, why not? Perhaps that is not the sort of engagement that the Foreign Secretary had in mind. Given that the CCP regime consistently breaks its promises and obligations under international treaties, and as the CCP under Xi Jinping is so much a part of many of these problems, do we seriously—and rather naively—believe that red carpets, tea and golden era trade deals are the correct response to genocide and egregious violations of human rights?

Last week, as Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, I spoke at the launch of the APPG’s report on the crackdown on media freedom in Hong Kong—which, on this World Press Freedom Day, I hope the Minister will refer to—and specifically the case of Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily. I also spent time with Jimmy Lai’s son, Sebastien. Jimmy Lai is a 75 year-old British citizen, and yet he has spent the past two and a half years in prison serving multiple trumped-up charges, facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail. I know Jimmy and his wife and, in happier times, they were visitors here to your Lordships’ House. Later this year, Jimmy Lai’s trial under Hong Kong’s draconian national security law will begin. He has already been denied his choice of defence counsel, and it is likely that he will receive a severe prison sentence with little hope of a fair trial.

Please will the Minister look at the statements made by Mr Lai’s international legal team—led by Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, who has herself received rape and death threats—and also raise with the parliamentary authorities the absurd and ridiculous decision to force attendees at last week’s press freedom event to hand over leaflets on press freedom in Hong Kong? Officials apparently said that “Political slogans and materials are on our list of restricted items”—I mistakenly thought that politics was the whole point of Parliament. But, beyond the absurd, Sebastien has specifically and repeatedly requested to meet the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. Like his father, Sebastien is a British national. Will the Minister explain why that request has so far gone unanswered? Can he establish whether the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary will commit to meeting Sebastien at the earliest opportunity to discuss his father’s case and become more proactive and more public in speaking up for the rights of this British citizen in the future?

Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, recently wrote to the Chinese Government stating that the draconian national security law has interfered with the rule of law in Hong Kong by undermining the independence of the judiciary and removing safeguards to protect fair trial. Will the Minister please provide the Government’s assessment of the current state of the rule of law in Hong Kong?

Turning briefly to North Korea, I declare an interest as co-chair of the all-party group. This year marks the 10th anniversary since the establishment of the UN commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity chaired by the Australian judge Justice Michael Kirby. What steps are the Government taking to follow up and implement the commission of inquiry’s recommendations, particularly its call, 10 years ago, for its findings of crimes against humanity to be referred to the International Criminal Court?

On Iran, which has been referred to, will the Minister explain why the Iranian national guard has not been proscribed as a terrorist organisation and say whether we can expect to see action on this soon? Can he tell us about the plight of Iranian journalists, especially women, who are still in prison and about the gender apartheid faced by Iran’s women and girls?

Finally, I have spoken repeatedly in the House about the short-sighted decision to cut BBC Persian radio services and attacked the decision to abolish the Arabic services. I welcomed what the right reverend Prelate said about this in introducing the debate. Yesterday, the BBC said that the crisis in Sudan had led it to open a new radio service in Arabic on shortwave—QED. It is essential that we continue to broadcast the values of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and an open society. Are the Government re-examining the funding models for the BBC World Service to ensure that vital language broadcasts to closed societies continue?

I hope that our values will always be at the very heart of our foreign policy as we face the challenges of a changing and increasingly divided and unstable world. If the Minister cannot respond to all my points in detail, I hope he will undertake to write to me on them. In closing, I again thank the right reverend Prelate for giving us the opportunity to raise these matters.