Hong Kong: Pro-Democracy Campaigners

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, while appreciating my noble friend’s sympathy for my position, I assure him that I have been persistent in my capacity as a Minister within FCDO and particularly in my responsibilities as Human Rights Minister to ensure that we do everything possible, in terms of both direct action and action with international partners. We continue to lead the international community. We have made statements through the Human Rights Council and the G7 and will continue to do so. On the wider policy of specific sanctions, I have already indicated our current position, but we keep that position under review.

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

Many of us who were able to visit Hong Kong in the past and were privileged to meet Martin Lee, Margaret Ng and other pro-democracy campaigners will recall that we were warned by them that this might happen and that we should not trust the Chinese Government to support democracy. Given the breach of agreements that the Chinese Government have gone in for, is it not time that this country rethought our whole relationship with China, not just on this one issue but on a whole range of issues? We cannot go on treating China as a normal country when it breaches international agreements in the way it has done.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I totally agree on the breach of international agreements. Indeed, the Sino-British joint declaration and China’s continued non-compliance has repeatedly been called out by the UK. As I have said before from the Dispatch Box, it is an agreement that has international recognition and China, as a major player on the international stage, should uphold its responsibilities. On the wider issue of China and its role in the world, as I have also repeatedly said, it has a role to play on climate change and, in that regard, without the Chinese the ambitions and the actions required cannot be reached and realised. However, we will not hold back from calling out egregious abuse of human rights as we have done in both Hong Kong and Xinjiang.