Hong Kong National Security Law Anniversary

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on bringing yet another debate on Chinese human rights abuse to this House. I think the accusations that he has quite rightly made are an underestimate: by my reckoning, the US Government have in fact sanctioned some 11 people—former Chief Executive Carrie Lam, Chief Executive John Lee and nine other Hong Kong officials—for their role in the crackdowns in the city. The Foreign Office has very clearly said that the security law is a clear breach of the joint declaration. At the last count, I think at least 18 journalists have been arrested, numerous free speech media organisations have been closed down, several opposition parties have been driven out of operation and democratically elected places have been reduced to no more than 20% in forthcoming elections. I am sure my right hon. Friend will get on to this, but what have the UK Government actually done to show the Chinese that that oppressive activity has consequences? Nobody has been sanctioned, but what other sanctions have been brought to bear? What are the consequences of what the Chinese are doing?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I stand corrected. My hon. Friend is quite right: it is 11, which makes it even worse. Foremost among them is the Catholic entrepreneur and—most importantly—journalist Jimmy Lai, who languishes in prison on a trumped-up charge. I will come back to that point, because I have further questions to ask the UK Government, but I hope that the Minister has taken note of my hon. Friend’s comments about the actions of the United States. Our words about the transgressions have remained words; they have not given rise to actions that I would have expected from the UK Government. I am sorry to say that. They are a Government I support, but a Government who at the moment I have to say are in deficit in this area. I want to point out a few more areas where I find our Government in deficit.

What assessment have the Government made of all those figures we have been chucking out, as young political prisoners, three quarters of whom are aged 30 or under, bear the brunt of this oppressive regime? It is deeply troubling that minors face the longest sentences of all, averaging something like 27 months, further exacerbating their plight. What also bothers me is that the Government, having not gone to Hong Kong officially, suddenly sent a Government Minister there a few weeks ago. As I understand it, now that his visits and meetings have been published, Lord Johnson met no democracy campaigners, said nothing officially or publicly about the Sino-British agreement, said nothing at all about the breach of human rights, said nothing at all about those sanctioned, and, to my knowledge, said nothing at all about the plight of the British citizen Jimmy Lai.

I want to stay on that point because, of all the things the Minister could have said, he could have said something about the bad behaviour with regard to a British passport holder and citizen. I want to say it again: Jimmy Lai is a British passport holder and citizen. As much as every one of us sitting in this room today, he has rights. At the front of the passport, it states “without let or hindrance”. What is the worth of the passport that I and everybody else in this room carry, if my Government will not call him a British citizen with rights under international law for consular access? America refers to him as a British citizen and passport holder. The European Union refers to him as a British citizen and passport holder. What country does not refer to him as a British citizen and passport holder publicly? Sadly, that would be my Government—our Government. For some reason, the British Government take it upon themselves to know, beyond any other family member or Jimmy Lai himself, what is good for him. What is good for him is what he wants.

Jimmy Lai did not flee Hong Kong after the trashing of the Sino-British agreement. Why? Because he is a brave man who believed that as long as he stayed, he could be the guarantor of some of the rights that might disappear. He wanted to be the icon who believed in democracy and human rights, so that those who were fearful and fleeing, and worried for their lives and the lives of their family, would look to him and see a brave man standing on the hill saying, “I’m not going anywhere. This is my home.”

A British citizen, a brave man, now languishes in prison on a trumped-up charge that has nothing to do with reality. He faces a second court case later this year, where he will almost certainly be charged under the new security laws for sedition. Jimmy Lai knows, and his family know, that it is unlikely he will ever see the light of day outside that prison. He knew that from the very word go; he made his choices on the basis that he knew that from the very word go. He did not flee.

Surely Jimmy Lai wants us to say that he is a proud British citizen and passport holder. He is not a dual national, by the way. I wish the British Government would stop referring to him as a dual national: it plays into the Chinese Government’s hands, because they declare that they do not recognise dual nationals. He is not a dual national; he is a British passport holder. I want that to be very clear. His family, who I have spoken to and who had to flee to Taiwan, say he wants to be pronounced a British citizen and passport holder. All I ask is that at the end of the debate my hon. Friend the Minister gets up and says, “He is a British citizen and passport holder, and we intend to pursue the Chinese Government publicly for consular rights. He is a political prisoner, and there is no question beyond that.”

I congratulate and applaud my Government on the generous BNO scheme and on extending it. To give credit where credit is due, the Government have done well on that. The trouble is that after everything that has been going on and the failure to recognise even a British passport holder, many BNO passport holders in the UK are now fearful about their own status. We know that many of them have been hunted down in the UK by those terrible Chinese police stations, which are quite illegal but have existed in the UK for an unnecessarily long time. We know that they have been threatened and bullied about their status. They worry about their protections under a BNO scheme, which are far fewer than those of having a British passport and being a British citizen. I would like the Government to consider that our failure to act in that way for Jimmy Lai has consequences for those we would wish to protect in a wider scheme. One need only talk to them to understand their concerns. We need to make those changes and announcements.

On the basis of what my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, when will the UK Government put Hong Kong officials, who were responsible in the first place for many of those human rights abuses, under notice that they will be sanctioned? They should have been sanctioned by now. Is there a chance that the British Government are reviewing it? I know what the British Government and the Minister will say: “We never discuss sanctions.” I wish he would say at least that he will take note of what we have said.

For Hongkongers facing the plight of having to risk entering the Chinese consulate for the renewal of their Hong Kong passports, this policy places them in a vulnerable position. They are worried. What alternative procedures will the Government pursue to give those people a greater sense of certainty, such as by providing other things like travel documents or establishing a successful and secure passport renewal process that does not necessitate entering the grounds of a Chinese consulate? I remind everybody that the last person I knew of who entered a Chinese consulate’s grounds was dragged there by the consul general, was beaten up and had his hair torn out. I met him afterwards, and he was traumatised. The Chinese Government did not do anything, and the British Government talked about the law, but he quietly disappeared later on and no apology was made. It was a terrible act. I understand why BNO passport holders here are fearful of what will happen to them if they enter the consulate. The big concern and fear is about whether they will come out again. Will the Government look for other ways for them to establish their legitimacy, other than being forced into this damaging process?

The visit of Liu Jianchao last week also sent a signal to many people who are here under the BNO scheme. It is deeply regrettable that the Government chose, for some reason, to host him. This is a man deeply involved in China’s controversial fox hunt operations, which hunt down Chinese dissidents around the world and seek to get them back to China using techniques that include threatening their families, televising that threat, and eventual torture and arrest on re-arrival. It is an example of China’s disregard for international norms and human rights that it behaves in that way so publicly. By welcoming this individual—there is a photograph of a Minister sitting next to him; given the abuse of international norms and human rights, I am astonished that we would allow a Government Minister to meet him and sit with him—are we not sending a chilling message to everybody else that we place that relationship on a higher plane than people’s human rights and liberties?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

These are abuses of human rights and democracy. The hon. Gentleman is right: this is an appalling return to a time we thought had long passed. We now respect people’s human rights, but that is not the case in China, and it is now not the case in Hong Kong. The worst part about the situation in Hong Kong, which he is right to raise, is that we were one of the guarantors, but we seem to be shuffling away from that guarantee. Where other countries have acted on the abuse, we seem to be stepping back. I am concerned about that. I would love to know more about it from the Minister.

[Tim Loughton]

Going back to the visit by Liu Jianchao last week, a photograph was publicly promoted—through Government circles as well—with lots of smiling Chinese officials. I counted at least five parliamentary colleagues in that photo, including a senior Government Minister, sitting alongside a notorious senior Chinese Government official responsible for snatch-and-grab, effectively illegal, rendition. Given that my right hon. Friend and I and five other parliamentarians have been sanctioned by China, and that the Chinese ambassador and other Chinese Government officials are, quite rightly, banned from coming to this place as a result of the good work of the Speaker, does my right hon. Friend not think that no parliamentary colleagues should be seen sitting down with Chinese officials of this calibre and reputation? They should not be doing it, should they?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend knows very well that I agree completely with him. I was shocked to see that picture. I wrote to the Prime Minister on the Sunday, shortly before Liu Jianchao was due to come over. I also wrote to the Speaker, who was in agreement that the meeting would clearly not take place in the House of Commons or Parliament generally. When I wrote to the Prime Minister, I was told I would get a reply at some point—although the man is gone now, so the reply will come after the event, which is sad, but there we go.

The point is that I did not know at that stage that Liu Jianchao was going to meet any officials; I was told that he was not and that he was going to meet MPs. I then saw the picture the hon. Gentleman referred to, in which a Government Minister is sitting front and centre next to this man, whose reputation is so utterly appalling that it beggars belief that anybody would want to sit next to him, but everyone in that picture is grinning and happy. That our colleagues should then attend is another thing, and I simply say that there should be some solidarity in this place. If people are sanctioned for standing up for their beliefs, we do not want to undermine that by sitting next to these characters. I would therefore like to know what assessment the Government made before the meeting with Liu Jianchao.

After all, this place should be a beacon of freedom. I have the highest respect for the procedures, processes and nature of Government—I served in Government myself for some years—and I understand the difficulties, but there is a particular reason why this individual should not have been allowed to sit next to a Government Minister. When the deputy governor of Xinjiang was going to come over here, I and others went out to the protests with the Uyghurs, because he was part of the design of the terrible system that is now, essentially, genocide against them.

We campaigned outside the Foreign Office, which eventually said that it would not allow an official to see him, although one had been going to. I was happy that it came to its senses and said no. By the way, when people say that British foreign policy cannot persuade anybody any more, it is not true, because every other European country that was going to see him said no as a result. So we have some sway after all; we have some locus in this. I therefore want to ask the Minister what thought was given to this before this man arrived here.

I spoke earlier about Lord Johnson’s visit, and I was astonished to find that the problems or the plight of the people we have spoken about today, who have been attacked, arrested and trashed, were not raised particularly—it was all meetings with business. I can understand it if he meets with business, but meeting with business in Hong Kong is not the same as meeting with business in the United States or the UK, where people have freedom of expression and are covered by human rights and a workable law. That is not the case in Hong Kong, and we cannot detach ourselves from what is going on politically in Hong Kong if we choose to go to Hong Kong to make business arrangements.

As I say, the American Government have already warned their businesses that common law does not protect them in Hong Kong in the way that it would have done under the Sino-British agreement. That is a really important point. English common law is the finest legal system in the world, and it is being adopted by countries all over the world, particularly for business deals. It is straightforward and much easier to operate, and it runs under a system that has been tested through time, and many people welcome that. However, the freedoms and rights in it disappear when they clash with the new law that exists in Hong Kong. That problem did not go away, and things like countering foreign sanctions, and businesses getting trashed as a result of these new laws, do not seem to have been raised either.

However, I want to return to Jimmy Lai. Of all the things I have spoken about today, this man should be in our thoughts. He is a brave democrat and a decent man. He is a journalist. He speaks truth unto power. He was fearless in the way that, when he had to, he attacked the Legislative Council and the decisions it made. He was constant and convinced in the role that he played.

I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that we should take decisive action to uphold the promise of protecting our citizens. I want to know what steps the Government intend to take, not only on many of those who are languishing in jail but, importantly, on Jimmy Lai, because he is iconic. Are we going to say to the Chinese Government, “Enough is enough. There are consequences to your actions. We intend now to tell the world that this man is a British citizen and a British passport holder. We have responsibilities for him, and we intend to claim those under international law. We are not prepared any longer to do things quietly behind the scenes. If you choose to go on down this road, we will sanction all those responsible for the introduction of the new laws and the crackdown, as America has already done”? We should be telling China that that is where we are going. I know that we worry about losing business with China, but sometimes the price of business can be too high, and I think that that is the case here.

All that I want to know is that we recognise a British citizen, we recognise a British passport holder and we treat them the same, no matter where they live or where they are. That is the point of the passport. I carry my passport with pride, but I doubt its provenance now, as a result of our attitude and the attitude of those at the Foreign Office to Jimmy Lai. I ask them simply to examine their conscience and to ask themselves whether, if they had been incarcerated by a foreign Government that had broken an international agreement, they would not want the Government and the Foreign Office to stand up for them in the boldest and bravest ways, as they should?

I have two last points, and I will be brief. I understand that there is a lot of movement at the moment on the National Security Bill, which is providing the Government with some tools—for example, the enhanced tier of the foreign influence register scheme. However, we do not know yet whether China will be included in that enhanced tier. If my hon. Friend the Minister cannot respond to that point now, I ask him to take away the fact that we here in Westminster Hall, and more widely in the House, want China moved into that tier, because it poses a direct and constant threat.

The second thing, which I will finish on, is that an idea may be brewing in the Government that they want to do an energy trade deal with China. If that is the case, they need to rethink. The idea of rewarding China for its bad behaviour and becoming more dependent on an autocratic regime smacks of failed policy. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to tell me at the end of the debate that there is no such discussion and that no such trade arrangement will be attempted.

In conclusion, this is a sad anniversary. These people, who have been arrested and incarcerated for the freedoms that we take for granted in the United Kingdom, need to be supported. Overall, the best thing we can do to show the Chinese Government that we shall not tolerate this is to say that Jimmy Lai is a British citizen—a British passport holder—and that we demand the rights that come with British citizenship, including consular access. I ask nothing more of my British Government than that they support a British passport holder.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I was not intending to speak in this debate, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and fellow sanctionee has spurred me on to fill the short gap that we might have in this debate. There is rarely a debate on China in this place that I am not chafing at the bit to participate in. I agree with everything that my right hon. Friends have said and I will not repeat it. Certainly the generosity and necessity of the BNO scheme has shown its worth. I fear that many more than the 160,000 former residents of Hong Kong here already will swell those numbers.

The rule of law, justice, free speech and anything resembling freedom were snuffed out over more than 60 years in Tibet. They have been snuffed out in recent years in Xinjiang and are now being aggressively snuffed out in Hong Kong. The rule of law, as any of us would recognise it, does not exist in China. I want to give two examples. We had a meeting of the Conservative human rights commission at the beginning of this week and heard testimony from two very brave men who have been the victims and fallen foul of—I will not call it the Chinese justice system, because there is no justice—the Chinese legal system.

One of them, Peter Humphrey, is a 67-year-old British citizen from Surrey who had 48 years of experience in China. He did a lot of work in China and was working for GlaxoSmithKline when in July 2013 he and his wife were arrested and imprisoned on charges of illegal information gathering after conducting an investigation for GSK. They spent two years in Chinese prisons during which time Peter developed advanced prostate cancer because medical treatment was deliberately withheld in a bid to coerce a false confession. He was the first prominent member of the foreign business community in China to be imprisoned by the Xi Jinping regime and the case attracted extensive media coverage. He was also the first foreigner to be paraded in a cage on Chinese television in a notorious broadcast of a false and forced TV confession.

In 2019 there was the case of the Tesco Christmas cards, which gained a lot of attention when a six-year-old girl from Tooting opened a box of Christmas cards bought in Tesco to find that one of them had already been filled out. The cards were made in China. On the front the card featured a kitten in a Santa hat. However, inside one of the cards was this message:

“We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization. Use the link to contact Mr Peter Humphrey.”

So Peter was specifically mentioned in that note. It was from a prisoner in the gulag—one of many millions who were being forced into labour and used by companies in China to sell their goods to an unsuspecting Tesco, which, to give it its due, ceased business with the company that provided the goods. The trouble is that it is almost impossible to source where many of these things come from. We know how so many things are made in China and disguised in various component parts.

The second person who we heard testimony from earlier this week was a 42-year-old Romanian citizen, Marius Balo. Many of the people in the room were in tears at the testimonies that the men gave about their experiences at the hands of the Chinese Government. In 2014, Marius was wrongfully arrested, along with all the staff of the Chinese company for which he worked as a part-time employee. The company was accused of contract fraud, which Marius had known absolutely nothing about. It was entirely trumped up. He spent the next two years in a 12 square-metre cage with no way to contact anyone in the outside world, and a further six years in the same Shanghai prison as Peter Humphrey.

This is going on all the time. Those two men have been exceedingly brave in not hiding their experiences, but speaking up. They have done so on behalf of the many thousands of people in similar situations in Chinese jails and in the Chinese legal system. We owe them a debt of gratitude as they continue to speak up. It is estimated that there are something like 5 million prisoners in Chinese jails, of whom over 5,000 are estimated to be overseas nationals. We do not know how many of them are British, and we do not know what support they are getting from British consular missions. Perhaps the Minister could tell us how many British nationals, in addition to Jimmy Lai, are in Chinese prisons at the moment and explain what support they are receiving.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend might be so bold as to ask the Minister how many have been in prison for longer than a year and are still awaiting trial. Many of these people have not even had the right to a trial.

[Tim Loughton]

That is entirely the point. It is not just a question of their having dodgy justice, but a question of their having to wait years and years, just like the 45 people who are still going through what is likely to be a six-month trial. They were in jail, restricted of their liberty, for many months before that.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green mentioned earlier, more than 100 people have been remanded in custody for an average of nearly two and a half years. Under trumped up charges, they are incarcerated in pretty grim conditions before they even have a chance to argue their case, if indeed they are given that chance. Often the defendants are not even allowed in court to argue their case. The jury system does not exist in many cases, and the verdict is predetermined. Something like 99.9% of all those prosecutions result in a conviction, and 99.9% of appeals against those convictions are turned down.

As I said, justice does not exist in Hong Kong and the whole of China. There have to be consequences when that specifically undermines British interests and when the British agreement has been, in the Foreign Office’s own words, flouted and breached. Other nations seem to be taking that breach more seriously than one of the co-signatories of that agreement, which has a duty of care to the many millions of citizens still in Hong Kong, let alone the increasing number escaping its borders.

There is no rule of law, and the cases that I cited predate the national security law, since when things have got much worse. We know that the Chinese do nothing when faced with just a war of words. The only time the Chinese take notice is when those allegations have consequences and Governments follow through on those consequences. Other nations, particularly the Americans, have followed through with legislation that has had direct consequences for the ability to trade, for people’s ability to travel, for investment and so on, and it is bizarre and completely unacceptable that we have not followed the Americans’ lead on even a fraction of those.

[Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech. I think what he is reaching for and what would be helpful to know from the Government is what we, the Foreign Office or the UK are doing to take action. He has mentioned sanctions. When people are effectively taken as pawns or hostages, the other thing we can and should do—in relation to Beijing, but also Iran, Russia and many other countries—is raise that under the new arbitrary detention mechanism alliance that we pioneered with Canada. Does my hon. Friend agree that sanctions and words alone are not enough, and that action in international fora that can embarrass those who take hostages is imperative?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. That is just one of many devices available to the United Kingdom Government. For some reason, they have chosen to use none of them.

Let me give the Minister a series of questions; I hope that he has plenty of time to answer them and many others that have arisen. Do the Government agree with the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that the national security law

“has de facto abolished the independence of the judiciary of Hong Kong SAR”?

What steps will the Government take to communicate their discontent with China’s ongoing breaching of the internationally binding Sino-British joint declaration? It should not just be, “You are a bit naughty. We signed this agreement, and you do not seem to have stuck to it—would you mind awfully doing something about it?” It must not be that sort of “Dad’s Army” sergeant approach to things: “Would you mind awfully?” There have to be consequences. What are the Government doing about it? If the Chinese say nothing, what will we then do in response?

I have some more questions. What assessment have the Government made about reports that Hong Kong’s status as a financial centre is being used to bypass western sanctions on Russia? What assessment have the Government made of UK strategic assets currently held by the Hong Kong Government? What plans do the UK Government have to review the status of Hong Kong’s economic and trade offices in the UK following the enactment of the national security law and the incident at the Chinese consulate in Manchester, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green mentioned? Extraordinarily, the consul general not only admitted to having beaten up somebody who was protesting outside—there was no hiding it—but, when interviewed on television, said, “Well, it’s my job.” He was bang to rights. What further evidence was needed? It was on film—in his own words. He had broken the law and assaulted somebody who was freely at liberty in the United Kingdom. The Government did nothing until he was spirited away by the Chinese Government, and then it was too late.

I have three other questions. What actions are the Government taking to protect Hongkongers now in the UK who face harassment, intimidation and threats from agents of the Chinese Communist party after the incident in Manchester? Lots of people are rather scared that they are going to have a knock on their door. What steps are the Government taking to expand their Chinese expertise in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, including through the recruitment of Cantonese and Mandarin speakers?

Finally, what support are the Government offering to UK nationals who have been targeted by the national security law? I declare an interest, because those nationals include the seven parliamentarians who have been sanctioned under the national security law, the consequences of which, other than the bans on travel and investment, we do not know. We have been offered no protection or added support by the Government, and yet the Government continue to be willing to meet representatives of that regime and give them publicity, as if we were dealing with any other normal democratic nation that respects the rule of law. China does not. It does not in Hong Kong. This law is appalling. We do not just need to say so; we need to make it clear to the Chinese that there are consequences from going through with it.