Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, whether UK consular officials (a) have been granted consular access to Jimmy Lai and (b) are able to visit him in prison.

Ministers and officials continue to raise Jimmy Lai's case at the highest levels with the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities and have been clear in our calls for his release, while continuing to press for consular access. Our repeated requests for consular access have been declined by the local authorities on the grounds the Chinese government does not recognise dual nationality and therefore considers Jimmy Lai to be exclusively Chinese. Consular access to dual nationals relies upon the agreement of the detaining state and is not covered in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.