Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the “serious concern” expressed by several UN Special Rapporteurs that the proposed changes to the Hong Kong special administrative region’s legal system and enforcement mechanisms proposed in the Decision of the National People’s Congress, do not include assurances that the measures will be fully compliant with international human rights law, in particular the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We remain deeply concerned about the situation in Hong Kong. As the Foreign Secretary said in Parliament on 1 July, the enactment by China of a national security law for Hong Kong is a grave and deeply disturbing step. The law's imposition by Beijing on the people of Hong Kong constitutes a clear and serious breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. On the same day, the Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office summoned the Chinese Ambassador to make clear the UK's deep concern at China's actions.

With regard to the law's compliance with international human rights law, as the Foreign Secretary set out in his statement, the national security legislation contains a number of measures that directly threaten the freedoms and rights protected by the Joint Declaration. This includes the potentially wide-ranging ability of the Chinese authorities to take jurisdiction over certain cases without any independent oversight, and to try those cases in the Chinese courts. This violates paragraphs 3(3) and 3(5) of the Joint Declaration, and directly threatens the rights set out in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political rights, which, under the Joint Declaration, are to be protected in Hong Kong. This represents an assault on freedom of speech and the freedom of peaceful protest for the people of Hong Kong.