Iain Duncan Smith MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Jun 2026 · Human Rights: Supply Chains · Hansard source

  More

  It is always a blessing to have you chairing a meeting, Mr Dowd. It is particularly a blessing today, as we would not have this debate were you not here, so thank you. I have been active on this subject for some time. I have been sanctioned by China because of the issues that we raised over modern-day slavery. I remind Members that it was the Centre for Social Justice, which I set up, that first published the paper “It Happens Here”. We were then able to get the Government to initiate the Modern Slavery Act—the first legislation of its kind in the world. We were all very proud of that Act, but sadly it really has no enforcement. Government and suppliers have no obligation to check. They are supposed to make a declaration, but we know that many of those declarations are in fact deliberately false—they know they will not be checked, and therefore they do not have to worry about it—so while the Act is great, it is rather toothless. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) on securing this debate and making such a good opening speech. I will not repeat all he said, although I agree with so much of it. In the limited time I have, I want to focus on certain issues. First, the reality is that slave labour is not only a massive punishment and a human rights abuse on a scale, like genocide, wider than anything else; it is also commercial. Countries such as China use slave labour as a way to undercut markets, compete unfairly and drive businesses out of business—particularly here in the UK, as we have experienced. One of the big issues is the net zero determination and what we wish to do to clean up the environment because the biggest providers of solar arrays, wind farms and the technology are, in fact, based in China. The big problem is that the Government have two conflicting requirements. Quite rightly, they want to get on with cleaning up the environment; but they also know that if they cannot buy from China without a clear set of supply chains that are without slave labour, that will cost more money. That impacts the pace and the way in which they can provide a cleaner atmosphere. We have to say that one thing is more important than the other, and that is the human rights of those people being abused in places such as China. At the end of the day, we cannot go to bed at night with any grace if we say that we put up more solar arrays and wind farms but those were supplied by factories where people may have died, been abused, or had their lives and families destroyed. We know that China, in the case of Xinjiang, is committing a well-established genocide on such a scale that children are now in forced education camps. Millions of adult males are in forced labour, many producing the polysilicon that goes into arrays made in and around Xinjiang. The women, unbelievably, are being forcibly sterilised. The birth rate in Xinjiang has gone off the edge of a cliff. China is going to eradicate an ethnic group; it is very much the policy of the Chinese Communist party to have Han Chinese in charge of China, and nobody else. It also makes money from the fact that people in slave labour, as I said earlier, are producing goods much more cheaply than anyone else can. Look at what we are not doing: we are not checking supply chains. On this issue, I have been in opposition to whatever Government have been in power—neither the last Government nor this one have made a big effort to check those company declarations. I have had responses from this and the previous Government saying that they were doing their best and trying hard. It is not good enough to do one’s best or try hard; the question is: what is the best? Look at what is happening in other places. I point to the USA’s Act, which basically outlawed all use of slave labour anywhere in supply chains and put the means in place to check that. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States creates a rebuttable presumption that goods produced wholly or partly in Xinjiang, and other places using slave labour, are made with forced labour unless importers can prove otherwise. That is how it is done—we tell importers, “You must now prove to us that you have avoided any slave labour in your products. Failure to do that has you banned and fined.” It is immediate. They do not simply sit there saying, “Well, other bits of Government are helping us”, because to be honest, the Government do not have the ability to check themselves. They do not have what it takes, but there are companies out there that do this regularly. I have met the representatives of one such company. Forensic companies such as Oritain, based in New Zealand, specialise in using forensic science to check where goods were made. From that, it knows the footprint and the likelihood of slave labour. It will immediately investigate a company’s declaration and can challenge it. If it challenges it, the US Government will ban and fine the company. That has led to a whole rerouting of supply chains across China for the US market. Sadly, it has also meant efforts have been redoubled to put slave labour products into markets such as the UK, because it is known that the UK is a soft option. When we look around the countryside of the east of England and elsewhere, we see a load of arrays. I would bet that the vast majority were made with slave labour because no checks were carried out. The reality is that we have to do more. The Modern Slavery Act 2015, which I greatly supported, has now become toothless. Section 54 needs to be upgraded. There needs to be a punishment. Government need the ability to prosecute immediately, and supply-chain checks must take place. I end with this. The reality is that the legislation is a mess. With colleagues on both sides of the House, I successfully tabled an amendment to the Great British Energy Act 2025, to ban the use of products made with slave labour. It was a classic rebellion, and we got it done. Yet when I checked, I saw that next to nothing had resulted from it. There is that offence in the legislation, but the Government have done nothing to call out any of the companies still selling those products. We put a similar obligation into the Health and Care Act 2022, but next to nothing has been done on that—no declarations and no speeches to Parliament about what the Government have done. We cannot go on addressing this issue in a piecemeal way: it has to be done across the board. That is why I support the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green in his call for the Modern Slavery Act to have teeth and for section 54 to be implemented. Any business that, having been checked properly, is found to have misdeclared itself and its supply chain should be punished—it should be banished from importing to the UK and face financial and even criminal penalties. That way, we will stop this practice.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  It is always a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), who talks common sense most of the time she gets up, which may be one of the reasons why she is still on the Back Benches. If we listened more to those who know something about things, rather than talking as though we know things, and saying things that are invariably wrong, we in Parliament would obviously be better off. The greatest threat we face is that bad actors out there are using this level of technology to get across to countries such as the UK. This is not a party political point, because both Governments have failed to face up to it to the degree that they should have—that is why this Bill is welcome, but it is not everything, as the hon. Lady says—but we think that we can treat the bad actors as though they were normal actors in a commercial sense. However, China is using slave labour to undercut markets and regularly puts IOTs into cars. It gets away with it because we think that we need China more than it needs us. That is the big problem. The hon. Lady is right to raise it, and I congratulate her for again making an excellent speech. I will in due course beg to move my amendment on anti-refoulement, because although this is a good Bill, some bits are missing and others have been skated over. This is one area about which we will come, again and again, to regret that we had not done more. The issue is British citizens abroad ending up under the rule of Governments that do not believe in the concept of freedom before the law, in a fair trial as part of that process, or in habeas corpus, which is an English common law right that has gone around the world. The amendment seeks to prohibit data sharing with jurisdictions that cannot guarantee a fair trial. It maintains the current legal approach, which generally restricts the sharing of sensitive information outside the EU. Currently, information sharing of a type enabled by proposed new regulation 6, which is in clause 18, is prohibited outside the EU. The proposed new regulation is therefore weaker than what is going on in the European Union. Sadly, it paves the way for such sharing, rather than restricting it. The amendment therefore seeks to prohibit information sharing with places where the Secretary of State believes that a fair trial simply cannot be obtained. It would require the Secretary of State to consult civil society and human rights experts to identify jurisdictions—this would apply universally and not just to China, although China is a big player in this—where the right to a fair trial cannot be guaranteed, with all decisions subject to mandatory annual reports to Parliament. That is important: Parliament should be part of this and make decisions about whether it agrees with the Government. Beijing is a good example. It has frequently used seemingly legitimate criminal complaints to target dissidents. Proposed new regulation 6, if unamended, therefore raises transnational repression risks rather than solving them. The amendment is necessary to close that loophole in the Bill, which currently fails to anticipate politically motivated requests from such totalitarian states. I often say that we should stop speaking about countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as authoritarian states. They are not authoritarian states; they are totalitarian states. Why do I say that? Because everything in those countries is owned and run by the state. Authoritarian states are often dictatorships, but they are not the same thing as totalitarian states. They are brutal and nasty, but totalitarianism is a complete system. This is about totalitarian states. Proposed new regulation 6 is predicated upon helping other Governments obtain justice. The argument of my amendment 3 is that—quite apart from the transnational repression risks—justice as we understand it cannot be served in a country where essentially there is no rule of law, no right to a fair trial, and a judicial system that serves the party. As I often say, it is a matter of pride that perhaps the greatest gift this country has given to the world is the concept of freedom in the face of the law. That is the point I made earlier: habeas corpus came from English common law and dominates so much of the free world’s thinking. It was not until the 1970s that some countries in Europe actually practised habeas corpus, so it was not just the case that it was produced by Britain; it was also owned by many other countries. That is what is at risk here, and we should be the greatest defenders of that right to a fair trial anywhere in the world. Let us take a few of these countries as examples for why amendment 3 is needed. Let us look at China. Requests were made by authoritarian states—totalitarian states in this case—regarding Interpol notices, as has been the recent pattern, and this happens a lot. The People’s Republic of China and other countries have a troubling recent history of very significant transnational repression, hounding dissidents in the UK and cloaking their political persecution in superficially legitimate criminal charges. The PRC is not alone in requesting information on political opponents in the UK, and it does it a lot. We can confidently speculate that China will make requests of the UK almost immediately should the Bill be passed. Let me look at the single biggest case that confronts us in China at the moment: that of Jimmy Lai. He is a British citizen. I cannot tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, how endlessly in debates, even under the previous Administration, we had to fight to get the Government to state that he is a British citizen, not a dual nationality citizen. He is a British citizen, is proud to be British, has been British all his life and has only ever owned a British passport—he has never been a Chinese citizen with a Chinese passport. The special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, in her 2024 and 2025 reports, specifically flagged concerns that evidence obtained through torture is still widely admitted in Chinese courts. She also expressed concerns in late 2024 regarding the case of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, noting that evidence allegedly secured through torture in mainland China was and is being used in the trial. On 15 November 2024, the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention published its opinion that Jimmy Lai is “unlawfully and arbitrarily detained” and called for his immediate release. The proposed new regulation will not go far enough and therefore does not deal with this, and that is what my amendment 3 is all about. On the risk of extradition to China from safe third countries, currently the UK does not have a bilateral extradition treaty with the People’s Republic of China, and it has suspended its bilateral extradition treaty with Hong Kong—something that many of us were calling out for at the time in 2020. In 2025, proposed changes to the Extradition Act 2003 would allow co-operation between UK and Hong Kong authorities on a “case-by-case ad hoc basis”. The trouble with that is that it begins to open the door. The risk of sharing NIS data is not confined to the physical removal of individuals; it also poses a profound threat to national security and the safety of the diaspora within the UK—how often have we heard about that? These totalitarian states not only seek to extradite dissidents, they seek to silence them through transnational repression and to compromise the UK’s own digital resilience. Sharing NIS data with an adversarial jurisdiction is akin to providing a road map for a state-sponsored cyber-attack. For dissidents and human rights defenders living in the UK, NIS data can be used to demonise and de-anonymise their activity. This information is frequently used to identify and harass family members remaining in their home country, to conduct targeted phishing and surveillance against the individual’s private devices, and to coerce the individual into becoming an informant under the threat of criminal charges based on the shared technical data. Let me deal with another case: that of Ryan Cornelius in the United Arab Emirates. Ryan Cornelius is a British citizen who has been arbitrarily detained in Dubai for 18 years, despite well-documented evidence of an unfair trial and inhuman treatment. Ryan’s detention has been found to be arbitrary by the UN working group on arbitrary detention. His case arose from a high-profile financial dispute involving loans connected to a major Dubai development project. Although he and his associates had reportedly complied with restructuring agreements with Dubai Islamic Bank, he was arrested without warning, transferred by plain-clothed officers to a police facility, where he was held incommunicado, denied access to a lawyer and subjected to aggressive interrogation. During this time, he was coerced into signing documents in Arabic—a language he does not understand—under the false premise that this would give him his release.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source

  More

  I just want to point out a clear example of why this is necessary. In 2022, the Home Office asked police forces to collect ethnicity and other data to have a display of evidence. Out of 43 forces, only one complied. That is why it must be statutory and enforced; does my right hon. Friend not agree?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The test of bad legislation is always whether it contains carte blanche Henry VIII powers—in this case in a thin and flimsy Bill—that grant the Government the right to do anything they like with the legislation, even after it has passed. That made it a dog of a Bill, but now the Government have paused it—or returned it, or U-turned, or whatever they are calling it. The Chagossians’ rights lie at the heart of this matter, so can I take the Minister back to the statement he made about the Chagossians? He talked about them wanting to come to some conclusion about their ability to return to the islands. The BIOT Supreme Court ruled that section 9 of the British Indian Ocean Territory (Constitution) Order 2004, which barred the right of abode to Chagossians, was illegal, so why have the Government mounted an appeal against that, to ensure that it is illegal for them to go to their islands? Does he think the Chagossians have no right to go to the islands, or that they do have a right? Which is it?

• 3 Mar 2026 · Small Charity Sector · Hansard source

  More

  I do indeed. I am going to be careful about taking an intervention unless the Member nods their head to suggest that they are prepared to stay for the rest of the debate. I am like a spider at the centre of the web, but I promise I will not trap anyone if I do not have to; I have great confidence in Sir Roger’s stewardship. Some 20 years ago, I visited the Easterhouse estate in Glasgow, which was one of the most deprived communities in the United Kingdom. At that time, the people there no longer looked to Government as their safety net from poverty; instead, it was local charities that stepped forward. People at the grassroots were present every day, patiently helping people into work and out of debt and addiction. The lifespan of individuals there was incredibly low, much lower than the UK average. That visit stayed with me throughout the latter part of my time as party leader. I saw deprivation and problems, but I also saw innovation at a local level to solve key problems. Innovation is critical, and that is what the small charity sector is about. For that reason, I founded the Centre for Social Justice in 2004 to create a bridge between local poverty fighters and policymakers here in Westminster; we described it as connecting the back streets of Britain to the corridors of power. The work that the organisation does now is informed by an alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots charities. Today it is led by former charity leader and CSJ award-winner Andy Cook. This is all about real people doing things away from Westminster and achieving things that are never exalted enough; nor is experience of them ever transferred to central Government. The CSJ harnessed the experiences of those charities to identify five distinct pathways to poverty, which it could then change; that idea still holds as true today as it did when I set the organisation up. Those pathways are worklessness and welfare dependency; addiction; educational failure; debt; and of course family dysfunction and breakdown. What I learned about the impact of worklessness and the other pathways helped to shape some of my thinking later on. Every year since 2004, we have had an awards programme that recognises outstanding small community groups and charities that work quietly but effectively across the country. To see what they have achieved is one of the most moving things. They will not be known to many people, but what they do is remarkable and the lessons from their work ring out to policymakers. Instead of inventing new ways of doing things, we should look at what these groups do, see whether we can bring it to Westminster and, if necessary, make legislation that shapes lives along the same lines. I want to refer to some community groups and charities that I know about—I hope other Members will do the same, to give a cross-party sense of what is going on in our communities. The first I want to talk about is Ripple, a suicide prevention charity based in Portsmouth. After the tragic suicide of her brother Josh, Alice Hendy dedicated herself to preventing harmful online internet searches from leading others to the same fate. We face a growing nightmare out there, with many people committing suicide as a result of what they see online. It is a real problem. From her bedroom in Portsmouth, Alice created a browser extension that intercepts crisis searches, offering a calming breathing exercise before signposting people to accessible local services. I have seen it myself, and it is quite brilliant—the members of the Government who saw it were also taken aback by how remarkable it is. What began as a response to personal tragedy has become a lifesaving tool that has now been downloaded—believe it or not—more than 2 million times. This is a small idea, from a small set-up in a bedroom, that is now being used more and more widely. That is why we need to learn from what these groups are doing, pick it up and see what we can do centrally. Many individuals will not have committed suicide as a direct result of that particular initiative, but there are many other examples. With the right Government engagement, tools like Ripple’s could be made available in schools, hospitals and jobcentres across the country, for example, yet Alice and her team still have to approach institutions one by one. I say again to the Minister: these are the kind of huge, life-changing things we can take from this debate—I am sure colleagues will give similar examples—and we do not have to invent them from scratch, because they already exist. Another shining beacon in our charity network is the BAC—the BAC O’Connor centre in Staffordshire; I first encountered it some years ago during my visits to grassroots charities. For 30 years, BAC O’Connor has been helping people to recover from addiction. We have long argued that, for obvious reasons, addiction is a reinforcer of poverty. BAC’s founder, Noreen Oliver, who sadly is no longer with us, was a much-loved member of this family. I was lucky enough to visit the centre again last year with the hon. Members for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier). Some still new to political leadership in various other parties think that simply legalising drugs is a single-stroke way of ending the drugs problem and saving lives. BAC O’Connor believes in changing and transforming lives; its rehabilitation programmes remind us that recovery, not normalisation, remains the desired outcome. BAC O’Connor does groundbreaking work, as I am sure the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) will want to explain further. It created its own restaurant for those coming out of addiction and is a very good example of what I am talking about. In my constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green there are some remarkable small charities, from which the Government could learn important lessons. They include the Dream Factory, founded in 2008 by Avril Mills BEM. It supports children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions or with severe disabilities by making their dreams—the things that they hoped or wished to do but have not been able to—a reality. It is a simple device: no matter what their situation is, Avril wants to hold them and say that they are worthy of achieving some of their dreams, although they may not be around long enough to see all of them. Wanstead and Woodford Migrant Support, a Christian charity based in Woodford Green, offers free immigration advice, housing support, advocacy and social spaces for refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants. By providing community-based advice early, it helps prevent homelessness. Immigration and housing policy should recognise and learn from its preventive work and the savings created by local and interactive support. There are others. Read Easy Waltham Forest offers free, confidential one-to-one coaching for adults who want to learn to read. One of the main reasons why people—mostly young men—end up in prison is that they simply cannot read and write. We discovered that they are too embarrassed to go into jobcentres, where they will be confronted by things that they need to read and write. They will probably be sitting in front of an efficient woman who is trying to help them, and they are embarrassed about admitting that they simply cannot read what she is putting in front of them. They will leave the jobcentre and fall into a life of crime because, without reading and writing, there is nothing out there that people can do for regular work. Many people who cannot read and write struggle; that is an often overlooked barrier to employment and to a straightforward, well-lived life. The central issue that I hope this debate will address is this: the Government take grassroots charity too much for granted—they did before and still do now, to a greater or lesser degree; this is not party political, as I said. The Government fail to listen when charities are delivering what works, and I urge the Minister to raise that point with her colleagues. They ought to be looking with MPs at what is going on in their constituencies and seeing what we can bring forward. The Government should rise up to serious, lifesaving policy work that does not need degrees or involve people writing new policies on the backs of envelopes and everybody getting excited about them. The programmes of these charities have been tried and tested, and they work—in life, it is always a good start to look at what works and copy it. That is what most of us would want to do. We need to foster a stronger culture of philanthropy in the UK that is closer to the American model. In its “Supercharging Philanthropy” report, the CSJ proposed practical steps to get us there. It suggested unlocking matched funding schemes to drive philanthropy and creating an evidence fund, so that smaller organisations can prove their impact and compete on a higher-level playing field. I want this debate to focus on how the Government can better learn from charities. There is a clear policy pipeline through which Ministers and Departments can systematically learn from grassroots charities working on the ground. The problem is that larger charities have public affairs teams and a lot of money, so they can fill up the inboxes of the Government on a daily basis, which they do—I have experience of that. I am not attacking them; I am simply saying that the real innovation is in smaller charities. It is the same in the economy—job creation in the business sector is all about small businesses. They are the ones that take the risks, are dynamic and produce the most employment in the United Kingdom. Small charities and community groups are exactly the same: they are innovators that see a problem, want to solve it and innovate to do that. When it works they really grow, but it is difficult because there is a glass ceiling that they must get through to reach the Government. That is what the Centre for Social Justice is trying to enable, but the issue needs to be recognised on a wider scale. That innovation must be harnessed to produce solutions. I remain proud of what the CSJ has done to bring these voices to the national debate. The CSJ Foundation has now given more than £25 million to grassroots charities and hopefully will raise more. I hope that, as this debate continues, the Government will listen and recognise that, through discussions with groups such as the Centre for Social Justice and others, we can harness and recognise the issues. There are a significant number of colleagues here for a debate such as this on a normal day, and they all work with local community groups and charities. Let us find a way to show what is really good about what those do and get the Government to act, once and for all, on things that we know work, rather than doing experiments in public policy. I rest on the basis that those charities are the lifeblood of what keeps society going, and we do not recognise them fully enough. I know that colleagues do, but the Government never do.

• 3 Mar 2026 · Small Charity Sector · Hansard source

  More

  This has been an excellent debate, not least because all parties have been represented in it, and all parties have spoken with one voice. We value the incredible efforts made by local community groups and charities, but all of us also recognise that much more can be done to release them and to recognise some of the incredible schemes that they have come up with—I named a number of them. There have been many suggestions about the best way to do that. There have been comments about the need to modernise gift aid, and to uprate the thresholds of the gift aid small donations scheme, so that charities that receive small cash donations can get gift aid-style repayments of tax. That is a useful idea that has been put forward. There is also the whole idea of placed-based giving. Small charities are embedded in communities throughout the UK, and it is important that local and placed-based giving is encouraged so that smaller charities are supported and can continue delivering their vital services. I also picked up a general concern, which is quite right, about the fall-off of corporate giving in the UK towards the small charities sector. The big problem is that—forgive me, I cannot remember who made this point—something in the order of 80% of charitable giving goes to about 20% of all charities. They are the big charities that are staffed up with lots of people to lobby us and to always come in and see us. The small community groups and charities, however, that do 80% or more of the work often do not get access to that. Rewarding companies for supporting charities and community groups in their local areas would be a very good way of increasing corporate giving. Only 25% of British businesses donate to charities in the form of time, cash or goods. An estimated £4.26 billion was donated by British businesses in 2024, and that was flatlining. I say to the Minister that we need to do more to encourage a greater level of local support and giving, because philanthropic giving is vital. I mentioned in my opening remarks that we need to look at what the USA does in its tax structure for charitable giving. Particularly, we want to look at small community groups and charities benefiting from that, and raising more money given directly by those individuals, who are rewarded for that because it is a common good. This debate has been an excellent opportunity. I recommend that anybody who wants to inform themselves more about the policy work speaks to the Centre for Social Justice. All parties are welcome to look at this. I hope to have a chance at some point to meet the Minister to discuss with her any possibilities that we can raise. I have one abiding thought. Recently, we held another of our annual awards where we give out money to winning charities in six categories—money matters to small community groups and charities. I have to say that it was one of the most moving experiences that I have had. I listened to people who have grown their support groups out of tragedy in their own families and communities, and have risen to that and overcome it. Alone among all other reasons, it is not the structure or organisation, but the beating heart of small community groups and charities that helps us survive out there. It is time that we motored on in recognising them and making sure that they get a proper fair crack at what is out there to help them deliver their great services. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the small charity sector.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Industry and Exports (Financial Assistance) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I understand what the Minister is saying very clearly, but a couple of the examples I gave where things had slipped through the net show that the system is not perfect. Does he think that the Government are likely therefore to deliver, as that said they would, on taking the Modern Slavery Act and beefing it up to such an extent that companies importing and exporting have a responsibility to check their supply chains, and if they do not it would be a criminal offence?

• 9 Feb 2026 · Jimmy Lai: Prison Sentence · Hansard source

  More

  I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. Today, as the Minister said, Jimmy Lai, a British citizen, has been sentenced to a further 20 years in prison. Given his poor health and the fact that he sat for five years in solitary confinement, that is not a sentence; it is a death sentence for that brave man. The authorities have trashed everything that we would consider reasonable in law. For example, like others, I was named—nine times—in the prosecution case, and I have never even met Mr Lai, or spoken to him, sadly. I simply ask the Minister why the statement that the UK Government released today refers to Jimmy Lai as a “British National”. Lord Cameron finally changed that, and made it clear that Mr Lai was a British citizen. Will the Minister change the statement and refer to him as a British citizen, which is what he is? Why do the Government constantly refer to Hong Kong and the national security law? The reality is that the British Government have sanctioned absolutely nobody in the Chinese Government for trashing the Sino-British agreement and installing the Chinese national security law, which is the reason why Jimmy Lai was arrested. He has been convicted and sentenced for nothing more than standing up for freedom of speech and peaceful protest for democracy. The Government went on a visit to China recently. Before doing so, they granted full planning permission for the huge and ghastly Chinese embassy in London. Why did they not at least hold back on planning permission, so that they could say to the Chinese Government, “You must release Jimmy Lai now and cancel the prosecution altogether, or you will not get your embassy”? Instead, we have given them the embassy for nothing, and the Prime Minister was treated like dirt while he was out there. Sebastien and Claire Lai, Jimmy Lai’s children, have fought for him. I feel sorry for them, and my thoughts go to them. Surely, this is a sad day for anybody who believes in freedom, justice, and the legitimate rule of democratically made law. Will the Government now call for a humanitarian parole?

• 9 Feb 2026 · Jimmy Lai: Prison Sentence · Hansard source

  More

  (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if she will make a statement on the 20-year sentence imposed on our brave British citizen, Jimmy Lai.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles: Legacy and Reconciliation · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate Members who have spoken, particularly the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). He set out eloquently, in precise and excellent detail, exactly what is wrong with what is happening today and what will be wrong when the Government next bring forward their Bill. I still do not understand the reason for the rush to get the order through today. We have legislation coming before us, and surely it would have been reasonable to allow the courts to get on with their business and for us to legislate on the basis of what they bring forward. I simply say to the Government that it is badly done that we are rushing this order through and that the House is being forced to vote on it today. The points I want to make are not about the legalities of this, because those have been raked over endlessly. As I said, the right hon. Member for Belfast East gave a brilliant exposition of them, and there is nothing I can add. I want to talk simply about what the previous Government were trying to do when they brought in the previous legislation. Back in about 1993 or 1994, I went out to South Africa with a delegation to look at how people there were trying to bring the country together again and clear themselves of the baggage of what had happened over those desperate years. During that time, many more men and women were killed in South Africa then we are dealing with in Northern Ireland, tragic though that was. It was the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa that persuaded me that something along those lines was vital for Northern Ireland. I say that as somebody who served in Northern Ireland. I also say it as one of those who lost a good friend, whose name I have mentioned before—Captain Robert Nairac. The main point I am making is that I no longer wish to pursue the people involved. His parents have died, and the rest of the family do not want to pursue those people for justice; they want to find out what happened to Bob Nairac. Nobody knows, and no one will come forward with the possibility of prosecution hanging over their head. What happened was terrible, but we want to know what it was. That is the bit I feel strongly about: the knowing is important to end this and draw a line under it. I am afraid that the Bill will continue the pursuit of individuals, particularly those who are Northern Ireland veterans, as I am. There is no help here in respect of Ireland and its pursuit. What are we going to do? There is nothing to say that Ireland will now agree to drop what it is doing and open its records. So much of what happened is in its records, because people fled there from their brutal crimes. This is not about equivalence, which was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis). As have I said before, equivalence came about when a limitation was put on incarceration periods back in 1998. That brought equivalence to terrorism and to terrorists. The hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow), who is not in his place, made the point that the vast majority of prosecutions have been of terrorists, but over 3,000 of the deaths were down to terrorists and only about 300 had anything to do with the armed forces. So of course there have so far been more prosecutions of terrorists, but there will never be enough while we cannot get the records—they do not exist—of those who committed these foul acts. I again make the point to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East that it is a one-way street. Time is limited, so I will finish simply by saying that I remember a conversation with Norman Tebbit, who died quite recently, during which I asked what was the worst thing that had happened to him. He said that it was not lying under the rubble or even believing that his wife had died as she lay next to him after the bombing. He said that the worst thing was when he had to swallow hard and watch the person who had set the bomb and blown his wife into a different future walk free. He said that that was the worst thing, but he understood why it was necessary. He swallowed it and determined against a prosecution. I was hoping that with the previous legislation, we could get to the truth of things, rather than have this ridiculous pursuit, which will never end, of those gallant veterans who, like me, served in Northern Ireland.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I rise because in the previous debate we had on this, a question was posed to Ministers, and it has been asked again now: what are the reasons for this Bill? First, Ministers rested on one idea, which was all about how we had somehow received a binding judgment from the International Court of Justice, and this was therefore important because we had to stand by that. I remember it became clearer and clearer during that debate, particularly for some Members, that this simply was not correct. There is no binding judgment; it is an advisory judgment, because we have an opt-out for all matters to do with Commonwealth Governments. That is very clear, and it has been said by many judges and other learned legal people. Some of my right hon. Friends, one of whom I see on the Front Bench, have raised other reasons in these debates. Beyond the ICJ judgment, we were told there were other issues, and that somehow if we did not do this we would face challenges under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea and by the International Telecommunication Union, which stands steadily. What is most interesting about all this is that, when pressed throughout, bit by bit Ministers’ arguments fell apart. These issues are very detailed, so I will not go into them now, but they will have to be raised in much more detail later.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source

  More

  I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that I raise these issues as a sanctioned individual. Not only am I sanctioned, but my whole family is sanctioned, I have been trolled by operatives from the security service of China, and I am under constant watch by them, all the way through. On the basis of that, I simply ask him this. When the Secretary of State issued his letter, he said—this was quoted earlier—that the concern about cables should not present a problem for “a lawful embassy use”. Nothing about the Chinese is lawful here in the United Kingdom. Is it lawful for them to attack Hongkongers who have fled here? Is it lawful for pop-up police stations to go on pulling people in? Is it lawful for them to place bounties on people’s heads? Is it lawful for them to be asking British citizens living next door to Hongkongers to bring them into the embassy, so they may collect their bounty? These are all unlawful acts. The truth is that this Chinese embassy, with its 200 extra staff, will increase that. In every place where China has put more people in its embassy, transnational repression has increased. Does the Minister not agree with that?

• 8 Jan 2026 · Human Rights Abuses: Magnitsky Sanctions · Hansard source

  More

  I really do not know the answer to that question. All I can say to my hon. Friend is that we act individually and are supposed to co-operate, but that does not always work. We have seen with the Chinese and others that America leads the way and we half follow, or do not follow at all. My concern is that we do not champion such action in the way that we could and should as an upholder of human rights and freedom. This country has a huge record in that area and we need to use it much more. I am not the only Member of this House to have raised concerns about the relationship between the Government of the United Arab Emirates and the activities of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. What is going on in Sudan is brutal, bloody and huge, even in comparison to what is happening in somewhere like Gaza. It is an astonishing abuse of human rights and the value of life. The RSF is responsible for brutal murders, rapes, attacks on hospitals and significant numbers of killings, and yet this organisation has been supported heavily by the UAE. It is said that without the support of the UAE, there would not now be a major war going on in Sudan. There are really big questions to be asked here, because without those arms shipments and other support, there would not be the fighting and terrible consequences that we see in Sudan. I wish to draw the attention of the Minister to reporting by The New York Times in June last year, which, citing US intelligence sources, references the involvement of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Deputy President of the UAE, in co-ordination with the RSF and in his role as chair of two charities funding hospitals in Chad that have allegedly been used in the distribution of weapons to the RSF. The investigation further reports that the US envoy to Sudan confronted Sheikh Mansour personally in 2024 about his support for General Hamdan of the RSF. As the ultimate owner of Manchester City football club, Sheikh Mansour is possibly the most high-profile UAE investor in the UK economy. What are we going to do about that? That is a signal and serious problem for us. Will the Minister confirm that, given the appalling crimes of the RSF, which fall squarely in the purview of the global human rights sanctions scheme, the Department has carried out a full assessment of whether representatives of the UAE Government may meet the criteria for sanctions, given the significant role the UAE is alleged to play in support of the RSF and the substantial influence of the UAE on investments in the UK economy and public life? If such an assessment has not been carried out, will the Minister say whether it is the Government’s intention to do so? Individuals arbitrarily detained abroad are particularly vulnerable to torture, ill treatment and other serious human rights violations, from the moment they are detained. The Government’s own figures show that in 2024 the FCDO received 186 new allegations of torture and mistreatment from British nationals overseas. Arbitrary detention and related human rights abuses have long-lasting effects on those who experience them; following release, survivors must bear the physical, psychological and socioeconomic toll of their captivity. This makes it all the more concerning that the list of British nationals currently subject to arbitrary detention abroad is long. I am going to read out the names on it: Jagtar Singh Johal; Ryan Cornelius, whose family are with us today in the Gallery; Jimmy Lai; Nnamdi Kanu; Christian James Michel; Matthew Alexander Pascoe; Ramze Shihab Ahmed al-Rifa’i; Charles Ridley; Mehran Raoof; Craig and Lindsay Foreman; and Ahmed al-Doush. I want to focus on two particular cases that exemplify the FCDO’s reluctance to use Magnitsky sanctions to challenge arbitrary detention: first, Ryan Cornelius; secondly, Jimmy Lai. A case that underscores the ongoing failure of the UK Government—and, I have to say, that of their predecessor—to effectively employ Magnitsky sanctions to deter and punish those responsible for arbitrarily detaining and mistreating UK nationals is, of course, that of Ryan Cornelius, who has been arbitrarily detained in Dubai for more than 17 years. I want to mention the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), who has raised this issue on a number of occasions. I congratulate him on his support for the Cornelius family. This arbitrary detention also applies to Charles Ridley, Ryan Cornelius’s business partner, but I will focus today on Ryan. Unlike the case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ryan’s plight has been met with deafening silence, despite well-documented evidence of an unfair trial and the inhumane treatment that has been meted out to him. His detention has been found arbitrary by the UN working group on arbitrary detention. Ryan’s original 10-year sentence was extended by 20 years at the behest of the Dubai Islamic Bank, which has used his imprisonment as leverage to seize his assets, rendering his family essentially homeless. The FCDO has been reluctant to engage fully with the detail of Ryan’s case from the very beginning. Even now, Ryan’s family—who, as I said, are with us in the Public Gallery—are repeatedly forced to set out the basic facts of his case at every single meeting with the FCDO or Ministers, despite the fact that they are fully known to them. Despite repeated calls from Ryan’s family and from MPs for sanctions against Dubai officials, the UK Government have taken no action. Not a single individual has been sanctioned for their role in this case. I urge the Minister to look at imposing targeted Magnitsky sanctions on those responsible for Mr Cornelius’s arbitrary detention and asset seizure. I am going to list just eight people who are involved in the board of the Dubai bank: His Excellency Mohammed Al Shaibani; Yahya Saeed Ahmad Nasser Lootah, vice-chairman of the board of directors; Hamad Abdulla Rashed Obaid Al Shamsi, a board member; Ahmad Mohammad Saeed Bin Humaidan, also a board member; Abdul Aziz Ahmed Rahma Mohamed Al Muhairi; Dr Hamad Buamim; Javier Marin Romano; Bader Saeed Abdulla Hareb; and Dr Cigdem Kogar. I offer up the names of these people, all of whom are involved in this case, for the Government to think carefully about taking action. Unfortunately, Ryan’s case appears to be a clear example of economic interests taking precedence over human rights, largely because the UAE is such a major financial investor and trading partner. I am afraid that that double standard is not limited to Ryan’s case. India—another country with a recent trade deal—continues to hold a British citizen in arbitrary detention without consequences. Jagtar Singh Johal, from Dumbarton, Scotland, was violently arrested in 2017 while in India to get married. He was tortured and has endured eight years of detention, which the UN working group on arbitrary detention has ruled “lacks legal basis and is arbitrary”. After lots of hearings—hundreds of them—prosecutors in India have failed to produce credible evidence against Jagtar, and the UK must now use every diplomatic lever to bring him home. I want to return, finally, to the case of Jimmy Lai. The time has come, surely, for the UK to wield its sanctions authority against the officials responsible for repression in Hong Kong. Jimmy Lai’s guilty conviction for “foreign collusion” and “sedition” on 15 December, which paves the way for Hong Kong’s courts to sentence the 78-year-old British citizen to life in prison, is the final straw. Beijing has trashed the Sino-British joint declaration, crushed the freedoms it promised Hongkongers and the world, and imprisoned nearly 2,000 political prisoners, including Jimmy Lai. I have long called for the Government to hold the Hong Kong authorities to account for their persecution of the pro-democracy campaigner, who is guilty only of performing his duties as publisher of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper by speaking to diplomats and other overseas officials. Not a single Hong Kong individual is named on the UK sanctions list, which sets out all the people, entities and vessels sanctioned by Britain. In comparison, the US has sanctioned 11 officials from the top of Hong Kong’s Administration downwards. How is it that this country, which used to administer and run Hong Kong, has not sanctioned a single person in that process? The three judges responsible for Jimmy Lai’s outrageous guilty verdict—Esther Toh, Alex Lee and Susana D’Almada Remedios, two of whom were called to the bar in London—should be immediate targets, as should the prosecutors: Maggie Yang, Anthony Chau, Ivan Cheung, Crystan Chan and Karen Ng Ka-yue. Despite the clear role that Magnitsky sanctions could play in these cases, the Government do not treat them as a core foreign policy tool for protecting British citizens abroad. They should not be reserved for politically convenient situations but applied consistently, particularly when we have economic leverage over the perpetrating state. The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally recommended the use of Magnitsky sanctions to deter state hostage taking, and survivors themselves have repeatedly called for their use. I will listen very carefully to what the Minister has to say, as I think the House wants to get a sense of where the Government are moving on this and whether they intend to increase the level of sanctions or speed them up. If they do so, they will receive my support and, I believe, the support of the Opposition side of the House. These are important moments, and this debate is important. When this House passed the Magnitsky Act, we did so in good faith. This singular tool would help us in the fight against the abuses of powerful people, particularly in the defence of British citizens who have been wrongly detained and are without the ability to defend themselves. It will help our fight against the powerful people who have control over others who have no redress and no hope for their future. With the rise of totalitarian states and their satellites, who threaten our very belief in freedom and due process, and who are tearing apart what we call the international rules-based order—such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran—this facility is needed more than ever. Its use is to deter others as much as to punish those who have acted without the law, and such action should be co-ordinated among our allies. This House has to hold the Government to account—that is our task—and that is what today’s debate is all about. If we do not speak for those languishing under the control of others and the power of powerful states, then who will? I say to the Government simply: this is not parti pris, and nor is it personal; it is an idea that originated here in this place. It is the idea of freedom—freedom of the individual and their protections under the law. For those who carry out the most heinous crimes, there has to be some kind of sanction. The Magnitsky sanction is the best tool that we have. We should surely use it, and use it well, and we must make sure that those out there realise that if they get up to these most disgusting and debilitating acts, they will face a consequence and that consequence will last as long as they do.

• 8 Jan 2026 · Human Rights Abuses: Magnitsky Sanctions · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman is, of course, absolutely right. It is important to get justice and to make sure that others who would be tempted to go down that road realise there will be real penalties to pay.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Jimmy Lai Conviction · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with the right hon. Lady in her comments about the terrible attacks in Bondi, and I congratulate her on raising that now, but I rise to express the view again that this case is not only about Hong Kong, but about this Chamber. I have been named nine times in the prosecution case against Jimmy Lai. Others have been named more than that. It is appalling. I would have loved to have met him and spoken to him, but I never have done. It is trumped-up nonsense from the CCP. The second thing I say to the Foreign Secretary is that I agree with the strength of her statement about the appalling nature of the Government in China over this issue, but it is no good just meeting people to say they are wrong or calling in the ambassadors. Surely what we have to do is show them a ratcheting up in the things that we will do. First, we need to tell them that there will be no visit in January by our Prime Minister to an organisation that is so corrupt and indecent. Secondly, we should surely start imposing sanctions on those members in Hong Kong who run the place. We have done none of that. Every other country has sanctioned them, but we have not. Finally, there is the idea of allowing this regime to have a huge embassy with 200 extra spies brought in. At this point, they surely need to be told that it will not happen until they release Jimmy Lai.

• 18 Nov 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I rise to support the Opposition Front Bench in their concerns about the present legislation. Three facts stand out. First, the Bill does not protect veterans from criminal cases, even repeated ones. It essentially means that they are likely to be dragged through the criminal process multiple times if accused of wrongdoing or even asked to give evidence. Secondly, Labour’s protections for veterans can barely be called protections, and the Irish Government have denied that they exist at all. It remains unclear how they will work in practice to protect veterans, and the Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris has said that no additional protections will be given to veterans, so there is a conflict between the two parties to the agreement. Thirdly, it remains unclear whether the protections for veterans in the new legacy deal will protect paramilitaries and terrorists alike. Interestingly, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) asked the Secretary of State that question at the Dispatch Box, and he never answered it. I would be grateful if at some point he, or the Minister when he gets up, would say whether the protections extend to both sides. The main point that I want to make, having served in Northern Ireland, is how quickly people forget what a peculiar and terrible event it was—so peculiar to have British troops on the ground in the United Kingdom with British citizens all around them, having to keep the peace in a part of this United Kingdom. It seemed almost outrageous, but that was what we were called to do. We had strict rules of engagement, and those were very tough to follow at times because of the nature of the threat and what could happen around any corner. You never knew when you went to a house whether someone would be sniping or shooting at you, and that played on the senses and on the alertness of those soldiers. Sure, mistakes will have been made, but that was the very nature of the background in which that happened.

• 18 Nov 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I will not follow the hon. Member down that road, because I have limited time and there is something I want to reflect on, but the reality is that many people and veterans believe that this will be a problem for future recruits. I was, in actual fact, not in favour of the legislation passed by the previous Government because I felt that equating this by giving rights to both sides to avoid any prosecutions would not necessarily work. I was, however, persuaded in the final analysis by one particular case. The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) mentioned Robert Nairac. Robert Nairac was a very good friend of mine. I came to the conclusion that there was no way on earth that we would ever find out what actually happened to this brave soldier who served in Northern Ireland. We have had bits and pieces to relay the fact that he was almost certainly tortured and that he was executed, but we never get to know. His parents died not knowing and his family still wonder what happened to him. Was he ever buried? Is it true that he was cut up? That somehow spread, and nobody wants to own up to it. It struck me that for as long as there was a likelihood that somebody would be prosecuted for it, we would never know or get closure. I was persuaded on those grounds that it was time to shift from the way we were behaving—the way we were dragging soldiers through inquiries and into the courts. As Soldier F even now tells us, it is unlikely that we will achieve what everyone here keeps talking about as justice. What we will achieve is a permanent state of anxiety and nobody getting justice in the course of it. It struck me that the only thing we could do was to get to the root of the problems, have those cases explained and get those who were involved in them to tell the families what happened and why. Therefore, they would at least have closure through having knowledge and understanding of why these things took place. I wish we knew where Robert Nairac lies, if he lies anywhere at all. I wish his family knew. Many other soldiers and civilians are in those circumstances too. The terrorism and brutality of the IRA was appalling, yet we are still arguing about it even today. Let me take us back about a month to Norman Tebbit’s funeral. I remember when he watched the person who set the bomb and blew up the Grand in Brighton walk free. I remember him saying to me afterwards, “It was the worst moment in my life—I went through all of this and I had injuries. This man went free because we had to get peace in Northern Ireland, but my wife will never be free, because she is immobilised for the rest of her life, and I have to live with that with her. We are both trapped in what happened in those seconds in the bombing.” For his sake and for everything else, he recognised finally, as horrible as it was, that there was a necessary compromise to be made. Let me simply say that the attacks on the previous legislation forget that it was about trying to get truth and reconciliation, and about learning from other countries such as South Africa. As difficult and problematic as this issue is, there are major faults in this legislation, and I hope that the Secretary of State will respect the fact that amendments will be made and that he will accept many of them.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I understand that the Deputy Prime Minister has made it clear that he was held back for operational reasons by the Metropolitan police from answering that question at Prime Minister’s questions. Mr Swinford of The Times has published right now that far from that being the case, there is “significant frustration in the Met Police”, as they said that there was clearly “no operational issue” at all with the release of that information. I wonder if you will take that into consideration, Madam Deputy Speaker, because surely this is a process of misleading the House.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  I cannot give way again because the hon. Gentleman does not have a minute to give me—sorry about that. Otherwise, I would have loved to give way. That kind of shoplifting is a major problem, and I want to know that the Government will do what is necessary to bring the levels down. As long as crime is at such a huge scale on our high streets, we will lose more and more people and see more shops close. I ask the Government simply to think again about the national insurance charges, the level of business rates, and the nature of crime on our high streets. Those are the three main things driving people away from the high streets, mostly into shopping centres, which are not where we want them. We want people on our high streets, which are really important and vital to our communities.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  I do not have a Conservative council to criticise, although I would criticise it if it had done that. It was a Labour council that introduced these charges, and they have had a dramatic effect on those who would have come to shops. A small bookshop that has been there for many years is now thinking about calling it a day. That is a real problem, and it is bonkers to add that to the other problems these businesses have. Something that ruins high streets and causes real problems is the inability of local authorities to control the number of adult gaming centres on the high street. I and many others are campaigning to get the Government to allow local authorities to make a decision about that, rather than being overridden. I hope the Government will look at that in due course. The big thing that is affecting our high streets above all else is the crime and shoplifting going on. We have had a huge problem in our main shopping centres. These people go into shops and are violent. They threaten the shopkeepers, who are often pressed to the wall while they take thousands of pounds—this is not £1 or £2; thousands of pounds of goods are robbed from shop shelves. Those who are shopping are also threatened, and it drives people out of the high street. We have tried hard to bring this all together, so that the shops report the crime and the police are there for it, but despite that, this crime is still rising. One of the biggest problems is that when a shoplifter is arrested, they say that they wish to be tried in the Crown court. They know full well that the backlog in the Crown court is so great that they will be out on the street again that afternoon. The Government should consider carefully whether shoplifters should be allowed to do that, and whether magistrates courts, which do not have a backlog, should be doing summary charges on shoplifters in criminal cases—with limits, obviously—which would get them off the street that day, not back on the streets committing crime again.

• 3 Nov 2025 · “Soldier F” Trial Verdict · Hansard source

  More

  As someone who served in Northern Ireland, I just remind the House that this was the most peculiar operation that we could ever expect soldiers to do—patrolling streets in this United Kingdom, defending people against terrorists here in the UK, against a very strict rules of engagement booklet. They had to make complex decisions in a split second. Some of them were 18 years old, on the streets, petrified. In that context, I simply say to the right hon. Gentleman that he talks of equivalence, but more than 700 British soldiers in Northern Ireland were killed by paramilitaries. Not one single paramilitary has been arraigned and taken to court for any of those murders that were committed against the British Army and the British forces. The Secretary of State talks of equivalence, but this is not equivalence, because it is those soldiers who will be persecuted for the rest of time, and not one single member of the paramilitaries, who kept no records, will ever go in front of a court. That is not fair.

• 28 Oct 2025 · China Spying Case · Hansard source

  More

  I just want to clear up one small point. When the CPS originally decided to prosecute back in 2024, it was convinced on the basis of the then-required evidence that was in front of it that in this case, China was responsible, and therefore it posed a threat. What changed was the Roussev case, which redefined what the CPS needed to be able to say in order to go ahead with any further prosecution. It was made clear that all that needed to be done was to make the clear point that China was a persistent, continuous threat to the UK’s strategic interests. The reason why the CPS needed to make that statement had nothing to do with what had happened before; it was all about what resulted from the Roussev case. That was the key.

• 23 Oct 2025 · Alleged Spying Case: Role of Attorney General’s Office · Hansard source

  More

  My right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) is quite right. Throughout the whole saga, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) made clear, there have been conflicting stories about who did what, and why it could or could not be done, all in the same breath. But we know the rules require that the Attorney General is consulted on matters that are politically sensitive. It does not cut across his independence; it simply means that he or she has to be informed at the time. We understand from the Director of Public Prosecutions that the Attorney General must have been told that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. If so, the Attorney General’s role in this matter—independently—is to say to the authorities in the Government, “You are not providing sufficient evidence. This prosecution will collapse unless you do.” Did the Attorney General say to the Government, “You are not providing enough evidence to secure a prosecution. It is over to you to do as you have been asked by the DPP”?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Korean War: 75th Commemoration · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a shocking concept. A state like that is run for the purposes of the leader, their military chiefs and nobody else. I will come back to some of those figures. It is worth reminding ourselves that poor Lord Alton, the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on North Korea, is languishing in hospital with a broken back as a result of an accident. I am sure that otherwise he would be watching this debate. We send him our best wishes. Since the uneasy armistice in 1953, the Korean peninsula has stood as one of the world’s most volatile and divided regions. It is a grey zone between two vastly different states. In June 2019, the world watched as President Trump shook hands with Kim Jong Un and took 20 steps into North Korea, becoming the first sitting US President to set foot in the hermit kingdom. Just a single line of concrete blocks in a heavily militarised zone separates two nations and millions of lives—a division between freedom and tyranny. That must serve as a warning, especially in light of the war in Ukraine, that we must all do what we can to ensure that history does not see another divided Korea. In the south, a democratic and prosperous nation has arisen, which is now the world’s 13th largest economy it is one of our most important allies and friends, with which we fought shoulder to shoulder during the Korean war. Our partnership was further underlined in November 2023 when His Majesty King Charles III welcomed President Yoon and the First Lady of the Republic of Korea for a state visit to the United Kingdom, celebrating 140 years of diplomatic relations. During that visit, both nations reaffirmed their collaboration in diplomacy, trade, vehicles, military co-operation and artificial intelligence. We must continue to strengthen those economic and strategic partnerships with South Korea, Japan, India, the United States and other democratic allies to ensure that our prosperity and freedoms, which we too often take for granted, are not undermined by the rising threat from the authoritarian states that I have listed: China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, to name but the key ones. What of the north? While half of the Korean peninsula enjoys freedom, the other half remains under totalitarian rule. It continues brutally to repress its own people. In his recent book “The Dictators”, Iain Dale observes that the Kim family’s dictatorship ranks among the 10 most brutal and evil in history, alongside those of Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. That reality is consistently reflected in global human rights and religious persecution indexes. Organisations such as Open Doors UK, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Aid to the Church in Need and others continue their vital advocacy, reminding the world each year that North Korea remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian. It is a nation in which human rights are trampled daily and persecution remains unmatched, topping the world watch-list year after year. Just 12 days ago, North Korea marked the 80th anniversary of its ruling Workers’ party, inviting delegations from China, Russia, Vietnam and other authoritarian states to join the celebrations. For decades, the North Korean people have endured unimaginable suffering from ongoing nuclear development and security threats, starvation, brutal repression and systematic abuses, including enslavement, torture, imprisonment, forced abortions, enforced disappearances and persecution on political and religious grounds. North Korea’s human rights record stands among the worst in the world. To make matters even more harrowing, for three decades China has forcibly repatriated North Korean escapees. Many—especially pregnant women, who are highly vulnerable and are often trafficked after crossing the border—are sent back into North Korea, where they face imprisonment, torture, forced abortions if their child is of Chinese descent, or even execution. One escapee, Ms Kim Kyu-ri, now lives safely in London and testified at the all-party parliamentary group on North Korea. I was present, as the co-chair with Lord Alton, who I know is watching this debate. Tragically, Ms Kim’s sister was among the 600 repatriated in 2023, and her fate remains unknown. Such acts surely represent only a fraction of the brutality and loss that exist because of the existence of North Korea. All these issues were thoroughly investigated by the 2014 UN commission of inquiry into all the awful acts North Korea has done. The commission was led by the Australian judge Michael Kirby, who said: “The gravity, scale, duration and nature of the unspeakable atrocities committed in the country reveal a totalitarian state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” Its recommendations included the imposition of further sanctions on the regime’s illicit activities, on its nuclear programmes and on the forced production of goods by North Korean political prisoners, including textiles, wigs and fake eyelashes, which are often deceptively labelled as having been made in China. A report produced by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, “Made in China: How Global Supply Chain Fuels Slavery in North Korean Prison Camps”, gives evidence of these shocking practices. I want to return to the anniversary point. British soldiers, sailors and airmen were sent to Korea to fight for a people far distant. At the end of it, their bravery and determination secured, at least, freedom for half of that peninsula. Without their sacrifice, we would not be using the word “North” in front of the word “Korea”. We would be talking about the abuses of a deeply fractured communist regime that is destroying life for those who would love to have the freedoms that we have. Their sacrifice, and their deaths, must always be remembered. There is a tendency to forget that in the aftermath of the second world war we were involved in yet another major conflict. We have the right to be proud of our soldiers, sailors and airmen. Their sacrifice secured freedom for a second time, following the second world war.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Official Secrets Act · Hansard source

  More

  I make the following comments as somebody who has been sanctioned and hounded by the Chinese Government all the way through the past few years. I was briefed by the security services at the beginning that this was a slam-dunk prosecution—they were clear that they had met every single requirement within the Official Secrets Act. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) said earlier, the deputy national security adviser was very clear in his assessment of the information communicated by the two characters who were being prosecuted that at least 10 of the 34 charges that were laid were absolutely about passing secure information to the Chinese intelligence agency that would be “directly or indirectly, useful” to the Chinese state. That is very clear. It cannot, therefore, be for a lack of evidence that this has been dropped by the CPS. The key here was the whole idea of the Official Secrets Act defining that work as against an enemy—that is the key. So why in heaven’s name did the Government not take the opportunity, when it arose after the China audit, to raise China into the upper tier, as they did with Russia, North Korea and Iran? The Minister speaks of threats, but he does not say that China is a threat; he says it is a “challenge”, which is a ludicrous position to take. I honestly feel today that this Government have let you down, Mr Speaker—the Speaker of this Parliament—after you bravely stood for people like me to protect us against the overtures of the Chinese. They have let down Parliament. Nobody knows now whether they are safe, because these charges have been dropped. It is absolutely key, furthermore, that until we define China as what it is—a persistent threat that targets individuals, like me and others, and states—this will be a shame and a blot on our reputation as a strong state against terrorism.