Sir Keir Starmer has faced backlash over his trip to China amid claims that the Government has been “tricked” by Beijing. Conservative former security minister Tom Tugendhat raised the issue of Chinese sanctions on British parliamentarians after the Prime Minister announced that “all restrictions” had been lifted on current members.
Mr Tugendhat, along with former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Senior Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani and Conservative former minister Neil O’Brien, were among those banned from entering China, Hong Kong and Macau in 2021. Their property in China was also frozen, and Chinese citizens and institutions were prohibited from doing business with them. However, these sanctions no longer apply to current parliamentarians.
Addressing Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Mr Tugendhat said: “Do you not find it as surprising as I do that the Prime Minister has come back with a deal that lifts the sanctions on those six of us who are still in this House, but not the one who isn’t, nor the lawyers, advisers and academics who support the work of this House. Is this not a direct affront to the democracy of this place, an attempt to divide and conquer that we’ve seen China play against the European Parliament, and sadly has tricked our Government too.”
Responding, Sir Keir said: “I did raise it directly, and that got the response that restrictions do not apply to parliamentarians. I accept the challenge, the point, that we need to go further. That doesn’t mean that what we’ve achieved should be put to one side. In order to go further, we have to engage, and we have to engage at the leader level.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of adopting a “supine and short-termist approach”, adding that the Prime Minister “looked like he enjoyed his trip” but returned with “next to nothing” apart from a Labubu doll. She criticised the lifting of sanctions on Conservative MPs, saying: “Those MPs were sanctioned because they stood up to China. They stood up against human rights abuses. They stood up against the country spying on our MPs in a way that he wouldn’t dare. Those people don’t want to go to China.”
Sir Keir retorted that Mrs Badenoch’s policy was “to stick her head in the sand, unable to influence anything in a volatile world”, calling her approach “an abdication of responsibility”. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the Prime Minister was right to go to China but did so “from a position of weakness”, promising a super-embassy in London in return for relatively little.
