(TibetanReview.net, Jan31’26) – Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of Great Britain has said China had lifted “all restrictions” on six current members of the British Parliament, after he held talks with President Xi Jinping in Beijing. However, a Labour peer as well as a former Conservative security minister who had had their sanctions lifted have dismissed the move as too little from Starmer’s trip to China, which was preceded by his approval of China’s controversial mega-embassy plan in central London, according to bbc.com reports Jan 30.
Baroness Helena Kennedy, who was among seven parliamentarians sanctioned by China in 2021 for accusing Beijing of human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority, has said raising the case of Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai was more important than lifting the sanctions. The media tycoon was found guilty of colluding with foreign forces under a controversial national security law.
Speaking to the BBC’s World Tonight programme, Baroness Kennedy has said she was pleased the Labour government had secured concessions where Conservative leaders, including David Cameron and Boris Johnson, had not but added she had hoped for more.
“At least they’ve gone in there and got something out of this,” she has said, adding: “I’m not going to have balloons on my door and throw confetti around to celebrate this – I think it’s a meagre return, and I’d like to see Jimmy Lai being released.”
Former security minister Tom Tugendhat has also accused the prime minister of securing too little, despite sanctions on him lifted. He has also criticised the “abasement before going, so allowing the mega-embassy and not demanding the release of Jimmy Lai, who as we know is a British citizen in prison in Hong Kong for now more than 1,000 days for the crime of journalism”.
Sir Keir has maintained that he did raise the Lai case and the treatment of Uyghurs “as you would expect” with President Xi.
The original group of seven to be sanctioned were all vocal critics of China as members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, although former Conservative MP Tim Loughton, who is also a vocal critic of China on its Tibet policy, stood down at the last election.
Baroness Kennedy, a former colleague of Sir Keir when he was a lawyer, and crossbencher Lord Alton were sanctioned alongside four sitting Conservative MPs – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Nusrat Ghani, Tom Tugendhat and Neil O’Brien, the report noted. Also sanctioned were Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, chair of the Uyghur Tribunal, which is investigating atrocities against the minority group, and Newcastle University academic Jo Smith Finley, whose research focuses on the Uyghurs.
The deal was also criticised by Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, who has spoken of having been “arbitrarily denied entry” to Hong Kong to visit her newborn grandson last year. Hobhouse, a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, was not officially sanctioned. Nevertheless, she was held at the airport, questioned and sent back to Britain – a decision she believes was taken to silence her.
Sir Keir’s three-day trip to China – the first by a British prime minister since 2018 – was an attempt to thaw relations and he has argued that the lifting of some sanctions “vindicated” his diplomatic approach.
Hitting back at critics such as the Conservatives, who have accused him of “kowtowing” to China, the prime minister has said “it would be foolhardy to sit with your head in the sand and refuse to engage”.
“By engaging, we’ve taken advantage of opportunities and raised difficult and sensitive issues,” Sir Keir has said.