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Lord Garnier (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 2 February 2026

Debate

China: Human Rights and UK National Security

Contribution

My Lords, although I trust the Minister both expressly and implicitly, she is tied by the problems of being a Government Minister. I am now in opposition, so I have greater freedom to speak and to complain. I complain because the responses that we get from the Government are little more than vague generalisations. That breeds suspicion that nothing much is being done and that the dialogue between the Government and China is no more than formulaic. Can the Minister please do her best to reassure us—she may well know what the Prime Minister is about to say, or has already said, in the other place—that the fate of Jimmy Lai and our relations with China are not just diplomatic boxes to be ticked with nothing more to be said, and that genuinely positive, concrete discussions, with force behind them, are being conducted by her department and the Government as a whole?

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