Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-01-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with his counterpart in China on the recent disappearance of five people who work for a Hong Kong publishing company and bookseller.

Mr Hugo Swire

Her Majesty’s Government remains deeply concerned about British citizen Mr Lee Po who went missing from Hong Kong in December and his four colleagues associated with the Causeway Bay Books bookstore. I raised the issue with the Chinese Ambassador to the UK on 22 January and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), raised the case with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on 5 January. Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials are in regular contact with the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities to make clear our serious concerns about this matter. As the Foreign Secretary told the House on 12 January, if allegations of Chinese security agents taking a British Citizen out of Hong Kong are correct, then this would be a serious breach of the Joint Declaration (Official Record 12 Jan 2016 : Column 693).