Speeches

Tim Loughton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tim Loughton on 2016-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, when a UK (a) Minister and (b) official last visited (i) the area designated by the Chinese government as the Tibetan Autonomous Region and (ii) the areas of Tibet subsumed by the Chinese government into China in the 1960’s; what requests for such visits are outstanding; and if he will make a statement.

Alok Sharma

​I refer my Hon. Friend to the answer given by the former Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my Rt Hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), to the Hon. Member for Dundee West (Mr Law), on 4 May 2016 (PQ 35590), copied below for ease of reference:

The Hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) was the last serving Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister to visit the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), in September 2009. An FCO official last visited the TAR in June 2014. We continue to press the Chinese authorities for further access.