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Politics Home Article | China Has Lifted Sanctions On British MPs And Peers, Says Keir Starmer
(Alamy)
2 min read
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that China has agreed to remove sanctions from six parliamentarians, meaning they will be allowed to travel to the country.
In 2021, the Chinese Communist Party imposed sanctions on four current Conservative MPs after they criticised its human rights record and the persecution of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.
They were former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former security minister Tom Tugendhat, Nusrat Ghani and Neil O’Brien.
China also sanctioned Labour peer and human rights barrister Baroness Helena Kennedy, and crossbench peer Lord David Alton.
Speaking on Friday during his multi-day trip to China — the first visit to the country by a British prime minister in eight years — the PM announced that following a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, China had agreed to lift the sanctions.
Starmer told Times Radio: “The question of our parliamentarians has been a huge issue back in our Parliament, and therefore I did raise it.
“And the response has been that the restrictions no longer apply.
“And President Xi said to me that what that means is that all parliamentarians are free to travel to China.”
He added: “It underscores the point that I’ve been making all along, which is that it’s only by coming and engaging and having a leader-to-leader discussion that high can both take the opportunities, which have been really material in this visit, but also raise the sensitive issues.
“Some of my critics say ‘no, you’re better off at home, sticking your head in the sand and talking to no one’. That doesn’t resolve anything. We’ve made real progress on this visit.”
It is not yet clear whether China has agreed to remove sanctions from former parliamentarians like Tim Loughton, who stood down from the House of Commons at the 2024 general election.
