Why case of jailed Briton Jimmy Lai is major sticking point for Keir Starmer’s relations with China
The UK government is facing increasing pressure to call on China to release jailed pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai as it seeks closer trading ties with Beijing.
Media tycoon Mr Lai is currently on trial in Hong Kong facing charges under the city’s national security law, imposed by Beijing in 2020 in response to mass pro-democracy protests.
Mr Lai’s imprisonment and trial have become a sticking point for the British government in their dealings with China.
Chinese foreign secretary Wang Yi met Mr Lammy, and Sir Keir Starmer briefly, in London on Thursday, and pressure was on the UK foreign secretary to raise Mr Lai’s situation and call for his release.
Why is Jimmy Lai a British issue?
The 77-year-old has lived in Hong Kong since he was 12 years old, after stowing away on a fishing boat from China and working as a child labourer in a garment factory.
He built up fashion empire Giordano and after becoming a democracy advocate following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, he set up a magazine in Hong Kong.
Ahead of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China, he started Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily in an attempt to maintain freedom of speech.
Around the same time, in 1994, he became a full British citizen.
He has never held a Chinese or Hong Kong passport but because he was born in mainland China, Hong Kong authorities deem him to be a Chinese citizen.
Mr Lai has homes all over the world, including in London, Paris, Taipei and Kyoto. But his sole passport is British.
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‘Hong Kong’s become a policed state’
Why is he in jail?
During the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Mr Lai’s Apple Daily adopted the position of the protesters, criticising the government.
In June 2021, Apple Daily was raided by the police, who seized documents, froze its accounts and arrested its executives, leading to its closure.
Mr Lai was arrested and charged under the newly introduced national security law with collusion with foreign forces, as well as sedition under colonial-era laws.
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Mr Lai during a protest in 2019
He was also charged with unauthorised assembly for attending the protests, and fraud for a lease violation, which he has denied and has been condemned by the US as spurious.
The media tycoon has been found guilty of various other charges, including attending a Tiananmen vigil, which has meant he has been in a high-security jail since December 2020.
What about his trial?
In December 2023, Mr Lai’s national security law trial, where he faces charges of collusion with foreign forces and conspiracy to print and distribute seditious publications, started after years of delay.
After seven months, the court refused to dismiss the charges and adjourned the trial before Mr Lai could testify.
He was kept in solitary confinement and the trial resumed in November last year, when he first took to the stand.
Jimmy Lai pictured arriving at court on 12 December 2020: File pic: AP Photo/Kin Cheung
The media tycoon has now testified for more than 40 days, facing questioning about his editorial control over Apple Daily, links to activists in Hong Kong, the UK and US and meetings with US politicians.
In December, he told the trial he believed the UK had a “moral responsibility” to lead international support of Hong Kong, but denied requesting the UK government engaged in hostile activities against China and Hong Kong.
What has the British government done?
Boris Johnson
When Mr Lai was charged under the national security law in 2020, then prime minister Boris Johnson said the UK was “deeply concerned”.
This prompted the Chinese embassy in London to express “grave concern” about the “irresponsible remarks” which they said were an “act of interference”.
However, any pressure from the government appeared to drop after that for a few years.
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‘This is what Hong Kong is’
A lack of engagement
A handful of “China hawks” in parliament, including former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Tory foreign affairs committee chair Alicia Kearns, Lord Alton and Labour MP Catherine West, have consistently raised Mr Lai’s case in parliament.
Mr Lai’s son, Sebastien, and his father’s international legal team called several times for a meeting with Liz Truss and James Cleverly when they were foreign secretaries but that never happened, although they did meet with a foreign minister.
James Cleverly
Rhetoric then ratcheted up, with Mr Cleverly raising Mr Lai’s case directly with Chinese vice president Han Zheng as well as at the “highest levels with the Hong Kong authorities”.
Mr Cleverly accused Hong Kong in May 2023 of “deliberately targeting prominent pro-democracy figures, journalists and politicians in an effort to silence and discredit them”, adding: “Detained British dual national Jimmy Lai is one such figure.”
The then foreign secretary James Cleverly with China’s Vice President Han Zheng
Lord Cameron and Rishi Sunak
Lord Cameron, as foreign secretary, called for Mr Lai’s charges to be dropped at the end of 2023, and for his immediate release.
In a January 2024 letter to the last governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten, Rishi Sunak called Mr Lai’s trial “politically motivated” and vowed to keep raising the case with Beijing as a priority.
However, Mr Sunak dodged questions about whether he had personally raised his case with the Chinese government.
Starmer government
With a change of government, Mr Lai’s family and supporters hoped there would be a more concerted effort.
Three months after winning the general election, Sir Keir said securing the release of Mr Lai was a “priority” for his government and said it would “continue” to raise the case with China.
Sebastien Lai welcomed his words but asked the PM to “put word to action to save my father’s life and bring him home”.
David Lammy and Wang Yi in Beijing. Pic: AP
Ahead of his first trip to China as foreign secretary in October, Mr Lammy was urged by MPs sanctioned by Beijing to raise the case of political prisoners in Hong Kong, including Mr Lai.
The Foreign Office said he pressed Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on Mr Lai’s detention, and Mr Lammy said he “was able to have dialogue with the Chinese on areas where we disagree, areas like Hong Kong”.
Mr Lammy then joined Chancellor Rachel Reeves on a trip to revive economic ties after “years of tension”. She said she raised Mr Lai’s imprisonment with every minister she met in China.
During the latest meeting of Mr Lammy and Mr Yi, Number 10 said Sir Keir also met him briefly and told him he wants “consistent and respectful relations” and to deepen trade relations with China.
It did not say if he brought up Mr Lai, but the foreign secretary said ahead of the meeting: “We will also discuss issues where the UK and China do not always see eye to eye. In some cases, the UK does have significant concerns.”
On a bright but chilly February morning, around a dozen volunteers gather by the beachfront at Minster, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.
In bobble hats and walking boots, they carry blue plastic bags and litter pickers.
They wander slowly past the dog walkers and brightly painted beach huts, combing the pebbles for waste. But the rubbish they’re looking for isn’t normal litter; it’s builders’ rubble and shredded household waste.
It was dumped en masse by the lorry load, at an illegal dump site further up the coast by Eastchurch Gap, between 2020 and 2023.
“It’s lots of guttering that washes up, whole pipes, tiny rawlplugs, decorators’ caulk, bits of plastic and cable ties – it’s disgusting,” says Chris, as he pulls out items from his bin bag – filled in just 20 minutes.
Much of the rubbish is builders’ waste
Locals says the dumping should have been clamped down on far quicker
Belinda Lamb, who organises the clean-ups, describes seeing “shredded Christmas trees, bits of carpet, even the spongy material from playgrounds”.
“It’s really sad,” she says. “It’s having a huge impact on marine life – and probably our lives – because if fish are eating this plastic, then so are we.”
Belinda Lamb says it’s ‘really sad’ and is affecting the sealife
They tell me that five years ago, lorries started turning up to tip waste over the cliffs at an illegal dump site a few miles away at Eastchurch Gap.
Day after day the vehicles arrived, leaving behind mounds of rotting rubbish and plastic that fills the shoreline, gets picked up by the sea and flung out by the waves further down the beach.
Locals are angry, and feel let down. Volunteers repeat their clean-up work monthly – but the sea keeps washing it in. They fear the area, a site of scientific special interest, will be like this for decades.
The area around Eastchurch Gap is a site of scientific special interest
“It should have been stopped immediately,” Elliott Jayes, the chair of Minster on Sea Parish Council, says.
“The Environment Agency should have been able to slap a stop notice on it, and it should then immediately stop and prosecutions start straight away.”
Investigations are ongoing at the site. In 2023, magistrates first granted the Environment Agency a six-month restriction order to close it down, which has since been extended.
The gate has been locked ever since, with concrete blocks installed to stop vehicles.
‘The new narcotics’
We don’t know who’s behind the Eastchurch Gap site, nor why they dumped the rubbish, but illegal tips are a huge problem across the country and one that’s increasingly being exploited by criminal gangs.
“What we’re seeing is actually more and more evidence of really serious organised criminal gangs operating in the waste sector, because it’s such a low risk, high reward activity,” explains Sam Corp from the Environmental Services Association.
Lorries chucked illegal waste over Eastchurch Gap for years
It’s something the previous head of the Environment Agency called “the new narcotics”, and Sam says waste criminals can be involved in multiple offences, from money laundering to human trafficking.
It’s thought one-fifth of all waste in England is being illegally managed. That’s around 34 million tonnes a year, enough to fill about four million skips.
It’s understood to cost the economy around a billion pounds a year, with a further £3bn thought to hit legitimate operators from missed business.
Forms of waste crime include fly-tipping to avoid paying tax or high processing costs, as well as illegal fires and exporting waste to other countries with looser regulations.
But criminal gangs are also a sizable part of the problem.
Gangs can get a waste licence for a few hundred pounds, says Mr Hayward-Higham
Chief innovation and technical development officer for Suez, Stuart Hayward-Higham, explains how the gangs operate.
“Imagine you’re a business, so I come along and I say, ‘I’ll pick up your waste and deal with it’.
“You pay me as though I’m going to treat it properly. So maybe £50 to collect it, manage it, and £100 to treat it. I pick it up and instead of spending the money to treat it, or recycle it, I just throw it on the ground somewhere.
“Then I keep all the profit.”
He says criminals can set themselves up with a licence to manage waste for as little as £154, making hundreds of thousands – even millions of pounds – in this manner.
‘Low fines not a deterrent’
Despite the scale of the issue, Sam Corp doesn’t believe the authorities have enough resources.
“A £1bn problem merits a lot more than the £10m that the Environment Agency gets to tackle this issue every year,” he says.
Illegal tippers see fines ‘as a legitimate business expense’
“We need regulations to be much tougher and stronger and more strongly enforced. And even if you do get caught, the penalties are far too low and they’re not enough of a deterrent.”
He says the criminals “see fines as a legitimate business expense”.
Of the 1,453 illegal dump sites recorded by the Environment Agency in the last decade, just 64 led to some form of enforcement.
Thirteen were prosecutions, 14 saw warning letters sent and 26 were logged as leading to “advice and guidance”.
Some 319 of the sites were thought to be linked to organised crime, 130 were hazardous waste, and 261 were in rivers.
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In response, an Environment Agency spokesperson called waste crime “toxic”.
“It causes widespread and significant harm to people, places, the environment, and the economy,” they said.
“We are determined to make life harder for criminals by disrupting and stopping illegal activity through tough enforcement action and prosecutions.
“Last year we successfully shut down 462 illegal waste sites, bringing the total number in operation to the lowest on record.”
UK
‘US security guarantee’ the only path to peace in Ukraine, Starmer says – ahead of Trump meeting next week
A “US security guarantee” is the only path to peace in Ukraine, Sir Keir Starmer has said.
Speaking in Paris after an emergency summit with European leaders, the prime minister said a “US backstop” is the “only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again”.
And he said the future of Ukraine is not the only thing at stake.
European leaders at the security summit in Paris. Pic: Number 10/Flickr
“It is an existential question for Europe as a whole, and therefore vital for Britain’s national interests,” he added.
“This is a once in a generation moment for the collective security of our continent.”
It is a “new era”, he said, in which nations cannot “cling hopelessly to the comforts of the past”.
Any peace deal for Ukraine must “safeguard its sovereignty” and deter Russian leader Vladimir Putin from engaging in “further aggression in the future”, Sir Keir added.
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Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron in Paris: Pic: Number 10/Flickr
The prime minister joined the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and the European Union at the Elysee Palace in Paris, alongside NATO secretary general Mark Rutte.
The meeting was called by French President Emmanuel Macron after Donald Trump shocked continental leaders by arranging bilateral talks between the US and Russia – excluding Europe and Ukraine.
The talks are set to begin in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
Sir Keir however insisted that “Europe must play its role”, adding: “I’m prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others if there is a lasting peace agreement.
“So I will go to Washington next week to meet President Trump and discuss what we see as the key elements of a lasting peace.”
It is “clear the US is not going to leave NATO”, Sir Keir said.
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He added: “But we Europeans will have to do more. The issue of burden sharing is not new, but it is now pressing and Europeans will have to step up, both in terms of spending and the capabilities that we provide.
“I spoke to President Zelenskyy on Friday. I will do so again in the coming days. And we envisage further [engagement] with European colleagues when I return from the US.”
Britain will “take a leading responsibility, as we always have”, the prime minister said, adding that “democracy must prevail”.
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Starmer ‘prepared to send troops to Ukraine’
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Mr Trump stunned Ukraine and Europe last week when he announced he had called Mr Putin to discuss ending the war, without consulting them.
Leaders have been left scrambling to confront a new future in which they have less US protection and support and must do more to ensure the security of their own continent.
Asked by Sky News’s Europe correspondent, Adam Parsons, whether the US has undermined the UK, Europe and Ukraine by unilaterally starting talks with Russia, Sir Keir said the US wanted “lasting peace”, as did Ukraine, before reiterating his point about a “US backstop” being necessary to support any security guarantees.
‘Completely premature’
However, despite three hours of emergency talks, European leaders left the meeting without a common view on possible peacekeeping troops in Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the idea of deploying European peacekeepers as “completely premature” and said it was “completely the wrong time to have this discussion”.
He added that people were “talking over Ukraine’s head” and said he would be minded to support increased defence spending only if that was what European states wanted.
Similarly, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen said their country was “open to discussing many things” but they stressed they were still very far off deploying their own soldiers to Ukraine.
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