Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much funding his Department has provided for the training of Chinese judges through the work of the Great-Britain China Centre since 2015; and how many Chinese judges the Great-Britain China Centre has trained that date.

The Great Britain China Centre (GBCC), an arms-length public body independent from Government, facilitates dialogue with China on issues of importance to the UK. It currently receives £500,000 per annum in funding from the FCDO. GBCC uses this funding to support the UK Government's China objectives, including by delivering projects on rule of law and judicial cooperation. GBCC engages with legal professionals through a wide variety of forums, including the UK-China Joint Judicial Expert Working Group on Commercial Dispute Resolution and the UK-China Rule of Law Roundtable. Such initiatives are not training programmes, but instead dialogues that help to foster a better understanding of legal and judicial systems in China and the UK, and promote the rule of law as a key UK value. Given the nature of such dialogues, it is not possible to establish with precision how many Chinese judges have been engaged since 2015.