Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether it is their official policy to omit mention of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the imprisonment of Jimmy Lai when ministers discuss the UK-Hong Kong bilateral relationship in the press.

On the contrary, ministers and officials regularly raise the continued detention of Jimmy Lai, and China's obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in interviews with the media, statements to Parliament, public speeches, the government's Six-monthly Reports to Parliament on Hong Kong, and discussions we have with our Chinese counterparts. For example, the Foreign Secretary raised Jimmy Lai's case both in her working dinner with G7 foreign ministers in Canada on 11 November, and a phone call with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on 6 November.