‘Open dialogue’ with China provides hope in Jimmy Lai case, senior minister says

An “open dialogue” with China will hopefully lead to the release of Jimmy Lai, a 78-year-old British citizen detained by Beijing, a senior minister has suggested.

Communities Secretary Steve Reed made the claim when he was asked what had been achieved in the case of the Hong Kong pro-democracy activist during Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to China.

The Prime Minister raised Mr Lai’s case directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met in Beijing this week.

Mr Lai is the founder of now-defunct Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily and has been an influential figure in the territory’s pro-democracy movement.

He has been in detention for more than five years, much of that time in solitary confinement, having been arrested in 2020 under Hong Kong’s new national security law.

Speaking to Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme, Mr Reed said: “We all want to see Jimmy Lai released.

“The fact that there is now an open dialogue with China, the fact that the Prime Minister raised it directly with President Xi, means that there’s an open channel that I hope will lead to that.”

He added: “What tends to happen in these situations isn’t that you tend to get a release there and then.”

Mr Reed insisted the Government would “keep using” the “open channel of communication and dialogue”, adding: “My hope is that eventually Jimmy Lai be will be freed. I hope that’s what happens.

“With no dialogue, there’s no chance of that. With open dialogue, there’s hope.”

A cross-party group of MPs, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Arbitrary Detention and Hostage Affairs, were among those to urge the Prime Minister to raise Mr Lai’s case.

The APPG warned the possibility of the businessman facing a lengthy custodial sentence following his conviction in a Chinese court was a “de facto death sentence for him given his age and declining health”.

Lord Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, suggested ahead of the Prime Minister’s trip it would have been “pathetic” for Sir Keir not to raise Mr Lai’s case at the start of his meeting with President Xi.

Elsewhere, shadow home secretary Chris Philp claimed the Prime Minister had returned “empty-handed” from the four-day trip to China.

Mr Philp welcomed the lifting of Chinese sanctions on British MPs as “a small step in the right direction”.

However, he added: “But you think about the scale of China’s espionage activities against the West, and particularly against the UK, it’s not changing anything there.

“They’ve got what they want, which is their super embassy just next to the Tower of London, which will serve as a base for espionage, not just in the UK, but across Europe.”