Starmer faces backlash over trip to China amid claims Government was ‘tricked’

Sir Keir Starmer has faced backlash over his trip to China amid claims that the Government has been “tricked” by Beijing.

Conservative former security minister Tom Tugendhat raised the issue of Chinese sanctions on British parliamentarians after the Prime Minister announced that “all restrictions” had been lifted on current members.

Mr Tugendhat, former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Senior Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani and Conservative former minister Neil O’Brien were among those banned from entering China, Hong Kong and Macau in 2021.

Their property in China was also frozen and Chinese citizens and institutions were prohibited from doing business with them – but these sanctions no longer apply to current parliamentarians.

Addressing Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Mr Tugendhat said: “Do you not find it as surprising as I do that the Prime Minister has come back with a deal that lifts the sanctions on those six of us who are still in this House, but not the one who isn’t, nor the lawyers, advisers and academics who support the work of this House.

“Is this not a direct affront to the democracy of this place, an attempt to divide and conquer that we’ve seen China play against the European Parliament, and sadly has tricked our Government too.”

Responding, Sir Keir said: “I did raise it directly, and that got the response that restrictions do not apply to parliamentarians.

“I accept the challenge, the point, that we need to go further. That doesn’t mean that what we’ve achieved should be put to one side.”

He added: “In order to go further, we have to engage, and we have to engage at the leader level.”

Conservative former minister Sir Andrew Mitchell said the Prime Minister returned from China with “somewhat thin economic gruel”.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of adopting a “supine and short-termist approach”, adding the Prime Minister came back to the UK with “next to nothing” apart from a Labubu doll.

She told the Commons: “Of course Britain should engage with China – even though the Chancellor (Rachel Reeves) wasn’t allowed to go, even though they are an authoritarian state who seek to undermine our interests.

“Even though they spy on us, sometimes within the walls of this building, even though they fund regimes around the world hostile to our country.

“They are a fact of life, a global power and an economic reality.

“So let me be clear, it is not the Prime Minister engaging with China that we take issue with.

“What we are criticising is his supine and short-termist approach.”

The Tory leader added: “The Prime Minister looked like he enjoyed his trip.

“In fact, it looked like a dream come true for a man who was virtually a communist most of his life.

“But apart from the Labubu doll in his suitcase – and I hope he’s checked it for bugs – he has come back with next to nothing.”

On the lifting of sanctions on parliamentarians, Mrs Badenoch said: “The worst thing was the Prime Minister claiming a glorious triumph with the lifting of sanctions on four Conservative MPs, as if he’d done us a favour.

“Let me tell him, those MPs were sanctioned because they stood up to China. They stood up against human rights abuses. They stood up against the country spying on our MPs in a way that he wouldn’t dare.

“Those people don’t want to go to China. The Chinese know that. They know that they are giving him something that costs absolutely nothing. Why can’t the British Prime Minister see that?”

Sir Keir said in his reply that Mrs Badenoch’s policy was “to stick her head in the sand, unable to influence anything in a volatile world”, labelling her approach “an abdication of responsibility”.

He told the Commons: “Her reply this afternoon seems to be that we should engage with China but not engage with China, that what we should do, instead of leader-to-leader discussions where we raise all the opportunities and the difficult issues, each and every one of them, instead of those leader-to-leader meetings, should get a bag of sand and put her head in it and influence absolutely nothing.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the Prime Minister was right to go to China but did it “from a position of weakness”.

He said: “Unlike the Conservative Party, we think he was right to go and engage, but just like with President Trump, he approached President Xi from a position of weakness instead of a position of strength, promising him a super-embassy here in London in return for relatively meagre offers from China.”

Business and Trade Committee Liam Byrne chairman said that, while he welcomed the Prime Minister’s “serious engagement” with Beijing, the Government must publish a China strategy.

The Labour MP said: “The complexities of China require from Britain a whole of society approach, which is completely impossible until the Government publishes a clear China strategy to explain what is off limits and how we’re going to rebalance competition with Chinese industry that is six times over-subsidised compared to our firms.”