Cleverly meets China’s vice-president amid criticism of Beijing by British MPs
Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog. We start with news that the British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has met China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, during the first visit to Beijing by a UK foreign secretary in five years.
During the meeting, Cleverly said it was important the two governments continued with regular face-to-face meetings to avoid misunderstandings. He also said it was important to address the challenges and differences of opinion that all countries had in bilateral relations, according to Reuters.
But the visit has been criticised by China hawks on the Tory benches, who want a tougher line against a state which has sanctioned several British MPs and peers for speaking out about human rights violations.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith compared the government’s approach to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, while the foreign affairs committee chair, Alicia Kearns, said she had spoken to Cleverly before his visit and urged him to pressure the Chinese on human rights concerns.
Cleverly said he had raised human rights issues during meetings with Chinese officials. In an interview with Sky News, Cleverly was pressed on whether simply raising human rights obligations was enough amid concerns about abuses in Xinjiang province.
“I’ve had a number of conversations with senior representatives of the Chinese government, and I have raised human rights in every single one of those meetings and I will continue to do so,” he said, adding:
This is an issue that is discussed extensively – not just bilaterally, but at the United Nations. I take very seriously the report produced by the United Nations based on figures from the Chinese government.
So this will continue to be an area of discussion that I bring up alongside other areas, and I’m not going to change my posture on that. And I think the Chinese government understand the UK is consistent in our approach. I am consistent in my approach and I will keep raising these issues with the Chinese government.
Key events
Peter Walker
Ministers have been accused of hypocrisy in claiming Sadiq Khan expanded London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to raise revenue after it emerged the Department for Transport urged the mayor to extend the city’s congestion charge for the same reason.
On the first day of Ulez covering every London borough there was renewed bickering between the Labour mayor and the government, with Khan castigating Mark Harper, the transport secretary, for what he called factual mistakes after the pair crossed paths at a TV studio.
Harper and Rishi Sunak have sought to present the extension of the £12.50 daily charge for the most polluting vehicles as part of a “war on motorists” by Labour, amid a wider ditching of green policies after the Conservatives’ unexpected win in July’s Uxbridge byelection, a constituency affected by the extension.
In a round of media interviews on Tuesday, Harper argued that the expanded zone, which came into force at midnight, would have minimal impact on air quality.
“It’s not about air pollution, it’s about a money-raising exercise and this is absolutely not the time to be putting all those costs on hard-pressed and hardworking Londoners and those in the area outside London,” he told GB News.
Khan, who was also touring TV and radio studios, told BBC One’s Breakfast: “I just bumped into Mark Harper as he was leaving the studio and I think he made a couple of factual errors, which is really worth me clarifying.
“If this was about making money, I’d have acceded to the demand from the government to expand the congestion charge much wider than it currently is. That would have been a cash-grab, but I said no.”
This was a reference to a letter in October 2020 from Grant Shapps, part of a trove of correspondence between the then transport secretary and Khan uncovered by a freedom of information request.
James Cleverly has said the UK was “clear-eyed” that China was not going to change “overnight”.
Speaking to broadcasters amid meetings with senior Chinese officials in Beijing, the foreign secretary said:
The UK, I, am clear-eyed, as I set out in my Mansion House speech earlier on this year, that we are not going to change China overnight. We’re certainly not going to do it in any one individual meeting.
“But it is important that we maintain regular dialogue, regular lines of communication. That is what I am doing, because we do seek to influence, that is what diplomacy is all about. We do seek to influence China.
Aamna Mohdin
The outgoing head of the UK’s leading race equality thinktank has said the continued denial of institutional racism has created a credibility issue for the government.
Dr Halima Begum, who is stepping down as the director of Runnymede Trust after three years, said that soon after the government released its controversial report on race, which claimed to not find evidence for institutional racism, there were several national scandals that showed otherwise.
“Every time they denied institutional racism, some other event would happen that showed the realities for people of colour living in Britain. If it wasn’t the Casey review, it was the cricket, or the experience of the black England footballers at the Euros. Every time there’s a denial of racism, it surfaces out again. So no, they were not successful,” she said.
She added: “I would say the more they tried to deny the existence of racism, the more they showed themselves to be not committed to race and, in fact, not committed to many people in this country, because the rest of the country could see the disparities. I think it created a bit of a credibility issue for the government and those that would deny institutional racism.”
Libby Brooks
Just 9% of Scottish firms agree that the SNP government understands the business environment in Scotland, according to a new report from the Fraser of Allander Institute.
The survey of more than 400 businesses in July and August found that larger firms and those in the hospitality industry in particular agreed that the current administration was out of touch with business needs, presenting a challenge to Humza Yousaf, who set out a “new deal” for business soon after he became first minister in April in an attempt to improve relations which were widely seen to have suffered under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership.
Yousaf presents his programme for government – the Holyrood equivalent of the king’s speech – to the Scottish parliament next week amid expectations of significant public service cuts and potential tax rises this term.
But further polling, this time from True North, a political consultancy set up by former advisers to Alex Salmond, found that more than half of Scottish voters believe they do not get value for money from public services, despite higher earners paying more income tax here than elsewhere in the UK.
Cleverly meets China’s vice-president amid criticism of Beijing by British MPs
Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog. We start with news that the British foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has met China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, during the first visit to Beijing by a UK foreign secretary in five years.
During the meeting, Cleverly said it was important the two governments continued with regular face-to-face meetings to avoid misunderstandings. He also said it was important to address the challenges and differences of opinion that all countries had in bilateral relations, according to Reuters.
But the visit has been criticised by China hawks on the Tory benches, who want a tougher line against a state which has sanctioned several British MPs and peers for speaking out about human rights violations.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith compared the government’s approach to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, while the foreign affairs committee chair, Alicia Kearns, said she had spoken to Cleverly before his visit and urged him to pressure the Chinese on human rights concerns.
Cleverly said he had raised human rights issues during meetings with Chinese officials. In an interview with Sky News, Cleverly was pressed on whether simply raising human rights obligations was enough amid concerns about abuses in Xinjiang province.
“I’ve had a number of conversations with senior representatives of the Chinese government, and I have raised human rights in every single one of those meetings and I will continue to do so,” he said, adding:
This is an issue that is discussed extensively – not just bilaterally, but at the United Nations. I take very seriously the report produced by the United Nations based on figures from the Chinese government.
So this will continue to be an area of discussion that I bring up alongside other areas, and I’m not going to change my posture on that. And I think the Chinese government understand the UK is consistent in our approach. I am consistent in my approach and I will keep raising these issues with the Chinese government.
