{"id":4628,"date":"2025-09-15T10:49:31","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4628"},"modified":"2026-02-20T13:34:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:34:48","slug":"official-secrets-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4628","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Lai&#8217;s Imprisonment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>John Whittingdale\u00a0Conservative, Maldon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The threat to our national security from China is real, and I share the disappointment and concern expressed. However, the&nbsp;Minister&nbsp;will also be aware that China has used entirely bogus national security charges to imprison a British citizen,&nbsp;Jimmy Lai, who has now been in solitary confinement for five years and whose health is deteriorating rapidly. This morning, his son Sebastien Lai asked to see the&nbsp;Prime Minister&nbsp;to press him to do more. Will the Minister reinforce that case and take every action possible to get the Chinese to release Jimmy Lai?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Dan Jarvis\u00a0The Minister of State, Home Department, Minister of State (Home Office) (Security), Minister of State (Cabinet Office)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jimmy Lai&nbsp;should be released immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Highlighting Jimmy Lai\u2019s five-year imprisonment in China, Sir John urged the Minister to press for his release and take all possible action to protect the deteriorating health of the British citizen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speeches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4628"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5690,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions\/5690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}