{"id":4730,"date":"2025-12-17T16:54:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4730"},"modified":"2026-03-20T14:00:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:00:36","slug":"engagements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4730","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Lai Conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>John Whittingdale\u00a0Conservative, Maldon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jimmy Lai is 78 and is a British citizen. He has already been in prison in Hong Kong for five years, simply for being a journalist. If he receives a further sentence on&nbsp;12 January, he is likely to die in prison. Will the&nbsp;Prime Minister&nbsp;make it clear that his visit to Beijing can go ahead only if Jimmy Lai is released?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Keir Starmer\u00a0Leader of the Labour Party, The Prime Minister<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising this really important case. As he knows, we continually raise it with our counterparts, and we will continue to do so. I condemn the conviction. Obviously we await the sentence, but it is absolutely clear that Jimmy Lai has been targeted by the authorities. It is wrongful, and I call it out. It is important that we continue to engage, so that we can raise this issue with those counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Sir John Whittingdale urges Prime Minister to act on Jimmy Lai\u2019s imprisonment\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rOAI48oyVAs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sir John urged the Prime Minister to make any Beijing visit conditional on releasing imprisoned British journalist Jimmy Lai, warning he could die in custody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4731,"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-4730","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\/4730","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=4730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5895,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4730\/revisions\/5895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}