Dr Andrew Chubb, Caoilfhionn Gallagher and Laura Harth.

Q1 The Chair: It is my pleasure to welcome you to the eighth meeting of the Joint Committee on Human Rights as part of our thematic inquiry into transnational repression. I would say to those who are watching this online that the call for evidence is still open and the deadline is 24 February. The committee welcomes evidence from individuals, groups and people who feel that they have been affected by transnational repression, especially if they are resident here in the United Kingdom.

Transnational repression is an evolving cutting-edge human right and it catches within its claws many people, from pro-democracy advocates to lawyers, sanctioned parliamentarians, journalists, political dissenters and opponents of totalitarian regimes. We are interested in how transnational repression is understood as a concept, how the United Kingdom Government have been responding to threats made and intimidation on British soil, inadequacies in the referral mechanisms, the patchy way that different victims have been responded to, and international co‑operation among democratic like-minded nations in responding to malign state actors—everyone from the theocratic dictatorship in Iran to the work of the united front in China.

With us today to help us understand these issues in far greater detail and to delve deeper into this whole question of transnational repression are three formidable expert witnesses. We have Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, who is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. She has particular expertise in freedom of expression and open justice, and regularly acts for journalists worldwide who are imprisoned, prosecuted, sued or subjected to travel bans due to their journalism. Her current and recent caseload includes work for journalists, bloggers, cartoonists, peaceful protestors and human rights defenders in Egypt, Turkey and Equatorial Guinea. She leads the international legal team for Jimmy Lai, who is incarcerated in Hong Kong, and is leading counsel to 152 BBC Persian journalists persecuted by Iran due to their work. She is a member of the UK advisory board to Reporters Without Borders.

We also have with us Dr Andrew Chubb, who is senior lecturer in Chinese politics and international relations at Lancaster University. He is a graduate of the University of Western Australia. His work examines the linkages between Chinese domestic politics and international relations, and his publications include “Transnational Human Rights Violations: Addressing the Evolution of Globalized Repression through National Human Rights Institutions and Transnational Repression in the UK”. He has testified before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearings on China’s global influence and interference activities.

We have Laura Harth, China in the World director of Safeguard Defenders. She is joining us online. Safeguard Defenders undertakes and supports local field activities that aim to protect rights, promote the rule of law and enhance the ability of civil society and human rights defenders in Asia. Laura is responsible for the advocacy and media engagements of Safeguard Defenders. She is its lead on transnational repression. She holds master’s degrees in international law, human rights and international relations. She is external liaison for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and on Hong Kong Watch’s advisory board. I should declare interests as both a patron of Hong Kong Watch and a member of IPAC.

I will ask the first general question to our three contributors and then we will turn to Members from both Houses who comprise the Joint Committee on Human Rights, who will follow up with more detailed questions to our witnesses. How have methods of transnational repression evolved over recent years? In your work, have you noticed an increase in the number of incidents of transnational repression or new tactics being used?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: Thank you to the committee for shining a light on this hugely important and growing issue of concern. As you have all heard, I am a human rights lawyer. In my work over the past 25 years, I am increasingly seeing this trend of states no longer being content with trying to silence critical voices within their own borders, but instead using an increasingly diverse and creative range of ways to use the long arm of the state to silence their critics, wherever in the world they may be. Many of my clients are refugees who fled oppression in their original home countries. They are journalists in exile, writers, human rights activists and lawyers. Now, increasingly, we are seeing them targeted in their new home countries, here in the UK, their supposed places of sanctuary.

We are also seeing a widening of those tactics to not just communities in exile but a wide range of others. As well as representing many victims of transnational repression, I have experienced it myself. I am conscious that around this room we also have a number of parliamentarians who have been targeted because of their work. We now of course live in a world in which Saudi Arabia orders the dismembering of a Washington Post journalist in Turkey, a Council of Europe country; Russia poisons its critics in London and Salisbury; journalists can be forcibly brought within jurisdiction by hijacking a Ryanair plane, as we saw in the Belarus case; and shadow Chinese police stations can operate in multiple countries worldwide, terrorising diaspora communities, including here in London—thanks for the brilliant work done by Laura in relation to that.

This is also a world in which activists such as Paul Rusesabagina, the “Hotel Rwanda” hero, and journalists such as Ruhollah Zam, based in Paris, can be lured to false meetings in order to kidnap them and return them to their countries of origin. We have seen some very stark examples in recent months. We have seen the multiple so-called dissidents in exile targeted by Hong Kong authorities with $1 million bounties on their heads, including the most recent list produced on Christmas Eve 2024. My client Pouria Zeraati, the Iran International journalist, was stabbed in broad daylight in London on Good Friday last year.

Of course, we have always had transnational tactics by certain states: the poisoned umbrella and the high-profile dissidents who are targeted across borders. We are now seeing something very different in terms of the scale and nature of it. It is now happening on an industrial scale, led by a number of states. I would characterise five key tactics I tend to see. It is important that, whatever definition and remit the committee adopts, you reflect this breadth.

Of the five tactics I tend to routinely see, the first is direct targeted physical attacks, so assassinations or attempted assassinations, physical attacks and rendition. The second is co-opting other states, so the use of Interpol red notices, for example, or indeed extraterritorial kidnappings. The third is mobility impediments of various types, so travel bans, cancelling passports or even revoking nationality. The fourth is online and remote threats. There is a whole range of those. The fifth is proxy targeting—for example, of family members. They would be the main tactics that I tend to see. Although the tactics and methodologies differ, the aim, it seems to me, is always the same: to target those who speak truth to power in whatever way, to frighten, to censor and to silence. I will leave it there in terms of my initial remarks.

The Chair: Before we move on, can I ask something specific? As a lawyer, you too have been targeted, have you not? Could you share a little bit about that?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: It is one of the reasons why I would urge the committee not to adopt the definition that is used in the Freedom House report, which refers expressly only to exiled communities and diaspora. That does not reflect the true scale of transnational repression. That would exclude, for example, parliamentarians here who are sanctioned by China. That is a form of transnational repression.

It would also exclude the tactics that have been used repeatedly by the Hong Kong authorities and mainland Chinese authorities in relation to my client Jimmy Lai—targeting, for example, Benedict Rogers when he was running Hong Kong Watch for material uploaded to his website here in London. He was threatened with prosecution under the national security law in Hong Kong. It would not capture the targeting of me and other members of the international legal team for Jimmy Lai threatened with criminal prosecution in Hong Kong for raising human rights issues before the United Nations. Astonishingly, this is China, which is a founder state of the United Nations, is a member of the Security Council and is threatening lawyers and parliamentarians for doing their jobs.

It is important that we ensure that a definition is not adopted that focuses solely on diaspora communities or communities in exile. There are particularly acute risks for diaspora communities and communities in exile, and I am acutely conscious of my privilege referring to what I have experienced as a white, middle-class woman based here, who can adjust my travel plans. I do not have family in Hong Kong, so, when I am threatened and choose to speak out, I do it without having a fear of what is going to happen to my family members in Hong Kong. I am acutely conscious that there are people in the room and probably watching online who do not have that experience. I am acutely conscious that their experience is far worse than anything I and my colleagues experience.

Q2 The Chair: Thank you, particularly, for saying that. As you say, there are several of us in this room today who have been sanctioned, but, putting it in perspective, we met a young woman recently who has had a £1 million bounty placed on her head, along with others, including a legislator from Hong Kong now living in this country. These are issues we take very seriously and are looking at. We will come back to you in due course. I ought to now bring in Dr Chubb to give his view on that general curtain‑raising question that I put at the outset.

Dr Andrew Chubb: Thank you for holding this inquiry. It is a very important step towards getting a systematic handle on the nature and scale of the issue. That, in itself, is a precondition for effective policy responses. In relation to the question of evolving tactics, scope and scale of transnational repression, I would point to two or three major trends.

One in particular concerns the embrace of technology for the purposes of transnational repression, so online digital platforms that Caoilfhionn has already referred to, methods of online harassment that can generate an incredibly coercive psychological effect on targets and online censorship mechanisms, where platforms are hosted in other countries. Surveillance, and the threat of surveillance, underpins all of this. The evolution of, say, smartphones and the ability to listen in on people’s smartphone communications and intercept communications from mobile devices is a clear and present source of coercion that many authoritarian actors have embraced in recent years.

Basically, technology has lowered the costs of reaching out across borders to coerce someone in another jurisdiction. That means that a broader range of actors can now engage in this type of conduct, potentially without even setting foot in the jurisdiction in which that coercive effect actually occurs. This creates a real policy problem, because it cannot be a case of just applying the law within the territorial jurisdiction in which the transnational repression is taking effect. Very often, the perpetrator or origin of that coercion is located remotely. We will probably come to this when we start talking about policy responses. It requires a more broadly encompassing perspective. This committee has really shown the way in the framing of the issue for this inquiry.

The embrace of technology is one major trend, which in turn is opening up new opportunities for actors to get into the game of transnational repression. We are also seeing collaboration among repressive actors globally, whether that be through renditions between countries or extradition, for example of Uyghurs from Thailand back to China in many instances. This is a function of the global trend towards authoritarianism. Authoritarian states are recognising common interests in areas such as this. This very much needs to be responded to. It is not an assumption on which, for example, the international policing and law enforcement systems are premised, so there is a mismatch there.

I would then draw attention to the linkages with domestic politics. Alex Dukalskis is one researcher I know who has done some excellent work quantifying the link between the rise in repressive authoritarian practices within the borders of transnational repression perpetrator states and the incidence of transnational repression outside of those countries’ borders. This is really important to take into account and is one of those drivers for the expanding scope of transnational repression perpetration that we are seeing and that Caoilfhionn has already responded to.

Q3 The Chair: I turn now to Laura Harth. Perhaps you could respond to that opening question and then later, as we look at some other more detailed questions, you can reflect on how the developments that you have been outlining have made it more challenging for Governments to tackle international repression. Let us wait and deal with that as you deal with other questions.

Laura Harth: Thank you so much to the members of this committee for discussing and shining a light on this important topic. I am going to echo a lot of what my colleagues said when we talk about the methods and the evolution of transnational repression in recent years. There are three essential parts to cover there. One is that, as my colleagues have said, authoritarian or repressive Governments used to be quite happy to let people go from their countries. They used to let dissidents, or troublemakers as they would call them, simply leave and go abroad, because the main essence of their regime or their focus was on internal control and stability, and maintaining power.

Along with the increasing repressiveness inside the borders, which Andrew talked about, in recent years we have also seen a lot of these authoritarian powers becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign policy posture and openly trying to subvert the international rules-based order. If we think about the famous quotes between President Putin of Russia and the secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party, when they talk about changes not seen in 100 years, it is very clear that they feel emboldened to change the status quo and to push and promote their policies and methodologies more broadly.

The second part to that is that digital innovation and physical connectivity have made it a lot easier for them to actively go after people abroad whom they see as a threat. With these two things coming together, we see them dedicating more resources to trying to suppress dissent and criticism abroad. We see them adopting official policies to enact that. I am thinking, for example, about the Chinese Central Commission for Discipline Inspection legal written interpretation from 2018, which explicitly outlines how their authorities are allowed to go after people in covert and extrajudicial ways, violating territorial sovereignty of other nations. We also see them being more effective, because the tools are there to make it easier for them to do that. There is the intent, the resources and the general situation, which makes it easier for them to do these things.

There is also, if you want, a positive part to why we see this evolution, in the sense that it has only been in recent years, maybe, that the world has really started to pay attention to this. This has become a part of the democratic debate. When we go from not talking about an issue to discussing it a great deal, that may make it seem that, all of a sudden, it has exploded. Going back to China, which is the country my organisation focuses on, when we look at the official data from the Chinese Communist Party, we see that it has been at this for quite a long time, especially since 2014. With these official policies, the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands just of people who have been forced to return to the country, but we maybe only started to really discuss these issues around 2018 or 2019, so all of a sudden that looks like a huge uptick, but it was happening before.

I want to end on that positive note. The fact that we are discussing it may make the problem seem bigger, but it does not necessarily mean that it is getting worse. The fact that we are talking about it and looking at ways to address it may make things better in a way. That is the hope, at least.

The Chair: I am going to turn now to my colleague Alex Sobel, Member of Parliament, who is going to ask you about some of the at-risk groups.

Q4 Alex Sobel: We generally hear about quite a small number of countries, certain communities such as the Uyghurs, or groups such as political opponents of the regimes in those countries. It would be useful to get a feel for whether this is a much broader problem. I know that I meet people from a much broader range of countries who are at risk or have been the victims of transnational repression. It would be useful to get an idea of what communities and groups are most at risk of suffering transnational repression, and what impact that transnational repression has on those groups and communities. Andrew, you have researched and published on this, so maybe we will start with you.

Dr Andrew Chubb: I will take the question in two parts. One would be to do with the variety of targeted communities in various diasporas. The other would be the scope of different professions and the different types of people who have been targeted. There is an expansion in both of those and along both of those lines.

Some of the smaller perpetrators, if you like, or less prominent international actors at least, that members of the committee may well be already familiar with are Bahrain and Eritrea. Pakistan is another that has come out recently. I hope that there will be some evidence to this inquiry concerning that particular case. There is Vietnam. Even elements within democratic countries have been accused and reportedly involved in very serious acts of transnational repression. I am thinking here of the Modi movement in India and the linkages with the murders of Sikh activists in Canada and the attempted murder in the United States.

There is really no shortage of geographical scope in terms of the range of diaspora communities targeted. In the UK here, I am not particularly familiar with the context of the Cambodian diaspora, but that is another example. In Australia, which is the country I come from, that has been a problem for years for the Cambodian community. It is an expansion in the range of diaspora communities just in that section.

We have also heard from Caoilfhionn that getting involved with defending human rights defenders can make you a target in the legal profession. We know various examples of journalists. Michela Wrong is one example who has been targeted by the Rwandan regime for her writings, including her writings on transnational repression of the Rwandan regime. There are journalists, lawyers and activists. Benedict Rogers was mentioned already. Academics is another one. I speak not as a person who has been targeted with transnational repression myself as an academic.

The Chair: We have a later question on academics, so perhaps we will not go there just yet, if that is all right.

Dr Andrew Chubb: There is some survey evidence though that indicates that academics are also a targeted group.

Alex Sobel: I will turn to Ms Gallagher. You will obviously have clients who have been affected by transnational repression. What impact has it had on them as individuals?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: “Utterly devastating” is the simple way of putting it. I agree with what Andrew said about geographic spread. Four of the main perpetrator countries that I tend to see are China, Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia, but I very much agree with Andrew’s point about some other states that routinely engage in this kind of activity flying under the radar a little and not being as focused upon, including Turkey.

May I also mention Kuwait? There is a very stark example involving Salman al-Khalidi, a Londoner, a constituent of your colleague Joe Powell MP and a UK resident, not a UK national, who was convicted in absentia in Kuwait for protesting in London in front of the Kuwaiti embassy, so activity that is perfectly lawful. It followed a background of him raising concerns on what was formerly known as Twitter about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia then complaining to the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Kuwait and raising a criminal complaint in Kuwait. That is a good and very stark example of some of these other countries that are engaged in this kind of activity.

The impact is really devastating. I will give one example and then maybe refer to my own experience. One example I want to give relates to the BBC News Persian staff. Lord Alton mentioned in opening that I represent over 150 BBC News Persian staff. Some of the highest-profile cases are well known. There is the case of, for example, presenters being threatened with death. Every single one of those staff has been captured in Iran’s legal dragnet. People who make cookery programmes or have never appeared in front of a camera and simply work in the back room have all been targeted because of their connection to the BBC News Persian service. All of them have experienced, in a range of different ways, a devastating impact.

It includes, for example, people not being able to return home when an elderly parent dies. Some of them have said goodbye to their parents over FaceTime because they were not able to return. It includes, for example, them not being able to travel to see family members because the countries where they can travel to see family members are unsafe, such as Turkey. It often includes them having to have fights with the Home Office here, for example about whether their mother can get a visa to enter the country to see their loved one, and having to deal with getting letters saying, “Why don’t you return to Tehran to see your family?” At a time when they have very good support from the Foreign Office, that is not necessarily carrying through to other parts of the UK Government.

Much of what they experience is very misogynistic and gendered. There are some very stark examples involving women journalists in particular. I will just give you one. One of my clients at the BBC News Persian service had a fake pornographic doctored image sent to the school that her 14-year-old child attends in London. That obviously is designed to send a message: “We know where your child goes to school too”. That is obviously quite devastating.

It is probably worth mentioning, at a very different end of the scale, the kind of actions that my colleagues and I have experienced over the last three years representing Jimmy Lai. That has included threats overtly from the Hong Kong authorities to prosecute us for being human rights lawyers and representing our client, taking steps such as filing an appeal with the United Nations. It has included hit pieces in state media calling us enemies of the people. It has included receiving, at 5 am on your phone, often when you are away and on your own, rape, death and dismemberment threats. I have received such threats, including very recently threats to one of my children by name.

It is very difficult for people to appreciate just how devastating those kinds of actions can be when you receive them early in the morning, on your phone, often when you are on your own. I mention that because I know how devastating it is personally and it gives you a small insight into how much more terrifying it must be for people who receive those kinds of actions and who have family members in the clutches of the state directly.

There is one final example that I want to give relating to Jimmy Lai and what we have experienced, which is a really important one about risk. This picks up on your point about technology. There have been repeated attempts to impersonate me and, indeed, Members of Parliament in order to privilege phish, as I call it, so to access sensitive information. That has included, for example, Laura and Safeguard Defenders receiving a fake email purporting to come from me, from Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, on the day that their report came out about shadow Chinese police stations saying, “Your report’s excellent. It’s so important. I’d love to offer you pro bono support” and then asking some questions about sources. Luckily, Laura and colleagues became suspicious of that, checked with me through another route and learned that it was inaccurate.

We have had multiple attempts to do that and that really worries me. Someone who receives an email purporting to come from a lawyer may hand over information that may put them or colleagues at risk. Impersonating a lawyer is a criminal offence for very good reason. Regrettably, we are aware of multiple examples of that. We have had our clerks receiving false emails purporting to come from our client saying, “Can you remind me of the details of my flight? Can you remind me of the details of X, Y, Z?” Luckily, we have not let any of those slip through the net, but it really worries me that professionals can be misrepresented in this way. I am conscious of parliamentarians having been misrepresented also using those methods.

It is very risky and the greatest risk comes to the mark—the person who ultimately is the target. I am very concerned about that and there needs to be much better awareness-raising about this shadowy tactic that is growing up. It is essentially using the name of a trusted professional as an “open sesame” to try to get you to hand over information. I have received those emails. I know how convincing they are. I have had emails go out purporting to be from me and I know how convincing they are. It means that more people around the world can spell my name than previously could, but they are written in a very convincing way.

I had one that went to all of the Silks in my chambers a number of years ago, saying, “Dear colleagues, I write this with a heavy heart but, because I’m an enemy of the state because of my work for Jimmy Lai, it’s unsafe to you and your families if I remain in chambers, so I’m resigning with immediate effect”. I can tell that you a whole series of Silks in my chambers who specialise in financial fraud fell for it and responded. Of course they then have provided additional information to the person who sent this email. It was written in a very convincing way. I have to say that, when I read it, it sounded like me. It was someone who knew the system. It was very well written.

We have been told by the authorities that those kinds of emails often go out very early in the morning or very late at night, when people see the message on their iPad or on their phone and may be less alert than they would be on a desktop during the day to things that do not seem quite right. They use the tactics of financial phishing. There is an urgency to them. You feel obliged to respond very quickly and that is a very risky tactic. China is honing it very well. Other states will follow. We have to crack down on it.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That was very vivid.

Q5 Alex Sobel: That leads me nicely into my next question. I have been working with Chloe Cheung, who lives in Leeds, for quite a while. She had the bounty put on her head and that, for me, brought into very sharp relief her security needs. That is something that we are well aware of, but it also brought into sharp relief that maybe we should look at what more the Government need to do. You have personal experience that you brought very clearly. What do you think the Government should attempt to do proactively to raise awareness among people who are at risk or are suffering transnational repression? Is there anything legislatively we need to do in addition?

Laura Harth: There is a host of things Governments need to do to address this threat. In the UK, we have seen that there has been a beginning of a response to that threat, but we are far from thoroughly addressing it. There are new laws such as the National Security Act—there are a couple of things—and I would argue that we need to start implementing it and making sure that it functions the way it should. Is it addressing all the issues that it should?

There are a couple of blatant gaps. One is a reporting mechanism for victims of transnational repression. I was looking this morning at the National Security Act and I thought it was quite interesting to see and compare how it does not mention transnational repression by that name, but it describes the act and actively defines it as a state threat, which is very good and adequate. Then, when we look at the applications, it is interesting to note that there is an outreach number and a reporting line for people who represent a business to go to if they feel that they have been approached by agents of a foreign state or by a foreign state that wants them to do certain things. We do not have that kind of mechanism or outreach available for targeted communities or people who become victims of transnational repression.

I would like to go into that a bit more because I received a response from the Home Office to the right honourable Sir Iain Duncan Smith just a couple of days ago. It was dated 17 January. Sir Iain had asked about the opportunity of setting up a dedicated reporting mechanism, which is something that targeted communities and victims ask for all the time. In that, the Home Office said that, after review and in consultation with counterterrorism policing, it found that the existing mechanisms—so that is 999, 101 or the local police station—are deemed to be the most effective method of reporting such crimes.

When you talk to actual victims, that is not the experience they have. That is because, in order for such mechanisms to be effective, you need local police to be very aware of what these threats are and how they may present. You need local law enforcement to be trained in understanding the kinds of threat actors you are dealing with. It also forgoes the understanding that, in a lot of the instances of transnational repression, when they first happen the first signs are often not criminal offences in and of themselves. There are early indicators: “I was at a protest yesterday and later that day my family back in China received a police visit saying, ‘We know your son or your daughter was participating in this protest in front of the embassy in London. What were they doing there?’” and those kinds of things.

That is an early warning that this person may be a person of interest. It also tells you that someone was actively documenting who was present at this protest, but a local law enforcement may not necessarily open an investigation. That in turn will create frustration for the victim because they will say, “I went. You told me to go and report. I did. Nothing happened”. This is one of those examples of where mechanisms need to be created but also actively communicated to the community so that they know what to do, but also know what to expect. What can they expect when they take certain actions? When should they take what kind of action?

My colleagues talked before about a lot of the direct impacts on people who are direct targets of transnational repression. A part that is not so often talked about but that really resembles what happens in a lot of these repressive environments back home is the indirect effect, so what we call the chilling effects. These actors would go after one individual to send a message to 100. They will try to get to one, intimidate one, harass their parents and put a bounty on the head of one, and then everybody around them is incentivised to stay quiet and not engage in such activities.

Awareness must be raised within those communities very publicly. Other countries, such as the US and Australia, have factsheets in different languages clearly spelling out what is acceptable, what is not acceptable, what the consequences will be for potential perpetrators, proxies that are being used, what the consequences will be if you engage in these activities, but also what mechanisms there are to protect yourself from this and what you can expect.

This is not everything but those are some starting points that we should note. I do not think that that is on the legislative side. I might be wrong there, but I think that it is definitely something that Parliament should ask for clarification on and, if it can, ask the Home Office about.

The Chair: It would be very helpful to the committee if you could share with us, around this question of the inadequacy of referral mechanisms, a copy of the letter that you referred to that was sent by the Home Office. Also, you talked about better practice in other jurisdictions. Some examples of that would be very helpful to us as well. I know that my colleague Dr Peter Swallow, Member of Parliament, wants to ask a quick supplementary to what has just been said.

Peter Swallow: Ms Harth has pre-empted me. I was going to ask exactly about whether communities are always aware that what they are experiencing is a form of transnational repression, but you have just touched on that, so we can move straight on.

Q6 Sir Desmond Swayne: Dr Chubb, can we now come to academics and the chilling effect on their free speech and research? To what extent are research agendas being distorted, publication being avoided, speaking in public being avoided, or whole areas of expertise simply being abandoned?

Dr Andrew Chubb: That is a good question. In the case of my field—I am a China specialist—there are plenty of examples of topics that have been avoided by a whole range of individuals within the field. At the same time though, there are many others who have then stepped in to look at that, so taking Xinjiang as an example. I do not think that the problem is so much one of entire topics not getting covered at this point, at least in that particular case. Rather, it is a case of individuals not being able to go there and so it being left to other individuals who do not face those types of constraints, for example a family member inside the country in question, or the requirement for fieldwork access that requires a visa. People in those types of situations are more likely to be constrained and basically self-censor in what they can investigate.

The crux of the problem is the constraint on academic freedom of those individuals who cannot go there. We have a model code of conduct that has been published by the Academic Freedom and Internationalisation Working Group, which I was a part of, which is a list of best practices proposed for our universities to better support their academics to be able to exercise academic freedom and thereby avoid any distortion of the research agenda. I would refer you to that. There are solutions in the case of academic freedom.

I also wanted to mention what the research shows. There was a survey done a couple of years ago by John Heathershaw and other colleagues, showing that more than 40% of social science academics say that they do in fact self-censor. By their own description, they self-censor what they teach in the classroom and the way that they frame issues related to authoritarian states. That is a concerning result and it reflects the inadequacy of the university’s environment as an environment of academic freedom that so many people feel like they need to steer away from certain topics in the classroom, so there is definitely work to be done there.

The extent to which it is framed within the transnational repression rubric is another question and we will probably come to that when we talk about definitions of transnational repression. It is just to note that, within the university environment, academic freedom is integral to the advancement of knowledge, over and above the basic human rights that we are talking about when we are talking about transnational repression.

The last point on that was the particular vulnerability of people in those circumstances, rather than all academics writ large. There are particular people in particular circumstances who rely upon visas, for example, or who have that vulnerability that many people who are members of diasporas also share. In that regard, it is a subset of the transnational repression issue.

Sir Desmond Swayne: When you say that academics are self-censoring with respect to what they teach and how, is that confined to those institutions that have had large investments, say, from China, or have large Chinese student populations, or is it more general?

Dr Andrew Chubb: That is a very good question. It is one that needs follow-up research to really dig into. Forty-something per cent is a large enough number to conclude that it is probably quite a general problem across the field and not likely to be restricted to universities that have relationships with particular authoritarian countries. Of course, it is not limited to China in that regard. There are many examples of problematic international relationships between universities and other authoritarian regimes. Again, that comes down to the function of the environment that is created by the institution and those legal obligations that universities have to create and maintain an environment of academic freedom in which academic work can proceed.

The Chair: I know that my colleague Baroness Kennedy will have a brief supplementary to you on that in a moment. I wonder whether you can share with the committee, as you come to reply to her, any information you have about the case of Professor Michelle Shipworth, who lost her job at an illustrious London university after teaching a course that people took exception to. Because of the financial relationship between that university and the People’s Republic of China, she was told that she was no longer to teach the course. It ended up with her leaving her post. If you are not able to give us more information about the case today, it would be really helpful to us as we proceed to have more information. If you are able to delve deeper into Sir Desmond’s question, perhaps you can include that with it.

Q7 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: That was precisely the sort of issue I was about to raise with you, Dr Chubb. One issue that arises here is the nature of the study. If it is about human rights abuses in a particular place and the forms that they take, for example, in China, often there is concern by the university, those who insure the university against any kinds of litigation and so on. There are ways in which universities themselves create constraints on academic freedom because they are concerned about the business that they are doing with China.

I wondered whether you saw that happening with regard to specific courses. Within the ambit of studying, for example, China, there are different things. You could be studying the language of it, the history of the Tang dynasty and so forth, or you could be looking at current activity within certain parts of China, such as Xinjiang province, and raising issues of forced labour, human rights abuses and the possible existence of concentration camps, for example. Those sorts of things are causing, as I understand it, in certain institutions, concern about losing Chinese students, business and opportunities to open university campuses in China. There is also the business of concerns about insurance and the insurance implications for universities. I wondered whether you had anything to say on that, incorporating what Lord Alton has raised.

Dr Andrew Chubb: On Michelle Shipworth and the UCL example, I do not have any particular further information in addition to what is out there on the public record. I would note that, from what I have read, the crucial point at which that became a really big problem was at the head of department level, whereby complaints were made about the content of the course. Then the line manager responded to those complaints with a steer to the academic that these topics should be modified and this content should not be included in the course. What is interesting in that case is that that is not a top-down directive from the university, necessarily. Perhaps further investigation could uncover that that was the case, but, from what I have read on the public record, that was a judgment by the line manager: “We’re going to steer away from this controversy”. Then, of course, she stood her ground and said, “I’m not doing that”.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: That is when it moves back up to the much higher echelons. You cannot just blame the line manager. When it becomes a controversial issue and someone is standing their ground, it goes up to higher levels inside universities, as I know from experience. That is the question.

Dr Andrew Chubb: Where the systematic failing on the part of the universities really kicks in tends to be the lack of support for academics who are looking to stand their ground, exercise their academic freedom and not bend to some instruction or complaint that they should or should not be covering a certain topic in a certain way. There may be examples of universities actively, from the top down, saying that certain topics should be off limits. I am not aware of specific examples of that. The process that we have outlined here is much more common, whereby it is the university lack of support for academic freedom when push comes to shove.

Q8 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Ms Gallagher, you have answered practically all my questions already when you were speaking to Lord Alton. I wanted to follow up on that. This is around the personal experience of transnational repression that you and your team have had. What are the main challenges that you have when you are representing Jimmy Lai?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: I suppose that all the tactics that are used against our team are designed to try to frighten us into not representing our client. They are also designed to be attritional, to make it more difficult to represent our client. One of the biggest challenges has been the range of tactics and the co-ordination. I would describe it as being like a tactical whack-a-mole—you know, that fairground game.

On key days in the case, I quite often wake up and find, as well as having rape threats and threatening messages to me, which are upsetting and worrying, that there have been repeated multiple attempts to hack my systems, so the secure systems that we use for documents or my email. I also have attacks on my bank accounts. On one occasion, there were 32 different attempts at the same time from multiple places around the world using VPNs to hack my email. On a day when you need to be preparing because you are about to address the United Nations, you end up on the phone to your bank, checking your daughter is okay and speaking to your chambers’ IT to check what is going on.

It is designed to be an annoyance and attritional. It is designed to make it too difficult to do your job or to do your job well. That is a real challenge. That happens undoubtedly in a co‑ordinated way, because it happens at key moments in the case where you get a spike in the attacks. We have had good support from the authorities here looking into that, but, regrettably, the answer from the authorities has been that they have used sophisticated systems and VPNs, they are very likely to be actors outside the country and, although what is happening is criminal, they cannot get at them. That is particularly difficult.

I should say also that I am the leader of the team and bear the brunt of a lot of it, but I am particularly concerned for more junior members of the team and people who are not necessarily public. My clerks have been targeted. Junior research assistants have been targeted. One junior research assistant ended up having a device cloned and was told that her device was in Hong Kong when in fact she was in London, just by way of example. That is very frightening for more junior members of the team. There are also issues about how we ensure protection for junior members of the team.

It also ties to a more general issue about lawyers. It has been a quarter of a century of doing this kind of work and many years of being targeted in a secondary way as a lawyer, so whenever I do a case about Iran for example. I cannot think of a single case I have done in relation to Iran where a member of the legal team has not had an attempted hack on their email. It happened when I acted for Aras Amiri and the British Council. It has happened in relation to every single journalist case I have done in Iran and every single case of a dissident or human rights activist detained in Iran. Quite often they target a paralegal or someone else, in the hope that they will not necessarily be as security aware. Lawyers have to have good security hygiene and every single layer has to recognise that it may be perceived as a weak point.

Something rather stark that I have seen is that, quite often, lawyers can be inadvertently weak points for activists and journalists. When I act for journalists, they are often very security aware. Sometimes you see even major international law firms doing a case about Saudi Arabia, Iran or China, where they will attempt to send you material over Google Docs, for example, or discuss a very sensitive issue over open email. There is an issue about professions that are likely to be targets understanding better what the risks are because, ultimately, the risks to them are risks to their clients. There is a critical issue there in much more mundane ways. When people are doing a family-law case about Saudi Arabia, for example, you need to have much better security hygiene than, regrettably, many people currently do.

The Chair: It is the case also that whole chambers, such as Essex Court Chambers, have been sanctioned. In parenthesis, I might add that academics such as Jo Smith Finley have been sanctioned simply, in her case, because of her interest in the Uyghur culture and language.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: When steps like that are taken, so when you have individuals sanctioned, a chamber sanctioned or academics sanctioned, their institutions and representative bodies coming out fighting and being robust is so important. Critically, it is essential that the UK Government are robust. This has to be treated as a real political priority. We cannot have a situation where a state that engages in this kind of activity, such as China, is given the red carpet. There have to be real political consequences and robust advocacy by the UK Government in engaging with these perpetrator states and holding them to account for what they are doing to a very wide range of people in a very wide range of professions and, most egregiously, what they are doing to diaspora and exiled communities.

The Chair: I am sure that Ms Harth is going to want to add to this. I am going to invite Mr Khan to ask his question and then I will go straight to Ms Harth so that she can add her comments about the points that have just been raised in her reply to Mr Khan.

Q9 Afzal Khan: Can I thank the three witnesses and start with my opening question? What would be the benefits of the Government adopting an official definition of transnational repression?

Laura Harth: I am not sure at this point that there is necessarily a benefit. I am not sure that it really matters what I think. When I look at the National Security Act, which describes what we understand as transnational repression as a state threat, it is very important that it has that classification, that it is put right up there and that the UK Government say, “This is a threat to the human rights and freedoms of our people and people residing in the UK. We take that very seriously and we take that just as seriously as other national security threats”.

I also know that there is discussion going on within international fora, including the G7, about finding a common definition. That would be my main argument to say that maybe we do not need to rush into a definition right now in every single country, because this is a transnational thing so it makes sense to come up with something that we all agree on and recognise, and then work on that issue together. With a lot of these threats, a victim may be in the UK, but the proxy may be in Canada and then the perpetrator that is directing the proxy or the agent might be in China or Russia. Having joint definitions definitely helps.

Lastly on the definition, I agree with what Caoilfhionn said before. It needs a couple of factors, for sure, if a definition is to be adopted. One is obviously the actor. There needs to be a link to a foreign state to be transnational repression. The aim is important. What is the aim of these efforts? They can be very wide but, in the end, it is about silencing and controlling people, so we need an element of that, especially because a lot of the definitions we see today talk about methods. It is usually a list—“It may include methods such as”—but, as those may evolve and expand, it is important that we have the actor and the aim in there.

Lastly, I agree that defining it solely on the basis of who the target is and limiting that target, as the Freedom House definition does, would be problematic because we see that the targets are much wider. I fully agree that the prime targets and victims of this, who we often do not talk about enough, are diaspora communities and people who have been forced to leave their country. They will often be the first targets and the most severely impacted, but they are not the only ones. It would be a bit self-defeating to limit ourselves to speak only about those groups when it is much wider.

The Chair: I think that Dr Swallow has a supplementary on this point, but I will ask Dr Chubb if he will then reply to that.

Q10 Peter Swallow: On the point about the definition in the National Security Act, which touches on foreign interference and I suppose might be considered to be broader than just transnational repression, is the position effectively that that broadness is actually constructive and helpful, where a narrower definition would be unhelpful because of its narrowness?

Dr Andrew Chubb: If I may just supplement my previous answer to Baroness Kennedy, we have touched upon research and teaching on the academic side. There is one more element that really warrants mention, where we do have a pretty egregious publicly known example. That is the example of being able to speak up publicly in the media in an area of expertise. You may have seen the BBC “Panorama” documentary last year, which contained the example of Professor Steve Tsang from the University of Nottingham, who was instructed by the university authorities not to speak in the media for at least a week around the time of a PRC delegation’s visit. That is something separate from academic research or from teaching, but it is one of the more egregious examples of that top-down influence.

On the question of definitions and what purpose they might serve, I can imagine reasons why the UK Government adopting a definition could be beneficial. The first would be raising awareness among particular parts of the Government that have not been sufficiently conscious of the complexities and the nature of transnational repression, such as front-line police forces, national human rights institutions, immigration authorities and the Home Office. I could see a benefit, from an institutional sensitisation and awareness-raising point of view, to the UK Government adopting a definition of transnational repression.

In terms of the nature of that definition, we have heard a bit about the debates that exist about whether it should be a narrow or broad definition. Personally, I would advocate very much for a broad definition that is focused squarely on the effect on human rights within the territory of the United Kingdom.

A key reason for that is that we need to think about the UK Government’s obligations under international human rights law. In particular, we should think about Article 2 of the ICCPR. The state has already accepted the undertaking to provide an environment in which the convention rights can be exercised. That is where we can pin down a very clear shortcoming or in fact blind spot in the UK’s human rights institutions which merits a lot more attention in terms of institutional designs. We can perhaps talk about that more when we come to potential policy solutions.

Broad definitions exist. We put one forward in the article that Lord Alton mentioned at the beginning.

The Chair: You did indeed.

Dr Andrew Chubb: Human Rights Watch also has a definition that makes reference to human rights but is not limited to diaspora targets.

Fundamentally, we are talking about acts of repression by, as Laura mentioned, state actors and, importantly, proxies of state actors to constrain, coerce or punish the exercise of fundamental rights here in the UK. That is the fundamental nature of the problem. A definition along those lines, which explicitly puts the human rights effects front and centre, could help sensitise a lot of these institutions that are not currently aware enough of the situations that people are bringing to them when they come for help.

The Chair: The inevitable request comes from the committee to share some drafting with us to try to do something as comprehensive as you are suggesting. That would be very helpful.

Q11 Lord Dholakia: I have two questions for Laura Harth. First, how did Safeguard Defenders discover the existence of Chinese police stations operating in the UK? Secondly, what impact has the closure of these stations had on China’s “persuasion to return” operations in the UK?

Laura Harth: Thank you for that question. The core mission of Safeguard Defenders core mission is to support human rights defenders in and from China to be better protected. One of the ways in which we have increasingly done that in recent years is by using the knowledge and research that we have on the way that China’s judicial system works inside the country to protect individuals from being forcefully returned to China from countries across Europe and the world.

Initially, we started this by defending individuals from extradition to China in official judicial meetings and through official bilateral co-operation. I am happy to say we have been quite successful at this across Europe. This is now de facto banned in Europe thanks to the European Court of Human Rights.

As we were doing those cases, we came across increasing instances where Chinese authorities were also using extrajudicial methods. Both methods were being employed at the same time. As is often the case in our work, that led us to delve into this issue and go and look at the official policies that underpin these methodologies, how these operations work and which actors and authorities are involved.

We did a couple of reports, one after the other, explaining how this works and what the official policies are. By tracking that, we came across these police stations. We like to base our published research on open-source material, statements from the Chinese authorities, official policy documents or party state media reports. That is really where we started seeing these things directly in connection to forced-return operations outside judicial means. Once we saw one, we started to delve in a little more. Over the two reports, we uncovered over 100 of those across the world, including in the UK.

It is important to highlight that this is not the only instance of the Chinese subnational authorities creating what we could call liaison stations. Procuratorates across China are doing the same; ports across China are doing the same. We have published a piece on consular volunteers, where the foreign ministry is doing the same, but you also have foreign departments of subnational Governments creating such instances. This is really a widespread problem.

What connects all these stations and liaison points? This links to your second question. What has happened since they have been closed? Has that changed things? What connects all these liaison points is that they are all run through what we call united front organisations or united front affiliates. When it comes to discussing transnational repression coming from China and other threats emanating from China, this is an issue that merits more attention from the Government and Parliament.

This is not a network that you can simply shut down by saying, “The police stations should shut down”. Those networks are still alive. The individuals are still there. Many of them engage in what we could broadly define as influence activities. These are people who are being portrayed and put forward as community leaders. These are people who are engaging with local law enforcement, local councillors, academics, the media and entrepreneurs. This ecosystem is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party has been using inside the country to exercise community control and influence. It is a really intricate network of relations that seeks to operate on all levels of society.

Last week, a friend reminded me of a quote from Mao in 1939, which should give us a sense of how problematic this is. In 1939 he wrote, “Our 18 years of experience show that the united front and armed struggle are the two basic weapons for defeating the enemy. The united front is a united front for carrying on armed struggle. And the party is the heroic warrior wielding the two weapons, the united front and the armed struggle, to storm and shatter the enemy’s positions. That is how the three are related to each other”.

Xi Jinping has consistently raised the importance of united front work since he came to power. This is really the message that we want to leave people with when we have the chance. This is not about the police stations; this is not about a single issue. This is about an ecosystem and a whole-of-society set-up that has been going on for decades and is not so easily dismantled. Raising awareness about the nature of this beast, if you will, while being aware of civil liberties and freedoms in a country such as the UK, is really crucial.

The Chair: Thank you very much. It would be very helpful to us if you could share more information about the activities of the united front.

Lord Dholakia: I have one small question. The impact of such police stations must be very great on the Chinese community and the diaspora community. Have you taken the matter up with the Home Office, the police, other national organisations or, for that matter, the Foreign Office? Are they allowed to continue such practices under diplomatic immunity?

Laura Harth: What we call police stations were basically liaison posts set up between local united front affiliates in the UK or other countries and subnational public security authorities back in China. They had no official nature or diplomatic status. This was undeclared to most of the Governments in the countries where this happened. It is clearly illegal and in violation of sovereignty.

We published those reports between September and December 2022. At the time I remember there were quite a few debates and meetings about this in Westminster. The Government were questioned on this point. I remember that the United Kingdom was one of the countries that very early on launched an investigation and openly declared that these endeavours were clearly illegal and unacceptable. At the same time, I will say that there has not necessarily been a lot of follow-up. Where did those investigations go? What diplomatic measures or steps were taken with China?

One of the particular concerns that I have is how those things are seemingly easily forgotten. One of my colleagues before—I do not remember who—talked about how sometimes, instead of acting forcefully, we are rolling out the red carpet. Last year, the current head of the international department of the Chinese Communist Party, Liu Jianchao, came to London and had meetings both in academia and with political representatives. This is a person who was responsible for writing the kinds of policies that led to the forced returns of people in brazen violation of sovereignty. This is a person who is not a government official; he is a Chinese Communist Party official.

The community sees these kinds of people being welcomed with open arms in the United Kingdom, and in other democratic countries for that matter, and having the red carpet rolled out. If you are a target community, that undermines your trust in the system and your trust that your country has your back, will defend you and will take steps against those perpetrators.

There are many examples where seemingly no real steps, or what the community perceives as no real steps, are taken beyond expressions of how this is unacceptable. This is something that we need to change. Again, that requires a whole-of-government response. This is not an issue that you can compartmentalise. This is not just happening to the human rights of a certain community; this is not just happening in academia. They are using a whole-of-society system and our response and resilience needs to come from the whole of society as well.

The Chair: In fact, in 2023 the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament published a pretty devastating report about the mass infiltration of many of our institutions. We will want to follow up the question that Lord Dholakia has put to you. We can ask, across the Government, what they have done to follow up the closure of the police stations and all these other questions.

Q12 Lord Murray of Blidworth: To what extent does the panel think that the National Security Act 2023, albeit only partially in force, has made a difference? What would you say to the Government about their timetable for the implementation of the foreign influence registration scheme?

Dr Andrew Chubb: I can comment very briefly because it also concerns Dr Swallow’s question, which I failed to address before. The breadth of coverage, on my reading at least, of repression offences certainly appears to be adequate. We know that transnational repression is occurring, quite possibly at unprecedented scale and scope, yet we have not seen any significant number of prosecutions even after the law’s enactment.

That in itself points to a limitation on the degree to which the National Security Act has helped. It would be interesting to see a test case. If someone were able to bring their transnational repression experience to the police and say, “I am alleging a breach of the foreign interference provisions of the National Security Act”, it would be interesting to see how the police would respond. As you mentioned, it does appear to be very broad in scope. It raises the question of why we have not seen action along those lines already. That also goes to the question of whether it has helped. So far we do not see any evidence that it is helping, deterring or even sending an important signal to the affected communities that the Government do have their backs.

To build on Laura’s point about diplomatic engagement, it is open to debate what types of diplomatic engagements are appropriate in the circumstances, particularly with repressive actors. It may be the conclusion that all diplomatic engagement should not be cut off, but diplomatic engagement absolutely does send a signal to communities out there. If it is going to continue, it needs to be offset with a countervailing signal to the communities to say, “We have your back. While it is a necessity that we carry on diplomatic relations and we welcome this foreign visitor or whatever, that does not constitute a signal that we do not care about the human rights situation within your communities”.

Taking action against transnational repression perpetrators, whether through the National Security Act legal framework or some other mechanism, is really crucial.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: Just focusing on the Act for a moment, if I may, Part 4 sets up the foreign influence registration scheme. It was meant to come into force in autumn of last year, but there was a decision not to bring it in, apparently. What is your understanding as to why that is? Do you have any understanding of when it might come in? Finally, would it make much difference if it were to come in?

Dr Andrew Chubb: It is a very good question. It is often raised in the context of transnational repression. I am not particularly clear, given the scope of the foreign influence registration scheme, exactly how it would help alleviate the situation of people facing transnational repression.

Since it is a declaration of what are accepted to be legitimate activities, at the same time that sort of serves as an affirmation of those activities. If there are covert activities going on, as we know there are, it is highly unlikely that repressive actors are going to register those covert activities. I am not sure. I am open-minded as to arguments of how it might feed into a transnational repression policy response that was comprehensive in scope.

As for why it has not been implemented, I do not have inside information about that, but my understanding is that it is to do with debates about who is going to be on which tier. It has a two-tier system with higher requirements for people on the upper tier. It seems that it is seen as being a politically inapt decision to put the main targets of the legislation in the higher tier. That is my understanding of the situation, but it is a little outside the scope of transnational repression.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: RUSI, in an article published in December last year, suggested that one reason was the query about whether China should be on the enhanced tier. Do you have any views in particular about whether that should be the case?

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: It is egregious.

Dr Andrew Chubb: Manifestly, China is one of the targets of the original intent of the enhanced tier.

Lord Murray of Blidworth: Indeed, that seems so obvious. If you had to conjecture, why is it such a difficult decision as to whether to commence it?

Dr Andrew Chubb: I presume it is to do with diplomatic priorities and economic considerations. That would be pure conjecture on my part.

The Chair: You are being very polite and diplomatic.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: It is an important question as to whether the Act has strengthened the UK’s ability to tackle transnational repression. I would say yes in principle, to an extent, but only for certain types of transnational repression and not others, for the reasons that Andrew has given. In practice, the answer is no, not yet. I share the apparent concern in your question about the delay in relation to Part 4, and I share the concern in the questions that have been raised in relation to the tier approach and China.

The bottom line is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We are in a position where it has not as yet been activated. We have seen the speculation—I have no idea whether it is accurate—in the reporting over recent weeks suggesting that China may not be in the enhanced tier. It would be a fundamental mistake if that view were to be taken.

I struggle to understand how that view could possibly be taken in the circumstances where we have a UK national languishing in prison in Hong Kong and where NGOs, parliamentarians and lawyers who have acted for him, and his son, a British national, who raised concerns about his case before the United Nations, have been targeted through transnational repression.

I have only seen the reports. I very much hope they are wrong. It would be a fundamental misstep if the view were to be taken that China should not be in the enhanced tier.

Q13 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: The evidence that we have been hearing indicates that current government policy is not yet dealing adequately with transnational repression. Given that we would like something better, how do the UK Government score against other Governments? Who does it better? Does anybody do it better? Should we be looking to any particular place to draw some inspiration as to how there could be policy changes, legislative changes, different policing objectives and so on?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: The bottom line is that our legal and policy frameworks, not just in the UK but internationally, are not designed to address these issues. We have plenty of international conventions, treaties and agreements designed to move people back across borders when justified, in relation to extradition or adoption, for example, but not to address this situation.

I will give you one example at international level that shows the gap. I mentioned the Iranian journalists earlier, hundreds of whom are based here in the UK. Many others are based in other Council of Europe countries. Here they are, facing very grave risks in a Council of Europe country. The Council of Europe has a platform for the safety of journalists, but it is designed to assume that the risk comes within a Council of Europe country, from another Council of Europe country, and that is how you tackle it. It simply does not deal with the long arm of the state reaching into the Council of Europe country from Iran. There are quite fundamental difficulties with us having to deal with this issue with creaking domestic systems and international provisions that simply do not tackle this issue.

Within the UK there is a very long list of things that could be done. I am quite happy to send the committee a much more detailed shopping list of what we could do, but I will just give a few examples.

First, at national level there is a whole range of recommendations that the committee should consider making. My experience and the experience of my clients is that there is a total postcode lottery when people report incidents of even very grave transnational repression in police stations around the country. The response that you may get if you report to the Met is fundamentally different from the response that you may get if you report in Nottingham, for example.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: We heard a bit of this in previous evidence sessions. The Met is getting on to this, but that is not true up and down the country.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: That is exactly right. There have to be national-level policy and standards, and far better ways of tackling that postcode lottery. That is fundamental. We do it in other contexts, for example in relation to trafficking or terrorism. Transnational repression, self-evidently, requires a national-level response rather than getting one response from a police force in Belfast, one from a police force in Cardiff and one from a police force in London. It is simply not good enough.

Secondly, at national level, there must be robust pre-emptive warnings of growing tactics. We already see the Foreign Office using travel advisories. If you are going to travel to China or to Iran, you can go on the FCDO website and get warnings about the risks that you may face when you are there. I have concerns about the adequacy of some of those travel advisories and their thoroughness, but there is a principle. It is recognised that, if you are travelling to another country, you get a travel advisory. Why do we not have advisories to deal with these growing tactics in circumstances where, unfortunately, many of the tactics are hidden because those who are experiencing them are terrified?

For some countries in particular, such as Saudi Arabia, I am aware of a large number of cases—I have acted in many cases involving Saudi Arabia—that never hit the headlines. The tactics are well known to those of us who work on those cases regularly, but they are not in the pages of the newspapers. Many of the people who experience them think it is just happening to them. There is a code of silence because they are terrified about what may happen to their loved one within Saudi Arabia, for example. When the Government have learned that information, it is imperative that there should be an advisory that shows and casts a light on those tactics. That is critical.

At government level, there has to be a whole-of-government approach to transnational repression. Regrettably, I am repeatedly seeing siloing, so you get a mismatch between the approach taken by the Foreign Office, the approach taken by the Home Office and the approach taken in relation to business and trade, for example.

This is not a party-political point. It is something we have seen with successive Governments. We have seen it with China, for example. We have seen it with Iran. On the one hand, you will have a strong statement from the UK at the UN in Geneva, but on the other hand the message that comes from the Minister for Trade or from the Home Office when someone applies for a visa for a loved one is quite to the contrary.

There is a fundamental problem with not having a whole-of-government approach. I understood that, when in opposition, Labour was keen to adopt this in government. It has now been in government since July and I am yet to see it. That has to be a real political priority.

Internationally, we have to get much more creative in how we tackle this scourge. Could I make two very short points on that? In relation to aggressor states themselves, we have to have far more sophisticated country-specific strategies to tackle the issues. The tactics that Iran uses are different from the tactics that Russia uses, the tactics that Turkey uses or the tactics that China uses. We need co-ordinated overall principles, but we also need to have sophisticated country-specific strategies that respond to the tactics.

This is the last point that I will make. As well as considering how to tackle the aggressor states themselves, we have to start targeting the bag carriers and facilitators. I would give a couple of examples of that. There are some bag-carrier states and some bag-carrier private entities.

One example is the UAE. In recent years, I am aware of eight cases that involve individuals being kidnapped in Dubai and brought to other states, where they have faced torture, arbitrary detention and forced disappearance. A public example is Paul Rusesabagina, who was lured to a false conference. When he flew through Dubai, he was kidnapped. He was put on a private plane, which he was told was bringing him to a conference. He is given a drug in his drink and, when he wakes up, he is in Rwanda. That happened in UAE. It happened on a Greek plane with a European aircraft crew. That is all in the public domain.

It is very difficult to tackle some of these actions when they are taken by states such as Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, but we need to start tackling the states that are facilitating this, including the UAE.

In recent months, you may have seen that the US sanctioned an Irish-based company for its use of spyware, which has been used to target multiple journalists, human rights activists and so on around the world.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: You are talking about Pegasus.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: Yes, precisely: Pegasus, Predator and so on. As well as targeting the facilitator states, we have to start tackling the facilitator companies. We need to be far more robust in how we do that.

How can it be that no one in Europe did anything effective when this was an Ireland-based company? It took the US to take the lead last year before action was taken within 24 hours.

The Chair: I am going to turn now if I may to my colleague Mr Tom Gordon, Member of Parliament, who has been waiting patiently to intervene. After that we will hear from Dr Peter Swallow.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: A lot of ground has been covered that is in subsequent questions, and I think it would be sensible if we all, as members of the committee, took account of that so that we just do not repeat things.

The Chair: I am sure we will not.

Q14 Tom Gordon: There has been a lot of conversation about prevalence, how often situations of transnational repression might come up and the issues with defining it. I just wondered whether we could build upon that a little bit further. Would it be a worthwhile endeavour to introduce a proper reporting mechanism for victims of transnational repression? How would we best go about achieving that, so that it is useful and informative going forward?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: I support the suggestion that was made by Laura earlier in this session regarding a reporting mechanism. I have made the point about the importance of national-level policy and standards. Information coming into the authorities is also really critical. At the moment, I am afraid that what I see, at national level and internationally, is that you often do not learn that a tactic has been used against others until you have experienced it yourself, you report it and then you anecdotally learn it from others.

That is not a UK-only problem. I will just give you one example. I and a colleague were under intimidatory surveillance from someone linked to the Chinese state at the United Nations in Geneva, which was investigated by security there. It was both in the UN building and in a local hotel. When we reported it, we learned that it has happened to multiple individuals involved in doing human rights work concerning China in that hotel. I did not know that, and I specialise in this field. Many others did not know it either. I have now spread the word in relation to others who were also staying in the same location. That is an example of where information was available in a patchwork way, but it has not been shared with those who are at risk of that tactic. I see that in the UK all the time.

It is important. A reporting mechanism should help ensure that information is gathered in a systemic way and patterns are spotted so people can then learn from the patterns. Again, it is only because of a parliamentary event discussing these fake emails that I learned of another academic who had a very similar experience. Emails had gone around purporting to be from the HR department of his university. They had gone to multiple individuals and they said, “Professor X is having a mental health breakdown. He's very sensitive about it”. There was information sent around about him. This was a very sophisticated spoof; it looked as if it was from the HR department of the university. It was received in a way that meant when people received it they wanted to be sensitive about it, so they did not raise it expressly with him.

It is important to know those tactics, but too often we are learning them in an ad hoc rather than a co-ordinated way. If we do not have the information, how on earth can we spot patterns and get policies and practices to tackle this?

Laura Harth: What should those reporting mechanisms look like? Some states do have them. There are often various ways, from a phone number to a number you can text or email addresses. It gives the option to the victim as to how they feel most comfortable reaching out. That is the first good element: making sure it is easy for the victims to reach out.

Secondly—this is something that I know has previously been discussed and is quite difficult—how do you make sure those lines of communication are secure? Given the threat that we are dealing with, that is quite an important one.

We see these mechanisms available, going back to the previous question, in a number of countries, in particular the US. We see it in Australia and in Canada. As this hearing is happening, I have just been informed that the French authorities have made an information page on transnational repression available on their website with a contact number. I have not seen it yet or what it looks like exactly. It is becoming standard practice. You will find that this is something that anyone dealing with the issue is usually advocating for in different countries and something that is asked for by the authorities.

In addition to the reporting line, we have seen some other best practices that I want to highlight. As democratic societies, all countries are very much at the beginning stage of becoming aware of the threat and starting to respond to it. A lot of the difficulties in the UK are also difficulties in other countries.

We have seen some that have gone a bit further or more quickly. In the US, during the previous Administration in particular, we saw this whole-of-government co-ordination across departments, with one department taking the lead and making sure that all the policies are ideally aligned on addressing the issue or not making it worse in certain cases. The different authorities that were dealing with this also created outreach mechanisms to the community.

That includes the factsheets I talked about before, which are available in different languages. Australia has a similar thing, where a lot of factsheets are available in different languages for the communities, outlining what TNR is according to them, what is allowed, what is not allowed and where to go if you encounter problems.

We have seen some countries—Andrew has hinted at it—where there have been prosecutions and Bills have been introduced, in particular in the US Congress, during recent years. We are also increasingly seeing subnational initiatives. Again in the US, single states are adopting or have adopted laws on transnational repression.

At the same time—this goes back to my point before about the united front—we have seen laws targeting certain activities, such as influence activities, political influence campaigns and so on, to make sure that the whole of the threat, as it has been conceived and as it is being used by the threat actor or several threat actors, is addressed.

There are a couple of best practices out there that have been tested and that seem to work. I am not saying they are perfect. I am not saying there are not additional things, but those examples definitely work.

If I may add one last thing on that—this is something that people often forget, including me—we talk to some of the targets or victims of these practices, both the direct victims and those who feeling a more general chilling effect. When we say, “Do you want a reporting mechanism? Do you want new laws? Do you need the police to investigate?” they usually say, “Yes, we need all that, but the priority, the first thing that we need to be more resilient, is psychosocial assistance”.

We do not necessarily know what that should look like, but it is important to recognise that a lot of these people already carry trauma from their background and what they have been through in their country. They have been forced into exile and are living abroad; they often do not have access to family members or friends. There is often already a lot of trauma there. Dealing with continued pressure in the country that you are calling your new home definitely makes it even more difficult. I just wanted to flag that. I do not have a response on it, but that is something that targeted communities ask very often.

The Chair: The clock is marching against us. I am going to ask Dr Chubb to be quite brief because there are a couple of other important questions that we want to get to.

Dr Andrew Chubb: On reporting mechanisms, it comes up time and again in the research that this is an inadequacy of the current set-up. There are some better if not best practices available to look to, including the FBI’s transnational repression hotline.

That hotline also illustrates some of the limitations though of that approach. It is a law enforcement entity that you are contacting, if you are contacting the TNR hotline in America. Unless you are alleging that a crime has occurred within the United States jurisdiction, there is a limited amount of help that you can get through that channel.

How the reporting mechanism looks to members of the public is really crucial. Something that we have not talked about enough in the general debate about transnational repression is national human rights institutions. For a law enforcement entity to be the contact point can often be quite intimidating. As Laura has mentioned as well, a lot of communities and members of communities who are carrying trauma might be reticent. I also hear this from the policy side. People in the home affairs bureaucracies talk about the reticence of communities to engage despite some of their outreach efforts.

This goes to the question: “What does the contact point look like from the perspective of those targeted by transnational repression?” If it is framed as being a contact point where you go to report the experience of having your rights constrained or violated within the United Kingdom jurisdiction, that is very different from a contact point with law enforcement to allege a crime.

If it is a human rights-focused contact point in the first instance, it can log those cases regardless of whether a crime is being alleged in that particular instance; it can monitor prevalence and occurrence over time. It needs to be a secure and trusted independent entity. In theory, that is what our national human rights institutions are supposed to be: independent statutory bodies that monitor the occurrence of human rights violations within the territory of the United Kingdom.

That is a big blind spot that has been missing from all of this. Holding this inquiry through the Joint Committee on Human Rights is a great start in putting the role of national human rights institutions on the agenda, whether it is the current one or a new institution such as a transnational rights protection office. That is a starting point both to enable the flow of information and to be able to render assistance to people who are facing this issue, whether or not a crime has been committed on the territory of the United Kingdom.

Q15 Peter Swallow: I will pass over any further discussion about prosecutions because we have already touched on the barriers to that. Returning to my original question about the breadth of the existing laws and potential future laws, is there any risk at all that the laws that exist on transnational repression, or, indeed, any future laws that may come in, might have negative consequences for individual liberties? I am thinking particularly in terms of the breadth that we have discussed with the National Security Act, for example.

Dr Andrew Chubb: I have one quick reflection on that based on the Australian example that we have had. It is a problem to approach the issue of transnational repression from a primarily national security point of view.

The big problem is that our national security agencies are set up to deal with national security threats. This is based on the Australian example. It has been in the Australian security agency’s annual reports for many years that the problem with diaspora communities being coerced from outside of Australia’s borders is that people can be coerced into co-operating with foreign intelligence services. That is the intersection with hardcore national security or state security issues, but that is a very small slice of the problem.

Moreover, if we lead with that framing of the overall problem, we risk presenting or reframing the targets as a potential national security threat vector for the purpose of policy‑making. This goes again to the importance of a forward-leaning, human rights-focused approach to this issue that starts with the contact point being framed from a human rights point of view.

I will leave it at that, but there are a number of issues to unpack with the security-focused framing, which we probably do not have time to go into, but I can give you some examples based on my research on the Australian case, if you are interested.

Peter Swallow: Specifically on that human rights point, it is fundamentally the case that any individual in the UK has the right to support most but not all foreign regimes, including those that are not aligned to the UK’s values. One could conceive of a situation where, in pursuing the actors of transnational repression, undue attention would be put on legitimate views that UK foreign policy may not be in line with but do not overstep the mark into transnational repression. Do you see that tension? Is that perhaps somewhat overstating the risk to protecting the rights of all individuals in the UK, including those who do not share the UK Government’s foreign policy outlook?

Dr Andrew Chubb: That is a real concern. That is a reason why you need national security legislation to be drafted in a precise and targeted way. In the Australian example, the one case of prosecution and conviction of foreign interference was not, unfortunately, focused on transnational repression. It was to do with improper lobbying or intentions to engage in improper lobbying in the future. It is one example, but, if you look at the details of that case, it illustrates a lot of the concerns that arise with very broadly drafted national security legislation and potentially with a general national security-led approach to the issue of transnational repression.

With that said, though, there is no right under any circumstances of one person to coerce or to encroach on the rights or the exercise of the rights of another person. That is a fairly clear line.

Laura Harth: I agree with every point that Dr Chubb has made. At the same time, there are these tensions. It is a very difficult question. We also know that some of democracy’s adversaries are using the liberties and freedoms afforded by a democratic system against those democracies. They are using those grey-zone tactics. It is a difficult balance to be found.

Dr Chubb is absolutely right to highlight how maintaining a human rights perspective in all of that is crucial. We need to make sure that we do not turn into our adversaries because, again, that would be a win for them. Where I disagree a bit is that I really applaud the National Security Act for highlighting that limiting or attempting to limit the freedoms of another individual on UK soil is seen as a state threat. An individual’s personal freedoms and ability to enjoy those freedoms is seen as a matter of national security. That shows how important the UK thinks this is and how important it thinks human rights are.

I speak more from an international perspective on this. I am advocating for these things in other countries. If we relegate this only to the human rights perspective, I am afraid that a lot of people might not take it as seriously; I am sure that is not the case for anyone in this room. We want to have that whole-of-government approach and we want to be able to say, for example, to the business community, “This matters, and it matters to national security”.

That is just speaking from a realistic point of experience. While I do agree with the points that Dr Chubb made, I am just not sure whether it is entirely workable in practice.

Q16 The Chair: Thank you very much. There is some important information there, which has been raised by Dr Swallow’s question, that we will want to reflect on further.

Let us move to the penultimate and last questions. I would like to ask you, if I may, about the international sanctions regime or what are often called Magnitsky sanctions. Do they work well? Are they being used effectively against perpetrators of transnational repression in the UK?

I should mention that at least three of us around the table today have been sanctioned by a number of the regimes that you have pointed to. I do find it passing strange that Magnitsky sanctions do not seem to be being used against some of those responsible for the incarceration of nearly 2,000 pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong or for what the House of Commons has described as a genocide in Xinjiang. What part do they have to play in this general problem?

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: I will take this quite briefly. My view is that the Magnitsky sanctions regime is not being used at all effectively as matters stand. There are remarkable gaps in terms of very egregious human rights abuses where they are not being used.

This is not a party-political point. Under successive Governments, we have tended to see Magnitsky sanctions used in the UK quite late in the piece, so we are not a leader. Quite often, you will see that it is only when other states, such as the US or Canada, have dealt with an issue and when it has become, essentially, unassailable, quite late on in the process, that the UK will join the bandwagon. That was not supposed to be what the system was in place for. I am particularly concerned where you have situations where the UK has direct skin in the game, UK nationals and residents are affected, and egregious human rights abuses are happening, and yet you do not see the state being held to account.

In terms of something that should be an overarching recommendation from this committee on this issue of transnational repression, it has now morphed to become a systematic tool in a number of countries’ toolboxes, particularly the countries that we mentioned earlier, and we are not seeing a corresponding policy stance that holds those countries to account in a robust and consistent way.

Magnitsky sanctions are one way in which we are not seeing those countries held to account for these abuses in a robust and consistent way, but there are many others. My overarching point would be that we have to start showing countries that behave in this way that there are political consequences, and, at the moment, we are not doing that.

The Chair: Would you agree that the way in which we oversee the sanctions is very opaque and often very contradictory, and that there is no parliamentary oversight? Is that something that perhaps you have given any thought to? Should there be some degree of oversight, even if it was in camera, perhaps by privy counsellors or parliamentarians, at some point? It could be the Intelligence and Security Committee, for instance. There is no parliamentary oversight, so there seems to be no consistency or logic about the way in which sanctions are used, and no way of challenging it.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: The way in which the process works means that you only see what comes out at the very end of the sausage machine when a decision has been made; you do not see the cogs and what has gone into the decision-making. As you say, there is no parliamentary oversight in it. Sometimes, a decision not to sanction may well be for very good reason. There might be a critical risk. There may be a backroom channel that is really important in relation to a British national who is currently in-country and being targeted in a particular way, and they have good intelligence to suggest that sanctions would be inappropriate and could make matters worse, for example. There could be very good reason in a range of circumstances, but we simply do not see that.

I will not do this on the hoof today, but I would be happy to give you some further thoughts in more detail. Opening what is currently a non-transparent process that is entirely behind closed doors to some better level of scrutiny is important. That could be done in a range of ways, but, at the moment, as you say, it operates entirely opaquely, and I am concerned at what we see at the end of the sausage machine. I am concerned at the end result, which suggest an ad hoc, inconsistent approach and fundamental gaps in holding certain states to account for egregious conduct.

Dr Andrew Chubb: Are Magnitsky sanctions being used well in respect of transnational repression? Of course they are not. There are no examples of them being successfully deployed as a penalty for acts of transnational repression. One possible problem is that the threshold for the application of Magnitsky sanctions is very high, such that the routine acts of transnational repression that generate these repressive effects here in the UK would very often not rise to that threshold, so they are perhaps not an option to begin with. Then you have the problem of the selective and non-transparent process of deciding whom to apply it to.

To bring it back to our human rights institutional set-up, both of those problems need to be addressed with an independent statutory agency or body that monitors the existence and occurrence of these types of issues, which can then make independent recommendations, perhaps not rising to the level of Magnitsky sanctions but at least recommendations to the Home Office of ineligibility for visa, for example, or to the Foreign Office about diplomatic representations.

It all starts with that contact point and getting the flows of information and the level of community trust up in order to be able to then have a trusted arm’s-length mechanism that could be applied in a more consistent way. Rather than it being a political decision where we have decided to apply the sanctions to this country and not to that country, it is out of our hands. It is the independent human rights monitor that decides whether someone is recommended to be ineligible, for example, for entry into the country, again going back to that institutional design and the contact point.

Laura Harth: I just wanted to thank Lord Alton for the suggestion of having, indeed, some parliamentary oversight, with, as you said, certain restrictions on publicity and so on, to get more insight into what really is a black box. I would suggest that whatever set-up that it ends up being is informed not only of what has been done, but also why it is not being used, why this country is not being targeted, and why these are people not on the list, so getting very clear answers.

That could be done with regard to sanctions. To some extent, it could include visa restrictions, but it should also include other diplomatic measures. We have seen some incidents in the UK where members of the diplomatic corps have been openly caught in the act of engaging in transnational repression and in unacceptable behaviour, and everybody is still a bit shocked at what was a non-response afterwards. Again, also looking at that and being able to get very clear responses on why things are not being done would be crucial.

Q17 The Chair: This has been a tremendous session, and we are going to turn now to the very last question, you will be relieved to know. Thank you so much for sharing your extraordinary expertise with us.

The committee will have to make recommendations in due course when we write our report. You have made a number of recommendations during the course of the proceedings, and we will chronicle those, examine what you have suggested, and see where we can agree and where we disagree. If you had a wish list now of just one or two things that you would prioritise as being recommendations to His Majesty’s Government, can you tell us what they might be? It may even just be to underline things that you have already said in the evidence.

Laura Harth: My main recommendation is really that this needs to be a whole-of-government approach. Beyond who mans the reporting lines or writes recommendations, this needs to be elevated to someone at or adjacent to Cabinet level who can co-ordinate and oversee how departments are responding and assessing this threat, and can make sure that what happens in, say, the business department does not negatively influence or aggravate the situation for people living in the UK who are seeing their human rights and fundamental freedoms hampered by a foreign aggressor.

That, for me, is the main message, also because a lot of countries using transnational repression are adopting a whole-of-government approach, where every part of their apparatus is geared to foreign interference in a certain way. In particular, as a simple example, when we talk about China, the united front is active in all its businesses, in its schools and in the PLA. It does not save any compartment of that society, so we should not be over-compartmentalising. We need to understand what the threat is. We need to understand how it impacts communities and to make sure that we respond with a whole-of-society approach, while being mindful of fundamental human rights.

Dr Andrew Chubb: It really is a case of underscoring what I have already said. The national human rights institutions have been absent from this debate and from policy responses, and yet they are supposed to be the entities that embody the UK’s fulfilment of its obligations under international human rights law, which have been accepted. That is why they exist. They are simply not adequately equipped to deal with the reality that human rights inside the UK’s territory can be violated from domestic and transnational sources, as we have heard in so many examples today.

We need to look at how the UK’s human rights institutional set-up needs to be updated in order to be able to take account of what is fundamentally a human rights issue. Very obviously, it is an appropriate point of contact, so it starts with being accessible, open, trusted and independent of Government as a point of contact to get that information flowing from communities.

From there, you get greater visibility and monitoring of the problem, as is required under international human rights law. You are supposed to monitor human rights violations occurring within the jurisdiction of the UK. The advisory function of making recommendations to Government and to different government departments then flows from that.

What dovetails quite nicely with what Laura outlined in terms of the need for a whole-of-government approach is that national human rights institutions should hold to account the various arms of Government to make sure that they are acting in ways that are consistent and uphold the UK’s human rights obligations.

That function comes back to the nature of that contact point to monitor the issue and make recommendations to Government, and, at the same time, to be independent of Government, so that it can make recommendations that are taken seriously at the level of human rights principles, rather than a political decision that is made on the basis of political calculations.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: As you have heard from all the witnesses in this session—and, I am conscious, from other sessions—we are dealing with transnational repression now operating in a very sophisticated way and at great scale, and it is essential that we take effective action and take it quickly, because, all too often, we are playing catch-up and getting to these issues very late.

For example, we raised some of the issues that we have discussed today in relation to Iran with the Human Rights Council and with the Foreign Office in 2017, when the first step was taken against the BBC News Persian journalists, and here we are, eight years later, without yet having an effective way to tackle it.

This may be the first and only time that Vanilla Ice is quoted in this august room, but it is high time that we stop, collaborate and listen, domestically and internationally, on the issue. I gave a list of shopping list earlier, and I will certainly send more detailed written submissions, but could I make five quick points?

First, I very much agree, of course, with the idea of a whole-of-government approach. That is the phrase that I used earlier. This has to be a core, cross-cutting priority, and we have to get out of the siloing-type approach. Just to give one stark example of that, since the election in July we have been attempting to meet the Security Minister in relation to what we have been enduring as Jimmy Lai’s international legal team and, indeed, what Sebastien Lai, his son, has been experiencing, and we have yet to get a meeting. If this is a top priority, why is it that we cannot get a meeting with the Home Office or with the Security Minister?

The Chair: We will take that up.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher: Secondly, the UK, overall, in multiple fora, including in its bilateral relations with other states, in international and multilateral fora such as the UN, and in terms of what it does here in the UK, needs to hold aggressor and facilitator states to account.

That is why the question from Lord Murray earlier was so important in relation to the tiers and China. We send such a terrible message if we have a situation where a diplomat can drag an activist by the hair into the Manchester consulate, then we have the kinds of actions that are taken against parliamentarians here, as well as so many others, with the bounties and the use of language such as calling individuals rats who need to be hunted down worldwide, and yet a view is taken, if one were to be taken, that China is not in the enhanced tier.

Thirdly, there is much that parliamentarians can do in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Some of the states that we are talking about are Council of Europe states, including Turkey, for example. That is a good forum where parliamentarians could do more. I have yet to see transnational repression being a key policy priority at PACE, and it can and should be a key priority there.

Fourthly, it is important that, at an international level, we look at having more effective information-sharing at state level. All too often, what I am seeing is that key information is shared by victims. I am acutely conscious of the time, but may I give one example?

Iran International has journalists around the globe, including hundreds based here in the UK. Iran has made clear that it intends to assassinate an Iran International journalist. It does not care whether they are based in London, in Washington DC, in Sweden or in Paris. Inevitably, what that means is that, when you have an assassination attempt, as you did earlier this year in Sweden, that information must be shared with the offices in Paris, in London and in Washington DC.

Rather starkly, one of my clients in the US learned of a credible risk to his life from a journalist in London calling him to tell him about the plot, rather than learning about it from law enforcement, because there had not been effective information-sharing. It is critical that we think about how we share information at an international level, because, at the moment, it is on the victims to think, “If this risk has arisen in Sweden, isn’t there a risk here, and isn’t there a risk there?” It should not be on the victims to do it.

The fifth point has not arisen at all today, but I just want to put it on record, and I will send more detail. There is a particularly acute problem in relation to the cancellation of passports and those steps that are taken when you have individuals who are stateless and are based here in the UK. I gave the example of Salman al-Khalidi, who was based in London but is currently languishing in a prison cell in Kuwait, having travelled on a UK travel document. He is stateless because his Kuwaiti nationality was cancelled as a result of his exercise of free speech here in the UK, including protesting outside the Kuwaiti embassy, and yet, when support is sought for him, the answer is, “We don’t give him consular assistance because he is not a British national”.

There is a particularly acute problem in relation to individuals who are victims of transnational oppression, end up detained in another state, and do not get the support that they should get from the Foreign Office. There is a very specific issue there about British residents, not British nationals, including, most acutely, those who are stateless.

The Chair: Thank you very much indeed, and thank you, all three of our witnesses, for giving us so generously of your time and expertise today. I have sat through many committee hearings over the years in both Houses, but I must say that today really stands out in my mind because it brings home the threats that there are to our democracy. All three of you are paying quite a price yourselves for the way that you speak out and act in order to highlight these transgressions that are taking place, so we are all in your debt and very grateful to you.

People who have been watching this online can raise these issues with their own Members of Parliament and urge them to look at the transcripts that arise out of today’s hearing and, ultimately, at the report and the recommendations that we make. Those who are interested in the proceedings of the Joint Committee on Human Rights can still make written representations about this inquiry on transnational repression up until 24 February.

Next Wednesday, we will return to the inquiry that we have mounted into Daesh, and some of the crimes against humanity and, indeed, genocide that occurred against the Yazidi community as a result of Daesh’s activities in northern Iraq and northern Syria. Caught up in that are a number of British citizens, including children and women.

Next week, we will be hearing from Alex Crawford, who is a very brave journalist who has visited the prison camps in Syria. She will be coming to give us evidence about the situation of those who still continue to languish in those camps without any justice being done. We will be looking at what has been done elsewhere, by comparison, in Germany and Holland, for instance, where judicial activity has led to the conviction of some of those who were held in those camps previously.

We have a very full agenda. We also have our report under way looking at supply chain transparency and the use of forced labour, which is an issue that comes up on a regular basis in our postbags. A lot of people have been writing to the Joint Committee about that, and we are grateful to those who are showing such interest.

With no further words—that is quite enough for one day—thank you, everyone, including Members and staff on the team, and members of the public who have been here in the committee room throughout the proceedings, as well as those who are online. Thank you all for your attention.