Jimmy Lai’s son says UK government did not do enough to help him on China visit | Jimmy Lai

The British son of jailed Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has criticized the UK government for failing to meet conditions for his father’s release during the prime minister’s visit to China last week.

Speaking at a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday, Sebastien Lai said his father’s imprisonment was not only a matter of humanitarian and national security, but also one in which “our values ​​are locked in” along with him.

These remarks followed the first visit by a British leader to China in eight years; During this trip, Keir Starmer was said to have raised the case against the former media tycoon and one of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy voices.

In December 2025, British citizen Lai was convicted of national security crimes in December following a nearly two-year trial that international rights groups criticized as politically motivated and an attack on press freedom.

Weeks before the Prime Minister’s visit, Lai is understood to have met with Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper and discussed her father’s condition, as well as the 78-year-old’s deteriorating health in isolation.

Lai said at a meeting: “If it is so important, then there should definitely be some conditions for my father’s release. It was a big thing that the trip was spared and the embassy was also spared.” All-party parliamentary group on arbitrary detention and hostage situations He listens to his father’s case.

The UK government wants closer ties with the world’s second-largest economy and last month approved a highly controversial new Chinese embassy in London. Although there were some tangible gains from the trip – visa exemptions, the lifting of sanctions against British MPs and their colleagues, and investment by British firms in China – there was criticism from parliamentarians who questioned why the prime minister went to Beijing with the embassy “in our back pocket” without securing Lai’s release.

“Time is running out for my father,” Lai said. “A man who defends freedom certainly deserves a portion of it himself.”

Lai was told his father’s case was raised by Starmer during his visit but he has yet to meet the prime minister or foreign secretary since then. Sebastien stated that there was no indication of when his father’s sentence would be announced, adding that if his father died in prison, it would be a disaster for both governments.

“It was a tragedy that the only thing that came out of this trip was Johnnie Walker, not Jimmy Lai,” said former Hong Kong governor Chris Patten, referring to the reduction in whiskey taxes agreed between the two countries during Starmer’s visit.

“We were told that the Prime Minister had raised Jimmy Lai’s case,” Lord Patten said. “We don’t know what the Chinese said in response… what was the extent of their discussion?”

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, head of Lai’s international legal team who met with Starmer and Cooper, said while she noted a change in urgency on the part of the government, the strategy was yet to be seen.

“We make no secret of the fact that we think it was a strategic misstep in not imposing conditionality,” Gallagher said. “It seems to us that the UK did not play its cards as well as it could have.”