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Business of the House

My hon. Friend makes a very cogent point. The Government are concerned that China continues to regard North Koreans fleeing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as economic migrants rather than treating them as refugees under the terms of the 1951 UN convention. As we all know, the scale of human rights abuses in North Korea is too severe for the international community, including China, to ignore. We have repeatedly called on the Chinese authorities at the very least to respect the fundamental principle of non-refoulement that is built into the United Nations convention, and we did that most recently at our regular UK-China human rights dialogue.