China sanctions MPs over Xinjiang row – follow live

The UK’s loss of access to EU policing data has been branded “concerning” by peers, who have said they fear new law enforcement arrangements put in place after Brexit are “complex” and “untested”.

Having examined security provisions in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), introduced after the UK left the EU, the Lords EU Security and Justice Sub-Committee warned “significant areas are missing” and “many important details are still to be agreed”.

The report highlights the UK’s loss of access to the EU’s Schengen Information System II (SIS II) criminal database as the “most significant gap in terms of lost capability”. The committee described this as an “area of concern” and recommended parliament monitor whether alternative arrangements were providing equivalent access to information.

Government officials previously insisted the UK is not missing out on intelligence about wanted criminals after losing access to SIS II alerts about people and stolen items such as guns and cars, which it has been using since 2015.

As a result some 40,000 alerts on dangerous criminals and wanted suspects had to be deleted at the end of December, when the post-Brexit transition period ended.

British negotiators had sought to maintain access to the system as part of a deal, following concerns raised by police chiefs, but the EU said it was legally impossible to offer access to any country not in the Schengen area, including the UK.

The findings also described new extradition arrangements as “ambitious”.

National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) bosses have previously expressed confidence in the agreement.

At least 10 EU countries will no longer extradite their nationals to face prosecution in the UK because of Brexit, the government has admitted, meaning British authorities may have to attempt prosecutions in other countries or circulate wanted criminals on an Interpol database in the hope they leave their home nation and can be caught elsewhere.

Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden will be “invoking constitutional rules as reason not to extradite their own nationals to the UK”. Plus, Austria and the Czech Republic will only extradite their own nationals to Britain with their consent.

The UK was previously part of the European Arrest Warrant system, which allows a streamlined extradition process between EU states and has been used for high-profile terrorists, drug smugglers and murderers.

Our home affairs correspondent Lizzie Dearden reports:

China has hit British institutions and MPs, including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, with sanctions in response to similar moves by the UK over the treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.

Britain, the US, Canada and the European Union on Monday slapped sanctions on Chinese officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses in the country’s autonomous northwest territory, with Dominic Raab announcing a package of travel bans and asset freezes against four senior officials and the state-run Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Public Security Bureau (XPCC PSB).

The foreign secretary said the abuse of Uighur people in Xinjiang was “one of the worst human rights crises of our time” and the international community “cannot simply look the other way”.

But China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement early on Friday that the move by Mr Raab was “based on nothing but lies and disinformation, flagrantly breaches international law and basic norms governing international relations, grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs, and severely undermines China-UK relations”.

The ministry said it had sanctioned nine people and four British institutions “that maliciously spread lies and disinformation”. Mr Duncan Smith, Tory MP Neil O’Brien, Lord David Alton, Conservative MPs Tim Loughton and Nusrat Ghani, Labour’s Baroness Helena Kennedy, barrister Geoffrey Nice, Joanne Nicola Smith Finley, and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat were the individuals sanctioned.

The groups were the China Research Group, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Uyghur Tribunal and Essex Court Chambers.

“As of today, the individuals concerned and their immediate family members are prohibited from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao of China, their property in China will be frozen, and Chinese citizens and institutions will be prohibited from doing business with them,” the ministry said, adding it “reserves the right to take further measures”.

The ministry also said it had summoned the UK’s ambassador to China, Caroline Wilson, “to lodge solemn representations, expressing firm opposition and strong condemnation”.