{"id":74831,"date":"2025-10-20T02:04:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T17:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/19\/chinese-embassy-approval-could-be-unlawful-if-uk-ministers-gave-advance-assurances"},"modified":"2025-10-20T02:04:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T17:04:24","slug":"chinese-embassy-approval-could-be-unlawful-if-uk-ministers-gave-advance-assurances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=74831","title":{"rendered":"Chinese embassy approval could be unlawful if UK ministers gave advance assurances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If Keir Starmer made promises to China it could constitute \u2018predetermination\u2019, Lord Banner legal opinion concludes<\/p>\n<p>Approving a Chinese super-embassy in east London could be unlawful if ministers gave Beijing assurances about the project in advance, one of the UK\u2019s top planning lawyers has concluded.<\/p>\n<p>If Keir Starmer or his team made promises to the Chinese government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/04\/china-mega-embassy-dilemma-starmer\">about the embassy<\/a>, it could constitute \u201cactual or apparent predetermination\u201d of the planning application, according to the legal opinion by Lord Banner.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/19\/chinese-embassy-approval-could-be-unlawful-if-uk-ministers-gave-advance-assurances\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Keir Starmer made promises to China it could constitute \u2018predetermination\u2019, Lord Banner legal opinion concludesApproving a Chinese super-embassy in east London could be unlawful if ministers gave Beijing assurances about the project in advance, one &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,319,1622,902,3412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-foreign-policy","category-keir-starmer","category-labour","category-planning-policy"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74831"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74833,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74831\/revisions\/74833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}