Hong Kong’s deputy justice minister has highlighted the need for foreign lawyers previously hired for national security cases to comply with the city’s immigration laws even if a proposed vetting mechanism did not apply to them.

Deputy Secretary of Justice Horace Cheung Kwok-kwan comments on Sunday came after Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok earlier said the proposed legal amendment giving Hong Kong’s leader the final say on the role of foreign lawyers in national security cases would not be retrospective.

But Lam hinted that previous applications for foreign lawyers to be involved in national security cases could still be barred as there would be “other ways” to handle them, without specifying how this would be achieved or whether he was referring to jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s attempt to hire British barrister Timothy Owen.