China: Human Rights and Security

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on securing this debate on government policy towards China and for highlighting these grave issues. I pay tribute to him, along with other noble Lords, for dedicating his immense knowledge, experience and wisdom to the service of people and causes which can often be buried beneath the rhetoric and power of the overbearing and tyrannical state.

Noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have spoken about China’s conduct of affairs backed by a show of force. There have been violations of agreements, such as our own 1984 Sino-British joint declaration on Hong Kong, under which it was pledged to “one country, two systems” for 50 years, and the horrid violations and imprisonments that have taken place there. Taiwan has been threatened by President Xi’s refusal to rule out force for what he calls reunification, and this is to say nothing of the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Tibet and of the Uighurs in the western Xinjiang province, to which noble Lords have drawn attention.

As we have heard, the UK Government have set out their approach: to co-operate cautiously, to trade and to challenge. But can there really be UK co-operation as equal partners on trade and economic matters with China? Trading as equals can be the only true basis on which a western democracy such as the UK can co-operate, given China’s economic power, which is now the second-largest globally. That is based on its vast wealth, its imperviousness to WTO trade rules—on state subsidies, for example—and its untrustworthy record on IP and cyberespionage, prompting action by the US, as well as its bid for regional strategic and military dominance.

Although China is not the UK’s first trading partner but our fifth largest, we do have a trade deficit with it. Given the strategic and sensitive nature of Chinese imports into the UK and its foreign direct investment—FDI—in the UK, it has already achieved great leverage on our economy. The figures vary, but Chinese investors have around £134 billion of assets in UK industries. It is no secret, and we know openly, that these range from a large share in Hinkley Point C nuclear power station—China General Nuclear Power holds a 33.5% stake in the plant, which is owned by EDF—to a 10% share in Heathrow. It has interests in breweries that Chinese individuals have, such as Greene King, and retail outlets such as Superdrug, as well as utilities such as Northumbrian Water. Around 200 companies are in the hands of Chinese individuals from China or Hong Kong, including state-run organisations and the China Investment Corporation. What precautionary measures do the Government intend to protect the UK strategically and its vital security in power plants, energy companies, IT and electronics, against dominance by Chinese investors, state or otherwise?

Rather than go ever deeper into trading arrangements with China, with all their drawbacks, my view is that Britain should concentrate on the benefits from developing trade and economic ties with other trading partners—to make common cause, for instance, with the incoming US regime, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester suggested. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Leong, will forgive me for returning to this theme, but I recommend that we develop and are alert to what can be done as a leading global partner now that we are members of the CPTPP. I recommend that we are alert to how we can not only develop our own trade with this dynamic and ever-growing alliance but help our new partners in the CPTPP against predatory or hegemonic Chinese economic moves, given the wide area of influence that China already commands not just in the Indo-Pacific but with individual CPTPP countries. Already, 20% of Chinese goods are destined for CPTPP countries, and 50% of them are intermediate products. Of those countries, Malaysia, Vietnam and Mexico have the highest level of imports from China. In the UK, that figure is 13% of our imports, given the nature of our imports from China.

Will the UK Government commit to ensuring that they do everything possible to lead and strengthen the CPTPP as a free-trading bloc and an alternative to our trading partners, and indeed ourselves, being dependent on the Chinese economy? To return to a subject we have been debating in a Committee, will they ensure that no measure is taken under the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill that would undermine the UK’s ability both to exploit the opportunities of the CPTPP and to act as a beacon of global free trade with our new partners?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a debate of fitting quality at the end of this calendar year. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for bringing it to us. In some respects, I hope this final debate of 2024 might frame some of the early debates we have in 2025, when we look at the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s visit to Beijing and other Ministers’ visits to China. I hope they will be able to take the contributions from this debate into consideration when they form their views, because we have served a challenge function and reflected on some of the subjects we need to debate.

As my noble friend Lady Smith said, tis the season of another government approach to China. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, outlined the previous Administration’s approach, so we can see the word salad of “protect”, “co-operate”, “prioritise”, “challenge”, “align”, “compete” and “engage”. The word that is missing is “strategy”, and you could add “published” in front of that. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Fox, because he outlined in such clear terms why we need to have one.

I say this with great respect, because I both understood and agreed with much of the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, but I felt there was a contradiction, to some extent, in seeking to move away from trade dependency on China towards other trading partners in the CPTPP who also predominantly have seen growth as a result of trade with China and are now basically a vehicle for us to have enhanced trade with China. This seems to be the Government’s adopted approach for trade. It seems that “European Union” are the two words that dared not speak their name in the debate. If we seek to diversify away from trade dependency on China, it might be that we should have stronger trade links with our European neighbours.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

Just to clarify, my proposal, which was not clear at all, was that we should help and encourage those countries that have a trade dependency with China—that is, those CPTPP partners—to move away from that trade dependency and use our role to do that.