Oral Answers to Questions

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

We have just cut VAT on many of those products. I have already visited my hon. Friend in his constituency, and I am happy to have further discussions about what more we can do to drive the take-up of these important technologies.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to help ensure that the supply chains of businesses in the UK do not use forced labour of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

In January 2021, we announced a robust package of measures to help to ensure that no UK organisations are complicit in the human rights violations being perpetrated in Xinjiang. We have also supplied detailed guidance to UK businesses, and will continue to engage with them.

[Afzal Khan]

I have lost count of the number of times I have urged the Government to take stronger, more robust action against China’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was spot on when he said that UK organisations must immediately sever their commercial ties with Russia to ensure that public money is not funding Putin’s war machine. In the light of a genocide that is happening on our watch, is it not high time that the Government applied the same rules and ensured that public organisations sever their contracts with Xinjiang? Will they also support amendments to the Health and Care Bill to prevent the NHS from being complicit in forced Uyghur labour?

[Paul Scully]

Evidence of the scale and severity of the human rights situation in Xinjiang paints a harrowing picture. The British Government will not stand for forced labour, wherever it takes place. We require businesses to report on how they are tackling modern slavery and forced labour in their operations and supply chains, and we plan to extend that to certain public bodies and to introduce financial penalties for organisations which do not comply. That will require legislative change, and legislation will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.