Integrated Activity Fund: Transparency

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered transparency of the Integrated Activity Fund.

May I say from the outset that it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, and to see Members here for this Thursday afternoon debate? Many MPs from different parties have attempted to question the Government on this fund, only to be met with unclear and murky answers. This is a fund of up to £20 million each year to countries accused of human rights abuses, so the last thing the Government should be is unclear and murky.

I will raise several issues regarding the transparency of the fund, in the hope that the Government can finally provide some answers. We know that the fund is spent across the Gulf Co-operation Council states—Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. However, the Government have failed to provide a breakdown of spending in each country. Ministers reason that this lack of transparency is because:

“Many of the projects and programme activities were delivered regionally, so it is not possible to provide a breakdown by beneficiary state.”

It seems clear to me that a solution would be to outline the projects that the IAF supports, then we could understand how the money is spent across the region.

However, when MPs have inquired into the projects that the fund supports, the Government continue to be vague:

“The Integrated Activity Fund supported a range of non-ODA programmes and projects across the Gulf. These included, but were not limited to, activities focusing on culture, healthcare, youth engagement, economic diversification and institutional capacity building.”

I am afraid that that is not clear enough. The House deserves to know exactly what projects the UK Government are funding across the region through the IAF.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is setting up the debate nicely here, but may I suggest that it might be helpful to go back to first principles and ask ourselves whether, in the areas he has just outlined, the need for any reform within the Gulf Co-operation Council countries may not necessarily be rooted in lack of money?

[David Linden]

The right hon. Gentleman puts a good point on the record, and it is something I will attempt to develop later in my speech. In terms of first principles, he is perhaps right, and I am sure that when he speaks he will reaffirm that to the Minister.

Considering the accusations from human rights groups over the legitimacy of this fund, the Government should be obliged to publish the results of the risk assessment that they should obviously have undertaken. However, the Government will not even disclose to the House the beneficiaries or implementers of, or projects funded by, the IAF, giving Ministers and the public no idea how their money is being spent.

Members of this House and of the other House have repeatedly questioned the Government on the specifics of the Integrated Activity Fund. However, we have only received vague half-answers in response. I guess that begs the question: if the Government have nothing to hide, why will they not be completely transparent on the fund?

The question of transparency clearly links with a topic brought up by hon. Members across the House, that of human rights abuses in the gulf region. Hon. Members have brought up the fact that the UK Government funds projects in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where we know the death penalty, torture and political imprisonment take place. Indeed, the human rights situation in those countries is worsening; Saudi Arabia executed a record 184 people last year, while the indiscriminate Saudi-led bombing of Yemen is responsible for what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst man-made humanitarian catastrophe.

This is not the first time the Government have been criticised over their funding of projects in GCC states. A case in point is the controversial conflict, security and stability fund, the CSSF, which drew criticism from UK aid watchdogs for serious shortcomings in the way it operated. It was found to have been insufficiently rigorous in applying safeguards to prevent collaboration with foreign entities with suspect human rights records.

One project funded by the CSSF was the contentious security and justice programme in Bahrain. In its 2018 report, the Foreign Affairs Committee urged the Government to review the programme, particularly in light of the evidence that Bahraini prison staff and security personnel had been implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings.

That programme, which cost at least £6.5 million, caused the CSSF to come under parliamentary investigation for its lack of transparency. However, once the programme began to face scrutiny, it was simply transferred over to the Integrated Activity Fund. If the CSSF faced severe criticism from this House for its funding of the programme, then it is only natural that the IAF, which is arguably more opaque, should receive the same investigation.

The IAF has also come under further scrutiny for its links to the Bahrain Special Investigations Unit. Recent freedom of information requests obtained by the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy revealed that in 2018, visits were made under the IAF from the College of Policing, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and Merseyside’s professional standards department to meet counterparts at Bahrain’s Special Investigations Unit. Since those visits, Bahrain’s SIU has been criticised by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims as “critically flawed” and failing to meet,

“the minimum professional standards and minimum international legal standards”.

Bahraini judges and representatives from the Ministry of Interior visited the UK in 2018 and 2019 under the IAF. According to the Bahraini embassy in London, these visits were conducted to discuss,

“both the scope and implementation of alternative sentences in the UK”.

The FOI requests also indicate that no overseas justice and security assessment was conducted for the judges’ visit, violating the Government’s own human rights safeguarding policy.

Prior to a mass prisoner release to ease the severe overcrowding of Bahrain’s prisons following the outbreak of covid-19, evidence suggests that alternative sentencing legislation was discriminating against political prisoners, including Sheikh Mirza Al-Mahroos and human rights defender Ali Al-Hajee. Alongside revealing the other contentious programmes and activities that the IAF supports, the FOI requests further highlight that at least two programmes have been provided exclusively to Bahrain. This evidence shows that certain activities are, in fact, country specific, thus negating the FCDO’s claim that country-specific breakdowns are impossible, since activities are only covered regionally. In the light of that, I again urge the Government to provide a clear breakdown of the individual projects and programmes they fund in each of the countries that the IAF supports.

With a history of controversial projects and their insistence on being vague about the Integrated Activity Fund, the Government are not painting a particularly clear image of their support for the GCC region. Lord Scriven said of the IAF:

“I have never seen a situation where it started open and became more swiftly opaque as criticisms grew… the Government have become hypersensitive if not paranoid to the fact that the truth will be exposed”.

It is imperative that the Government are more transparent about the Integrated Activity Fund, including by releasing information on the specific projects that the fund supports, in what countries, and crucially, whether they comply with the human rights risk assessment. I look forward to the Minister, for whom I have the utmost respect as a personal friend, enlightening the Chamber this afternoon as he closes the debate on behalf of the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I remind the Chamber of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I chair the all-party parliamentary British-Qatar group. I am struggling to remember, but I think I am also an office-bearer for the all-party parliamentary group on Kuwait, but other hon. Members will know that the amount of commitment that those offices bring with them is, shall we say, variable. My engagement with those APPGs has, however, given me, I hope, a small measure of insight into engagement with Gulf countries—those in the Gulf Cooperation Council in particular, although I am not sure that there really is a functioning GCC at present.

I am not without sympathy for the purposes behind the idea of such funds. As I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), I am not really persuaded that the deficiencies in civic Government, human rights and even in agriculture—rarely does a debate come up where the MP for Orkney and Shetland cannot talk about agriculture—are necessarily down to a lack of funding. However, I am also always aware that when one engages with countries that have deficiencies in those and other areas, it is best always to do so from a starting point of a measure of humility. We rarely achieve much by lecturing and preaching to people in other countries. Understand a bit of their own history and how they have come to the point they are at today.

To draw on my experience with Qatar, for example, I have been genuinely impressed in recent years to see some of the progress that has been made in relation to labour rights. The abolition of the kafala system and the opening of an International Labour Organisation office in Doha are significant achievements, and we should be pleased. When I speak to people in the Qatari Government, of course we want to talk about those things, as they inevitably do—every Government always want to talk about where they have made progress—but we also have to be mindful that there is still a significant way to go in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, for example. To engage with any measure of integrity with these countries, we have to be able to tell them that, while appreciating the progress they have made, we see other areas where progress still has to be made.

I am always very conscious of the fact that in Britain the abolition of the death penalty and the legalisation of homosexuality both happened in the course of my life. Both date back to the 1960s, so we should engage and encourage, but we should be mindful of the fact that we have not always had the greatest story to tell. On labour rights, for example, let us not kid ourselves, because we still have a problem with human trafficking in this country, notwithstanding the gangmasters legislation that we have now had for about 10 to 15 years. So humility is the order of the day.

That said, engagement must bring with it other things. The most important of those, as the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said, should be transparency and accountability. It is in the operation of the IAF that we find a worrying lack of both transparency and accountability, and I fear that permeates other aspects of our engagement with Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Although it is not necessarily directly on point in relation to the operation of the IAF—at least I suspect that is the case, but who knows?—I am very concerned that the police chief in Dubai appears to be a front-runner for the presidency of Interpol. Nasser Ahmed Al-Raisi was in charge of the police service that detained a British academic, Matthew Hedges, for around six months on trumped-up charges, bluntly, which Matthew has always denied. I understand that he was eventually forced to sign a confession in Arabic, which he just did not understand, and in that time he was tortured. The engagement with the United Arab Emirates in relation to that case, for example, is not one that in any way, shape or form can be seen as working in the interests of United Kingdom citizens.

It is because of the lack of transparency and accountability that the business of engagement with GCC countries looks, from time to time, as if it is operating on double standards. We criticise China—I am 100% behind the Government’s new policy on China—but at the same time we seem to find it very difficult to criticise the Saudi Government, notwithstanding, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) outlined, their truly appalling human rights record. Yes, they have recently passed legislation allowing women the right to drive, but at the same time they are jailing those who actually campaigned for that very right. They also use the death penalty for people who would have been minors at the time they committed any crimes. They seem to continue on an almost unrestricted basis, including—God help us—having crucifixions.

If UK taxpayers’ money is being spent in such countries, the UK Government have a duty to account to taxpayers for where it is being spent and what it is being spent on. The little that we do know about the operation of the IFA, particularly as it relates to Bahrain, is that it involves sentencing reform and alternative sentencing there. That is a cause that I am prepared to support—indeed, it is a drum that I have beaten for many years in this country. That is certainly something we should support. However, if we consider the way in which alternative sentencing policy is pursued in Bahrain, we find very quickly that in fact there is no benefit for the political prisoners there. The beneficiaries of alternative sentencing are all within the country’s criminal justice system. I would have thought that one of the things we would want to promote is equal treatment, at the very least, of criminal prisoners and political prisoners. We should of course be pursuing a situation in which there are no political prisoners, but for those who find themselves imprisoned in Bahrain, any advances should be equally available to all.

There is a case for doing at least some of the work associated with the IAF, but I cannot think of many areas of public expenditure, even at this scale, that are allowed to be maintained in such conditions of secrecy. It is totally lacking in transparency and accountability. If the money is genuinely being spent on capacity building, we should expect it to be spent through non-governmental organisations, which I know is not easy in Gulf countries. However, they are there and they do operate, and they would seem a more obvious route for channelling support through, as we do in virtually every other theatre in which we spend overseas development moneys.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

This fund is not part of our aid budget; it is overseas spending.

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed, which is why I deliberately did not use the terms “overseas aid” or “overseas development assistance”. However, to the hard-pressed British taxpayer, it is money that is being spent overseas, and the objectives set for the IAF would not look out of place in our overseas development assistance budget. If the objectives are the same, there would have to be some compelling reason why, on this occasion, we are effectively giving money to state actors, rather than non-state actors.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in this regard. I fear that it is a topic to which the House will continue to return for some time to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cleverly]

I understand. The hon. Gentleman knows that, since becoming the Minister for the region, I am the responding Minister. If he is critical of repetitive answers, it is because the same questions keep being asked, but I will try to address promptly some of the points that were raised, if hon. Members permit.

I am very conscious that, as we have seen today, through written correspondence and more broadly, there has been criticism of the fund, and particularly of our work in Bahrain, but our policy has been to engage with Bahrain and to encourage and support its institutional reform through targeted assistance. For example, the IAF has enabled British expertise to help develop Bahrain’s independent human rights oversight bodies. I know that Members present have been critical, but the creation of those bodies is important, as is their improvement and reform. I know that the ombudsman’s office has, again, been criticised, but it must be recognised that it has investigated more than 5,000 complaints. I invite hon. Members to consider whether those investigations would have happened had we not been involved.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister cites two examples that we have discussed already. That is good, but if he can tell us about those examples, why can we not be told about them all?

[James Cleverly]

I am going to try to rattle through my speech, because, unfortunately, I will run out of time otherwise. A number of the points that Members have raised are embedded in it, but if I do not get to the end, I will not be able to cover them.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) said that the alternative sentencing programme is a welcome step in the right direction and that he would like to see it go further. He is right, but if it were not in existence it would not be able to go further, and it is in existence at least in part because of the technical assistance from the UK Government. Those outcomes have strengthened human rights adherence and accountability in Bahrain, and they are possible only because—

China’s Policy on its Uyghur Population

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). I thank all those who signed the petition to bring this matter to the Chamber this evening.

I do not know whether it is a formally declarable interest or not, but I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Uyghurs. My co-chair, the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), would be here, but she is shielding. It is worth reflecting that this is another instance demonstrating that the current procedures for participation in House business perhaps require another visit. In fact, the same is true of the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who takes a close personal interest in these matters.

As the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) observed, I first held a debate on the treatment of the Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang province in this Chamber on 29 January last year. It is gratifying to see the number of people attending the debate today, which is an indication of the attention that has come to the issue and that interest in it has grown.

I was particularly struck in June when Jewish News ran a front-page story with the headline “Chilling echoes”. On 1 October, it ran an editorial revisiting the issue:

“When Jewish News ran a front page earlier this year with the headline ‘Chilling echoes’—in reference to the abuse of the Uyghurs and parallels with the Shoah—we didn’t do so lightly. Any hint of a parallel with the darkest chapter in human history is something we’d always caution against. But the discovery of tonnes of hair taken from members of the minority community in China invoked emotions we as Jews simply could not ignore.”

I quote that because the question of genocide, and the evidence required to establish genocide, is now perhaps at the centre of this issue and our examination of it. As others said, this time, nobody can say that they were not told, that they did not know. There is a growing body of evidence that what is being done in Xinjiang province to the Uyghur Muslim population bears all the characteristics of a genocide, and that there is a requirement for it to be called out politically, and acted on legally, as a genocide.

The hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling referenced the UN convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. Article 2 outlines the basis on which genocide is to be established legally—that it is

“committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”,

although that should not be treated as an exhaustive list. That is to say, to meet the legal definition of genocide, the atrocities committed against the Uyghurs need to be committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Consider what has come into the public domain in recent months in that regard. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute published “Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang.” We have the report prepared for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China by Adrian Zenz, “Sterilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control”. We have further Australian Strategic Policy Institute reports: “Cultural Erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang” and “Exploring Xinjiang’s detention system”.

Surely, now, on the basis of that evidence gathered by campaign groups around the world, there needs to be a formal mission to China headed up by the United Nations to gather the evidence in a systematic manner, in order to move forward in a legal, not just a political, way. That is the opportunity that we have as a member of the United Nations Security Council, and I urge the Minister today to make every progress in that regard.

China: Labour Programme in Tibet

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reports of China’s rapid expansion of the labour programme in Tibet co-published by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. Having wiped my microphone, I feel like I am ready to go. Today’s debate is about the recent report on China’s rapid expansion of mass labour programmes in Tibet. This paper was co-published by a leading human rights adviser and scholar, Adrian Zenz, with a group that I am a member of called IPAC—the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China—and there are others in the room who are also part of that group. It includes both left and right parliamentarians in 17 countries who are concerned about the behaviour of China across a range of issues. As I say, Adrian Zenz is a scholar in this area, and he has previously published a paper with IPAC on the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women, and I will touch on that issue shortly.

Adrian Zenz has uncovered this material through existing Government papers. That is the interesting thing: none of this is secret. In a sense, it is quite open, and these Government papers spell out exactly what has been going on. The findings are shocking, although it is important to note that, with all the other debates about China, which I will touch on in my conclusion, Tibet has, funnily enough, been rather forgotten. It has been an issue for a while, and then it has disappeared, and nobody seems to talk about it. What this paper has done is reminded us that, over a longer period than for anything else, the Chinese authorities have been bearing down on the human rights of the indigenous population in Tibet.

The findings of the report are particularly interesting, because they show that there has been mandatory—I use this term advisedly—vocational training, which basically means driving out the sense of identity of the people in Tibet. Alongside these programmes, there are forcible labour transfer schemes. Those are slightly gentle words, but what they mean is that people are being taken from one place and put into camps, a bit like—well, a lot like—the Uyghurs we uncovered, who are forced to do hard labour in all sorts of areas and without proper pay or support.

Over half a million labourers were collected together into these camps in the first seven months of 2020. Local government officials are required by the Government to meet quotas for what they term recruitment to the scheme—it is nothing like any concept of recruitment that we might understand. It basically means that they have to get people in certain categories into those camps as quickly as they can. This process is overseen by strict military management, which includes enforced indoctrination and intrusive surveillance of participants. Labourers may also be forcibly transferred from their homes to work all over China. In other words, this is not just about camps in Tibet; people are being moved around to fulfil requirements elsewhere. Of course, this process has close similarities with the training and labour transfer in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, which I will touch on.

The Government’s attempts to dilute Tibetan identity are really critical. That is being done through forced cultural assimilation, and the same pattern is going on in a number of areas. Interestingly, the Government documents state that these programmes aim to reform Tibetan cultural “backwardness”. That is an interesting concept and a relative concept, and of course its relativity is defined by those in power, which is to say the Communist party of China. That aim is achieved by the Government enforcing the learning of Mandarin and weakening, however they can, the religious influence that exists among those who claim to be indigenously Tibetan.

This is not an isolated incident. We have seen this pattern of eradication—or attempted eradication—of ethnicity across China. We know from the parallel report that was published a little earlier on the Uyghurs that at least 1 million Uyghurs are in mass arbitrary detention in Xinjiang. There are almost 400 prison camps in the region, with more still under development. It is disgraceful, but we understand that western fashion brands use supply chains where forced labour is prevalent. I am sure that will apply in due course, if not already, in Tibet. The Government-sponsored forced sterilisation and birth suppression in the Uyghur populations, which we believe do exist, would meet the genocide criteria—we have yet to get the UN to even look at that, but it is the key. Civil servants are also placed in Uyghur homes to monitor behaviour, and children whose parents are detained are being taken from their families and placed in state facilities.

But it is not just the Tibetans and the Uyghurs; it is now also the Christians. Party members who profess a faith are now subject to disciplinary procedures, with the arrest and detention of Christian leaders such as Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Church, who was detained in December 2018 and sentenced to nine years in prison for

“incitement to subvert state power”.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

These acts of repression never happen all at once. It is never a single thing that happens immediately. Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern about reports that we are now hearing from southern Mongolia about the start of the same process of cultural and linguistic oppression of the local population? If we do not call it out, we will probably see the same thing happen there.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is a pleasure to give way to the right hon. Gentleman, who came early to this issue. He has been calling it out for some time, and I congratulate him on that. I agree with him. We have to look at the starting point. People took their eyes off Tibet, but we can see now what is happening. People did not want to talk about the Uyghurs, but we have advanced. Repression is happening everywhere.

My point about the Christians is that it has been going on for a long time. There are threats, for example, to withhold state support from low-income Christian families who do not give up their religious belief, and there is a similar experience among Catholic churches. It is not only about churches that the Government do not consider to be registered; it is also even churches that they might consider to be registered.

The Falun Gong has experienced the most appalling behaviour. The 610 Office is the security agency charged with solely persecuting the Falun Gong. If detainees do not renounce Falun Gong beliefs, they are subject to re-education through labour. There are reports of beatings, solitary confinement, 24-hour monitoring, rack torture, tiger bench torture, water torture, stress position torture, forced feeding for those on hunger strike and forced injections of unknown drugs, and now, most shockingly of all, there are confirmed stories of organ harvesting from those who have been incarcerated.

Liu Guifu, a Falun Gong practitioner from Beijing, was twice sent to RTL camps—retraining camps—in Beijing. She reports being deprived of sleep, not allowed to use a bathroom or drink water. She was forced to consume faeces and toilet water, and was given unidentifiable drugs to make her lose consciousness. I urge the Government to call that out.

I also urge the Government to do a series of things so that the UK becomes a lead advocate in all of this. First, we need to look at mandatory sanctions with regard to global human rights abuses: sanctions such as travel bans or asset freezes. The officials responsible should have Magnitsky arrangements applied to them for the use of forced compulsory labour in Tibet and in other areas, too. The Government should also open a way for similar judgments to be issued on cases regarding abuses against Xinjiang’s Uyghurs and other minorities in China that I have touched on.

I urge the Government to support amendment 68 to the Trade Bill in the Lords to nullify trade arrangements past and future if the High Court makes a preliminary determination that a proposed trade partner has perpetrated genocide. I can tell the Government now that, should such a new clause come to the Commons, I will absolutely support it. I also urge the Government to consider that, to meet GDP targets. China’s economy needs to grow by some 7.5% a year. Under the cover of that, China is being given the capacity to behave in the way it does by western companies and Governments, which are turning a blind eye.

It is worth reminding ourselves that, beyond even the human rights abuses, China is now in breach of World Trade Organisation rules endlessly across the piece. It incentivises companies through illegal discounts, tax breaks and subsidies. Even Volkswagen reported that it had to buy a quota of components from local Chinese suppliers or pay more than double the standard import tax on such parts, which violates the WTO rules that everybody else is meant to obey. China favours exporting finished products, which means that it basically forces companies to manufacture and produce.

The supply chain risk profiles are all in the report, and they are there for us as well. The supply chains in Tibet, Xinjiang and other regions are linked to forced labour, and the Government have to make it clear to British business that it is unacceptable to be in the slightest bit involved with those chains. I also ask the Government to demand reciprocal access to Tibet and other regions, such as Xinjiang, in order to allow for independent international investigation into the reports of forced labour, and to call for a UN special rapporteur on Tibet.

The peculiarity of the situation is that if China were any other country in the world, every Government would call it out. They would demand change. Imagine if it were a country in Europe, Africa or anywhere else—there would immediately be demands and debates in the UN. That does not happen. Far too much of what we think and do about China is now influenced massively by the concern about getting goods, manufacturers, investment and so on organised.

China is involved in occupying the South China sea. The UN has said that China has no right to it at all, yet it is demanding and controlling whole areas. It has been involved in border disputes—aggressive behaviour—recently with India, in which Indian soldiers have been killed.

Then there is the situation in Hong Kong. How much more can we say about Hong Kong? China is abusing what is going on and has dismissed an international agreement with regards to the legalities, leading to the incarceration of many peaceful protestors and their shipment to China for prosecution, where they will certainly not get a fair trial. By the way, I asked the Government what they think of British judges being employed still on the bench in Hong Kong. Surely it is time that we said, “Enough!” They can no longer give cover to what is going on in Hong Kong. It has to stop, for goodness’ sake.

There is one other action that the Government can take. The winter Olympics are planned to be in China. Many of us believe that, if it were any other country, there would now be calls for the Olympics to be moved. I simply say to the Government that they will have to take a stance on this issue pretty soon.

Overall, we are dealing now with a country that appears to have bullied and threatened its way through all of this. It is imposing the most dreadful and terrible things on many of its people, it is abusing human rights, and many people now believe that it might even be guilty of a form of genocide. I simply say to my Government that it is time for them to stand up. It is time for this Government to lead, and it is time for this Government to act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate. I declare an interest, in that I am also a member of IPAC. I, too, think that IPAC is to be commended for the production of the report that is tagged in the title of the debate.

To pick up on the theme first touched on by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), it is heartening to see the attention that issues such as the oppression of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang province and the situation in Hong Kong are now getting. However, it has not always been thus, and we should acknowledge that there has been a significant attitude change in Governments across the developed world towards China.

By and large I welcome that and I think it a positive change, but I sound a note of caution: when we criticise the regime in Beijing, the Chinese Communist party, we do that because what it does is worthy of criticism. It is not about isolating or demonising China. China has the potential to be a force for good as a massive and growing economy, but when we see that strength in the Chinese economy being used as a malign force in different parts of the world—the way in which China has used its economic influence in Africa, in particular, is worthy of greater consideration—we have not just the right, but the duty to call it out.

It is the case, candidly, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) touched on, that Governments of all stripes in recent years have been slow to the party on this. I remember the years when visits to this country under the Blair Government saw protesters shielded away from the site to avoid the risk of offending the delegations, and in 2013, Alex Salmond should have met the Dalai Lama when he came to Edinburgh. However, on all those occasions it is fair to say that the risk of upsetting China, getting on the wrong side of it and then being somehow economically disadvantaged, meant that we made the wrong call and took the wrong turns.

I am delighted to see a different approach from this Government and others throughout the western world. It was for that reason that I made the point about southern or, as we often call it, inner Mongolia, because what we are seeing there has disturbing echoes of what we have seen in other semi-autonomous regions in China. It starts with the linguistic and cultural oppression, but it never finishes there, and when we see it starting, that is the point at which we should be calling it out. I know today’s debate is not about southern Mongolia—perhaps we can keep that for other occasions—but I would draw the House and the Minister’s attention to some of the recent work being done by bodies such as Human Rights Watch and the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre and the reports that they published towards the end of August.

The IPAC report that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green referenced reveals that Tibet now has a significant compulsory vocational training programme and forced labour transfer scheme—straight out of the Xinjiang playbook, we could say. More than 500,000 people have been enlisted by the programme in the first seven months of 2020 alone; 49,900 of them were directly transferred to other parts of the province, while 3,109, according to the report, were transferred out of Tibet. It is easy to talk about the figures, horrific as they are, but it is worth pausing for a second to reflect on what they actually mean.

The figures mean, essentially, that the people of Tibet are seen as tools of the state and are deprived of the right and the opportunity to have any say in how and where they work. They have no freedom to choose how they live their own lives. It is a wilful disregard of human rights and human dignity, and that is why we have a duty to call it out. The report says that the forced labour programme is overseen by “strict military-style management”, which limits the liberty of Tibetans in an attempt to remove their so-called “backwardness”.

There is absolutely no place for such an approach in any working or social environment. We see this obsession with conformity and uniformity time and again in the way in which the Government in Beijing approach their people. There is no place for that in a modern state. The treatment of Tibet is part of the much wider programme that we have seen by the Chinese in other parts of the country.

I have a number of points for the Minister. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), there is a need to get observers and a human rights taskforce, badged under the United Nations, into Xinjiang province and other areas of concern. There is a need to meaningfully use Magnitsky-type sanctions and to look at whether the supply chains of companies selling and operating in this country have been using forced labour and whether British businesses and public bodies should take that into consideration. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 means that we have legal obligations as well as a moral imperative.

This comes down to the most fundamental human rights imaginable. We should never forget that human rights are universal. If they do not matter in Tibet and Xinjiang, frankly they do not actually matter here either.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

We now come to the Front-Bench speeches. I call Patrick Grady for the SNP.

China

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his support for these measures and for withdrawing his amendments; I appreciate his magnanimity in that regard. On the Magnitsky sanctions, he raises two different issues: their potential application in relation to, first, Hong Kong and, secondly, Xinjiang. We, of course, have a process for gathering all the evidence on those potential cases. The national security legislation is newly enacted, so that will take some time, but he is right to point to that. I have been reading over the weekend reports by Amnesty International in 2019 and 2020 on the range of abuses in Xinjiang, reports by Human Rights Watch between 2018 and 2020 on the mass detention and political indoctrination, and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination report in 2018 on the massive internment camps with no rights. We are looking at this carefully. As he rightly notes, it is important to assess this carefully, and it is a question of not only whether the abuses took place but whether individual responsibility can be ascribed to someone on whom we wish to impose a visa ban or asset freeze.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It seems wrong to be welcoming a suspension of extradition and exports, but backward steps though these may be, they are necessary, and my party will support them. Never mind the restrictions on exports—when will the Government start looking at the materials that we are importing from China, in particular those manufactured by Hikvision? It is some of the most intrusive surveillance technology to be found anywhere in the world, it is used widely in Xinjiang province, and it is now being purchased and installed by public and private authorities up and down this country. Will the Government look at that in a joined-up way?

On the subject of Xinjiang province, the world is watching, and what we are seeing is horrific. There was the drone footage at the weekend. Last week there was the interception of a shipment of human hair. I know that “genocide” is a term of art in law, and the Foreign Secretary is right to be cautious about its use, but it would make an enormous difference to tackling the issues in Xinjiang province if he would admit from the Dispatch Box that there are a growing number of adminicles of evidence that that is absolutely what is happening.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his typically focused and well considered remarks, and for his support. In relation to UK regulation and the regime that applies to imports, we have a strong and rigorous scheme in place, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will of course look at any individual cases that he wishes to raise. We are joined up—he asked about this—via the National Security Council and the other structures in a more closely integrated way, and covid-19 has encouraged that more broadly across the board.

On the definition of genocide, I have worked on war crimes since well before becoming a Member of this House, and the real challenge of it is the question of deliberate intention that is ascribed to it. As important as that is—it does bring with it legal implications that help in respect of accountability—the reality is that it can also distract from the fact that we are increasingly confident that there is a strong case to answer, as the Chinese ambassador was unable to do yesterday on “The Andrew Marr Show”, in respect of systematic human rights abuses. Frankly, the legal label on it is to me secondary to the plight of the victims who are suffering under it.

Bahrain: Prisoners Under Sentence of Death

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

Bahrain remains one of only two countries in the Gulf with an elected Parliament. UK support has strengthened the institutional capacity of the Bahraini Parliament’s secretariat, and we have enhanced the skills of staff to support MPs in their oversight of the Government. In addition, we have helped local NGOs to raise Bahraini youth awareness of democracy and parliamentary work, and we will continue to pursue those things.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I chair the all-party parliamentary British-Qatar group, among others, and the Minister will know that when it comes to engaging with countries in the Gulf, I preach a sermon of pragmatism and humility. But surely we can only encourage progress if we see it actually happening—expressing desire for change is not good enough. The OSJA process on which the Minister relies has been criticised by the Home Affairs Committee as being not fit for purpose. If he is going to rely on that process, will he publish the assessment carried out under it in relation to this assistance, and will he promote within Government an overhaul of that whole process?

[James Cleverly]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the points that he made. It was a Conservative Foreign Secretary who brought in the OSJA process, and as I have said, it is, by definition, constantly under review, and we seek always to improve it. The oversight bodies that have been criticised in the Chamber today only recently came into existence, and their existence is, in significant part, because of the work that the UK Government have done with the Bahrainis. There is a desire to see these organisations and their processes improve, and our technical assistance is part of that improvement programme. It would be entirely counter- productive for these organisations to be dispensed with, because I cannot see how that would increase or improve the oversight of the human rights situation. The aim surely should be to improve them, and it is through our close working relationship that we seek to do so.

Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend. He is absolutely right that, with these regulations and this legislation, there will of course be a whole range of suggestions and proposals from inside this House, from civil society and from non-governmental organisations about potential names. We will, of course, want to ensure that we proceed in a rigorous way. We want it to be based on evidence, but the advantage that we have is that the measures—this is one of the reasons I have always been a fan, champion and supporter of them—allow us to continue to engage bilaterally with countries that, frankly, we need to, while having targeted sanctions, the visa bans and the asset freezes, on the individuals who may be responsible. Where the evidence shows that that is the case, we have the mechanism to deliver that.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I too thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement and congratulate him on what I think will be seen in years to come as a watershed moment in the development of human rights law. He is absolutely right to focus on the most clamant cases that he has listed in early designations today, but I hope that frees up time and resource within the Foreign Office to turn attention towards China, and particularly to those in Hong Kong, for whom sanctions of this sort would appear to be the logical next step.

The Foreign Secretary rightly outlines and refers to the role of the courts in due process and ensuring that proper safeguards are put in place. There is another element, which is the role of this House in that regard. Others have referred to the Select Committees. The one Select Committee we are missing at the moment is the Intelligence and Security Committee. Does he agree that the announcement he has made today, which has been so widely well-received around the House, demands the early constitution of the ISC?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his support. These measures are important. I am not going to start, without proper appraisal and assessment of the evidence, handing out future designations. What I can tell him is that one of the delays or bits that took time was making sure we have a proper mechanism so that, as he rightly says, we go into a sort of steady state and can assess judiciously and carefully any future candidates for designations, if I may put it like that. He asked about the ISC. We want to see the ISC up and running as soon as possible. Once it is duly constituted, it will have a role in issues such as this.

Hong Kong National Security Legislation

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend and welcome all the work that she has done on human rights. She is right to draw attention to the specific issue of extra- territoriality. It is not clear, given the opaque way in which this is drafted in the national security legislation, how it was intended to be applied. We will take a very close look at it. We keep our travel advice under constant review. I hope that she has had the positive reassurance, given the statement made by 27 members in the UN Human Rights Council, that we are working actively and energetically with all our international partners to be very clear that China must live up to its international obligations when it comes to the people of Hong Kong.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement.

The statement will have been heard not just in this House but in Beijing also. I hope that in hearing it, China understands that the analysis that the Foreign Secretary has laid before the House today is not just the analysis of the Government but of this House as a whole. When we see reports of Hongkongers as young as 15 already being victims of this law, he must surely understand the importance of making sure that no Hongkonger is left behind in relation to the BNO passport arrangements. I very much share his frustration and disappointment that things have reached this point, but surely all countries and all institutions must understand that this is a moment when you have to pick a side: either you can be on the side of, and stand with, Hong Kong and the joint declaration, or you choose to stand with the Chinese Communist party. What will he do to urge the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and Standard Chartered bank to reconsider the decision they took in relation to taking sides?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his judicious remarks, and I certainly welcome the substantive points he made. He talked about the importance of this House, not just the Government, speaking with a united voice. That is exactly what we have had today on the key issue at stake, and I welcome his contribution to that. I also agree that it is heartbreaking to see the scenes in Hong Kong, just hours after the enactment of this national security legislation. We are counselling the Hong Kong authorities and Beijing to step back, but it is clear that, having enacted this legislation, they wish to proceed. We will need to wait to see the precise application and enforcement of this action before deciding some of the measures that we might take next, but these are under active consideration, including with our international partners.

I took the right hon. Gentleman’s point about BNOs. The full details will be set before the House by the Home Secretary, but we are very clear with our commitment to provide a path to citizenship for all eligible BNO-status holders and we will do the right thing by all of them. I have been very clear in relation to HSBC and I will say the same thing in relation to all of the banks. The rights and the freedoms of, and our responsibilities in this country to, the people of Hong Kong should not be sacrificed on the altar of bankers’ bonuses.

Xinjiang: Uyghurs

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

Clearly, as I have said previously, the reports we have seen in the last 24 hours or so add considerably to our serious concern about the situation in Xinjiang. We have had a short period of time to digest those reports. We will continue to stress our concern about the situation in Xinjiang and the way the Uyghur Muslim community in particular is having its human rights violated.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this welcome opportunity, and thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting it.

These reports would be horrific even if they were of stand-alone incidents, but of course we know they are not; they are part of a course of conduct that we have seen in recent years—the re-education camps, the forced repatriation of workers within China, and the reports of organ harvesting. As we have heard from others, this is a systematic operation, reminiscent of genocide, which is being visited upon the Uyghur population.

In January of last year I led a Westminster Hall debate calling for the Government to take this to the Security Council, with a motion demanding access for a working party to Xinjiang province. We all know the obvious difficulties with that, but with everything else having failed, why have the Government not done that yet?

[Nigel Adams]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman that I said earlier in my statement that we are constantly raising this issue with the UN. He is right to mention organ harvesting, and I know how concerned hon. and right hon. Members are about this alleged practice. We take these allegations very seriously. We have consulted our international partners and the WHO, and the evidence provides disturbing details about the mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners in particular, and raises worrying questions about China’s transplant system.

Hong Kong National Security Legislation: UK Response

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his excellent questions. I do think Hong Kong is part of a pattern, although it is not a uniform one. He referred to the violation of the UN convention on the law of the sea—I think that is what he was referring to in relation to the South China sea—and we could add cyber-attacks and the treatment of the Uighur Muslims. At every step, the right approach for the United Kingdom, as a matter of principle and also of effectiveness, is to call out behaviour that is contrary to international law on its own terms. In answer to the Chairman of the Select Committee and others, that is how we will build a coalition of like-minded countries to stand firm in the face of such behaviour.

My right hon. Friend asked about BNO passport holders. We have made a commitment, which he has heard today. It is important that we did that as a matter of principle, rather than waiting for others to agree in concept. However, we are already discussing with our partners—I raised it on the Five Eyes call yesterday—the possibility of burden sharing if we see a mass exodus from Hong Kong. I do not think that that is likely in the last analysis, but he is right to raise it, and we are on the case diplomatically.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

May I particularly welcome the commitment in relation to BNO passport holders? The Foreign Secretary has heard me make that plea on many occasions in the past. He will be aware, though, that the BNO offer was closed in 1997, so the announcement today does not offer any protection to those born after that date, who are, by definition, the brave young Hong Kongers who are out there demonstrating on the streets, and who are most vulnerable and in most need of protection. Will he look at what we can do to assist these people?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and pay tribute to him for his long-standing and principled position on this issue; he is absolutely right, and we appreciate all the cross-party support on this. He asked about those who do not qualify for BNO passport status. I would just point out that we are talking about over 300,000 people who do qualify. Of course, he makes a reasonable point about the cut-off date, but that would not apply to dependants. We have set out—based on principle, in the right way—the commitment that we are making but, as others have already mentioned, what will be important is that the international community comes together to ensure that there are options for the wider group to which the right hon. Gentleman refers.

Covid-19: Repatriation of UK Nationals

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

In that case, we will go to Alistair Carmichael.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

May I take the Minister back to the two positions stated last week by Sir Simon McDonald? These are not differences of nuance; they are two fundamentally different positions. Will the Minister share with the House the explanation that Sir Simon gave him for two such different positions being put out in the course of one day? More importantly, will he give us some assurance that if EU procurement processes are to offer a route to much-needed PPE being available in care homes and hospitals across the country, we will not lose out on that opportunity?

[Nigel Adams]

At the risk of repeating myself, it is actually the case that the permanent secretary issued his reaction to the Foreign Affairs Committee and made it clear that a political decision was not taken on whether we should participate in the scheme. Again, to reiterate the answer I gave to the SNP, the Health Secretary has confirmed that we will participate in a joint procurement scheme on therapeutics that is soon to launch. We have also made it clear that we will consider our participation in other future schemes on the basis of public health requirements, and that includes PPE.