Chinese Government Sanctions on UK Citizens

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his continued work on this subject. The Government see China’s increasing international assertiveness at scale as potentially the most significant geopolitical shift in the 2020s, but it is vital that we co-operate with China to tackle the most important challenges facing this generation, not the least of which is climate change. We will do more to adapt to that growing impact and to manage our disagreements. We need to defend our values but co-operate where our interests align. We must pursue a positive economic relationship as well as tackle global challenges. I said in response to a previous question that the House should be in no doubt that China is an authoritarian state, with different values from those of the United Kingdom. We will continue to act on matters on which we do not agree, including human rights and Hong Kong.

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP) [V]]

As Members have said, the sanctions fit into a wider pattern of action that Beijing has been taking forward across the European continent and the US, reaching beyond politics and into academia and elsewhere. From the perspective of the Scottish National party, the whole point of democracy is that we can disagree, if not as friends then certainly as colleagues, and I have no hesitation in expressing our total support and total solidarity with the right hon. and hon. Members across the House and those elsewhere who have been sanctioned in this way. I am quite sure it will not silence them; it certainly will not silence SNP politicians in the Scottish Parliament or in this place.

Beijing has taken advantage of mixed signals from the UK Government. Although the Government have not done nothing, they could be tougher. It was a Conservative Government who whipped their own Members against a genocide amendment to the Trade Bill—a matter of great regret—and the UK still does not define the situation in Xinjiang as genocide. Does the Minister not agree that we need to be tougher on this? It is high time that the UK Government follow the lead of others, define what is happening in Xinjiang as genocide and make it clear that the UK will not do business with genocidal regimes anywhere?

[Nigel Adams]

The amendment to the Trade Bill that was passed is consistent with our long-standing policy that any judgment on whether genocide has occurred is a matter for a competent court, rather than for Governments or non-judicial bodies, and should be decided after consideration of all the evidence available in the context of a credible judicial process.