Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 29th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister said in Committee that she would be getting the latest advice from the National Cyber Security Centre. I appreciate that she will give a fuller answer on the security Bill—when it comes—on high-risk vendors, such as Huawei, and the level at which the UK will tolerate them. So that is good.

I admire my noble friends and all noble Lords supporting this amendment, because every opportunity should be taken to highlight the atrocities going on in China, whether in Tibet, Hong Kong or Xinjiang. I still bear a grudge from the time when the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and I, as Cambridge students, were denied entry to China, despite the support of sponsors and known sinologists, such as Joan Robinson and Dr Joseph Needham. A friend of mine, Christian Tyler, wrote a book about Xinjiang 15 years ago, describing the emergence of a Uighur people rich in their own cultural and religious traditions. How could Beijing turn 10 million people into potential terrorists? No wonder some turned into freedom fighters. One of them came here—the Uighur leader of some 1 million people in exile, Rebiya Kadeer—at the invitation of myself and Lord Avebury.

All noble Lords heard how the Minister shares these concerns. Mass detention and brainwashing are the latest stage only of a long campaign by Beijing to suffocate the Uighurs, and to eradicate their culture, history, language and religion. The basic aim is to secure China’s penetration and economic control of central Asia, northern Xinjiang being the key crossing point for the belt and road initiative. We have already heard of Huawei’s work in that area.

China’s GDP per capita has risen, mainly because of this enormous trade and investment outreach, much of which is with this country, despite the international sanctions. In business, such as the telecoms Bill before us, it seems our international contact is still at its most active. That is surely good reason for this amendment. Human rights should be on the Explanatory Memorandum and impact assessment of every treaty and business agreement we look at in this House. As my noble friend said, this amendment provokes a new conversation, involving our own Human Rights Minister, the present Minister, and strengthening the Modern Slavery Act and its reporting requirements—as the Minister said. I hope the telecom authorities and the Government will think seriously about the necessity for the amendment, and that my noble friend divides the House.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I appreciate the way that the House authorities and all Benches have worked to enable us to challenge the Government safely, and am glad to conduct our business from the safety of isolation.

I support this amendment introduced by the powerful speeches of those sponsoring it and that of my noble friend Lady O’Loan. She described the horrors, yet many more as yet undescribed are happening. We are horrified at home by even small acts of violence towards people whose characteristics are protected in our laws, so how can we ignore gross violations elsewhere, turn a blind eye and pretend all is well out of convenience to ourselves?

History repeats itself. In the Second World War, in the early 1940s, concentration camp victims were used as workers by Siemens and many others. Now, we have ever-growing evidence of gross abuses of human rights in China. The chilling evidence from the independent tribunal of Geoffrey Nice QC found overwhelming evidence of forced organ harvesting. Yet we fail to act on its findings. We need legislative teeth, not sympathetic noises and wringing of hands. Professor Zenz’s report, published today, reveals the forced sterilisation of Uighur women in Xinjiang and the high internment rate of women in retraining camps. His supplementary paper on the relationship with Huawei, also published today, finishes:

“We must conclude that Huawei is directly implicated in Beijing police state and related human rights violations in Xinjiang, and that it has lied to the public about this fact on at least two different occasions.”


We must not be actors in history repeating itself because anything looks convenient or a bargain. We must not become complicit in human rights abuses on a massive scale. I will borrow the words of Andrew Griffiths, the then honourable Member for Burton, in a debate last March on forced organ harvesting:

“we have seen this before ... If we look at history, we see that there were opportunities for Governments to intervene and act, but they did not”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/19; col. 46WH.]

Now is the time to say “This must stop” and to uphold our values in all our commercial dealings. We must develop other supply chains. We must produce our own consumables, PPE and hospital equipment, not only telecoms equipment. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said, we must start somewhere. If my noble friends, led by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, test the opinion of the House, I will vote “Content” with them. If not, we must hold the Government to account to bring forward proper protection of human rights, and it will be to our shame if we do not act.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I was going to promise to be brief but, after the attempt of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, I am not quite going to match his brevity. We have heard some very powerful speeches and some very broad speeches today, and noble Lords are to be commended for that. However, there is one group of people who have not yet been mentioned, and that is the management and the directors of the companies potentially sourcing equipment to deliver the infrastructure in this country. Every company, in any business sector, has the potential to impact a range of human rights issues, and it is up to the board of that company to understand the impact it is having and to deal with it. This amendment, powerfully spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others, sends an important signal to businesses in this sector.

In her speech, I think I heard the Minister say that the impact was transferred from the equipment suppliers to the operators. Well, the operators are the people who source this equipment. Their boards have a responsibility to their shareholders and wider society to make sure that they do the right thing. It is clear that more boards are taking these issues more seriously, and this debate and subsequent changes should provide more emphasis for future boards and those future discussions. It has also permeated into the fund management world. Increasingly, investors look to invest in companies that act ethically and do the right thing.

This has been a huge debate but, narrowly speaking, we should expect our companies in this country to act ethically, and we should, as legislators, give companies as much guidance as we can regarding what that means in principle. That has been the nature of this debate.

Therefore, if the noble Lord, Lord Alton, decides to press this vote, we will support this amendment from these Benches, as we have said. If, however, he chooses to discuss with the Minister bringing something back on Third Reading, we would also support that—but what is brought back has to be substantive; it has to be real. I do not think the mood of the House can be satisfied by something that seems to push this into the long grass.