Wednesday 16th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

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Nigel Adams Portrait Nigel Adams
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The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this issue. Obviously trade with China is important to us. As I said earlier, it is the fourth largest trading partner. It is important to help UK firms to overcome the economic challenges of covid and ensure our long-term prosperity, but I can guarantee the hon. Gentleman that we will not sacrifice either our values or our security in that regard.

Bob Blackman Portrait Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
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Clearly the footage shown on the BBC earlier this week showed factories located right next door to prison camps in Xinjiang. That is very disturbing and suggests very strongly that the people working in those factories are in the prison camps, and are not doing so willingly. It is also clear that the conditions under which people are living are inhumane. When he sees the Chinese ambassador, will my hon. Friend urge him to accept the need for an independent investigation into the treatment and detention of the Uyghur people, so that we can get to the bottom of this and ensure proper, humane conditions, and make sure that people are paid for the work they do and that they do so voluntarily?

Nigel Adams Portrait Nigel Adams
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We do make this absolutely clear; in fact, the Foreign Secretary has made it clear that the UN Human Rights Commissioner or another independent fact-finding body must be given unfettered access to Xinjiang to check the facts to which my hon. Friend refers. We call for that repeatedly in joint statements at UN bodies and we bring this up regularly with the Chinese ambassador to the UK, but I reiterate that it is vital that China allows such access without delay.