Xinjiang: Forced Labour

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support for the measures we are taking. He is right about them. I share his concern in relation to Xinjiang and also, specifically, torture. Torture is an international crime, and anyone who engages in it, directs it or even takes an order in relation to it will be guilty under international law. The real challenge with China, as we know, is how to get remedy—redress—for these actions. The measures that we have announced today will prevent any profiting from forced labour, or indeed torture, and also prevent any UK businesses from financially, whether inadvertently or otherwise, supporting it.

If we want more significant accountability, the answer is to get an authoritative third-party body that is to review such matters—as, with the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), we have managed to secure in relation to World Health Organisation access to China this week. We have to keep pressing, with our international partners. That is why the group of international partners that is assembled is very important. It must be as broad as possible in order to secure access for the UN Human Rights Commissioner.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab) [V]]

Of course I warmly welcome these measures, but they simply are not sufficient for the moment at hand. We need only listen to the Secretary of State’s own comments and read them against the genocide convention to see that there is a clear example of genocide being practised in Xinjiang now. Killing people, causing bodily or mental harm, preventing births, forcibly transferring children—these are all the markers of genocide. Of course we need to come to a view both in this House and in the courts, but the difficulty about doing so through the courts is that China has a veto. How are we going to make sure that we name this as it properly is and that the people who are accountable for it actually come to justice? I have lauded the Secretary of State many times for introducing the Magnitsky measures, but there is no point in having them and just constantly reviewing them if we never blasted well use them.

[Dominic Raab]

We have used the Magnitsky sanctions. We recently announced another tranche of measures in addition to the first, and, as the hon. Gentleman will know, we are working on proposals to extend the model to corruption, so we have been extremely assiduous in this area. I understand his point about how we actually hold people individually to account for these crimes. Whether it is genocide or gross human rights violations, the label is less important than the accountability for what are, no doubt, egregious crimes, but he has not suggested anything to me that would precipitate that. We are taking the targeted measures that will cut the funding, inadvertently or otherwise, going into the internment camps, and prevent those in the internment camps who are running them from profiting from it. If we want any wider initiative, we will need a far wider range of international support and we will need to get authoritative third parties to have some kind of access. That is why I referred to the work of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, as difficult and challenging as it is, and why I raised it with António Guterres yesterday.