Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nusrat Ghani

Thursday 18th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. If she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the report by the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development of the Council of Europe entitled “Safeguarding democracy, rights and the environment in international trade”.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

It is clear that we live in dangerous times. Autocracies are behaving in a way that many of us have not seen in our lifetimes. The UK stands at a crossroads of this geopolitical stand-off between international rules-based systems as we know them and the system that autocratic leaders would like them to become. Trade and investment are at the very heart of that crossroads. The UK has long supported the promotion of our values globally, which will continue as an independent trading nation. By growing our trading relationships, the UK can increase its influence, which helps us to open conversations bilaterally with partners on a range of issues.

[Geraint Davies]

The Minister knows that I am trade rapporteur to the Council of Europe. My report, which has been agreed by 46 member states, calls for due diligence on the border to protect supply chains from human rights abuse and deforestation, and more clout for the environment vis-à-vis the interests of energy companies, in particular in dispute mechanisms. Will she meet me about taking forward those proposals so that trade agreements green rather than blacken our planet and uphold rather than diminish our fundamental rights?

[Ms Ghani]

I have read the hon. Member’s report, because he sent it to me. I have lost many hours of my life, but I have read it and I enjoyed it. It would be remiss of me not to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), the Conservative leader of the UK parliamentary delegation to the Council of Europe, for all his work. There is lots of really good stuff. [Interruption.] He leads the delegation, but the hon. Member wrote the report, which I have read. There are some good points, especially on China’s emissions, which are greater than USA and the EU combined.

The UK works with allies and partners through multilateral systems to promote our values globally. Multilateral forums include the UN, the World Trade Organisation, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Council of Europe. I will sit down and work through the hon. Member’s report with him.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nusrat Ghani

Report stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On agility, the Minister will know that the majority of the thousands of rules that need to be changed are in the environmental area. Does she think it is a good idea that civil servants are completely distracted and focused on the changes to these rules when we have one in four people in food poverty, 63,000 people dying a year due to poor air quality, sewage pouring into our seas and crabs dying off the north-east coast? Would it not be better if the civil servants and the Government tackled those problems rather than going down a rabbit hole and inventing worse standards than the EU, such as trying to get to World Health Organisation air quality standards by 2040, which the EU is trying to get to by 2030?

[Ms Ghani]

I think many people coming into the debate today think that this is the start of something, but this process has been in place for more than 18 months, and DEFRA has committed to maintain or enhance standards. The constant misinformation given out over what is happening on the environment is simply incorrect. DEFRA has already taken decisive action to reform areas of retained EU law and it already has flagship legislation on our statute book, including the Environment Act 2021, the Fisheries Act 2020 and the Agriculture Act 2020, all on powers that the SNP wants to give back to Brussels. The Environment Act strengthens our environmental protections while respecting our international obligations. It is simply incorrect to suggest that the Government will be weakening any of those protections. The Environment Act has set new legally binding targets, including to halt and reverse nature’s decline. Those targets, with oversight from the Office for Environmental Protection, will ensure that any reform to retained EU law delivers positive environmental outcomes. DEFRA will also conduct proportionate analysis of the expected impacts, so it is absolutely incorrect to misrepresent this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ghani]

The report today said, in contrast to the hon. Member’s comment, that we are one of the top countries to invest in globally. I am anxious to hear where he thinks the damage is being done.

I wish to address some of the amendments that misinterpret what the Bill does when it comes to workers’ rights. Workers’ rights are often rooted in UK law—they often started here, not in the EU—and the UK Government will not abandon our strong record on workers’ rights. We have some of the highest standards in the world. Why would we change that, if we started it and campaigned for it? In many areas, our workers’ rights are much stronger than those in the EU.

We have talked about maternity leave, maternity rights, flexible working, annual leave and the national living wage: all those things started here. Amendments that propose a carve-out for workers’ rights, which are not under threat because they started here, are a bit absurd.

Comments were made about product safety. The Government are committed to protecting consumers from unsafe products being placed on the market now and in the future. Of course that would be the way we do business. We are finalising a consultation setting out the next steps in delivering the Government’s ambitions for a new product safety framework. Our proposals include changes to save time and money for business.

[Geraint Davies]

On product safety, and specifically on asbestos, since it has been raised, the Minister will know that the precautionary principle means that chemicals that may be hazardous must be proven by the manufacturer to be safe. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency must prove they are hazardous, otherwise they can be sold—hence asbestos is sold in bricks in America. Can the Minister guarantee that there will be no shift to the American regime, which puts the onus on the Environmental Protection Agency and not the manufacturer? If there is, we will all be at risk of asbestos.

[Ms Ghani]

That is why we are going through EU legislation—to identify that and to make those decisions. I will respond to the hon. Gentleman’s point directly, but in his speech he mentioned his time at the European Council, and I believe that when he was there—

[Geraint Davies]

The Council of Europe.

[Ms Ghani]

The Council of Europe, forgive me. When he was there recently, the hon. Gentleman was open in saying that, when a Labour Government are in power, they will return us to the EU. If that is his motivation, I understand why he makes these points—

[Geraint Davies]

That is a lie.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nusrat Ghani

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State meet me and Swansea University to talk about using off-peak renewables to convert plastics into hydrogen and blending that in the gas grid, as his predecessor did, as part of the growth agenda? I appreciate that his predecessor did not do very well following that meeting.

[Ms Ghani]

I note that the hon. Member has raised the issue a number of times with BEIS. I am grateful that he has done so again. We are encouraged to hear about the development of new hydrogen technologies in Swansea. I know that the previous Secretary of State visited Swansea University. A range of Government support is already available for hydrogen production. The net zero hydrogen fund, the net zero innovation portfolio and the UK shared prosperity fund would help very much in Swansea.

Uyghur Tribunal Judgment

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nusrat Ghani

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that the December 2021 Uyghur Tribunal’s judgment in London found beyond reasonable doubt that the People’s Republic of China was responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and torture in the Uyghur region; and calls on the Government to urgently assess whether it considers there to be a serious risk of genocide in the Uyghur region and to present its findings to the House within two months of this motion being passed, use all means reasonably available to ensure the cessation of ongoing genocide, including conducting due diligence to ensure it is not assisting, aiding, abetting or otherwise allowing the continuation of genocide and fulfil its other obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, accept the recommendations of the Fifth Report of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang and UK value chains, Session 2019-21, HC 1272, including black-listing UK firms selling slave-made products in the UK and putting in place import controls to protect UK consumers, and place sanctions on the perpetrators of this genocide, including Chen Quanguo.

I put on record my thanks to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and the World Uyghur Congress, and to Rahima Mahmut and Dolkun Isa in particular. I also thank Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who chaired the Uyghur Tribunal. He worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2006 and led the prosecution in the trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of Serbia, for genocide. I cannot stress enough that there is no person more qualified than Sir Geoffrey to assess the facts and determine whether there has been genocide, the crime of all crimes.

There is a lot of speculation in this place about people abdicating their legal and moral duties, and that is what this debate is about. The Government have a legal and moral duty to respond to the Uyghur Tribunal’s verdict and the evidence that was put before it. They must stop shirking that duty by using expensive Government lawyers to weasel their way out of acting—a course of action that is truly reprehensible.

As we know, the Uyghur Tribunal verdict last month, which was based on the facts, was crystal clear: genocide is taking place in the Xinjiang region of north-west China. What more do the Government need to see and hear? Surely the Minister cannot argue with the evidence presented to the tribunal, or its conclusion that human rights abuses, torture and genocide are taking place—a conclusion that it made while it was sanctioned by the Chinese Communist party. There is no plausible reason for the Government to ignore the conclusions of the tribunal. To do so is to quibble on a point of dubious legality, to ignore evidence and to ignore the moral and legal duty to act. When will the Government do the right thing, and—this is a question to which we desperately seek an answer—where is the organising force of this Government?

I am not interested in hearing the Minister discuss whether or not the Uyghur Tribunal is a competent court. That is irrelevant to this debate. I am focusing on the International Court of Justice’s Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro 2007 ruling, which completely blows that argument out the water. Let me remind the Minister of the legal situation that the Government are in. The ICJ ruled that

“a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.”

That is the crux of the issue, and of this debate. Those are the rules that the Government are operating under—unless the Minister intends to suggest today at the Dispatch Box that we are now making up our own rules on the hoof.

This House, too, has examined some of the most horrific evidence put to the Uyghur Tribunal. With one voice, Parliament agreed that genocide was taking place in Xinjiang against the Uyghur people and other minorities. That was a significant development. We joined our allies in America in taking that view, and were soon followed by Parliaments in countries across the world, including the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada and the Czech Republic.

Today’s debate is about three things. First, now that the evidence has been presented to the Uyghur Tribunal, the Government must assess whether, under their ICJ obligations, they consider there to be a serious risk of genocide. Today’s motion will force the Government to present that analysis to the House within two months.

Secondly, if the Government will not or cannot do anything about the genocide, the mass rapes, the torture and the abuses taking place in Xinjiang, they should at least protect the British people. The British public—including my constituents and, no doubt, the Minister’s constituents—do not want to be assisting, aiding or abetting the Uyghur genocide. Only the Government can protect the British consumer by introducing import controls, blacklisting British firms profiting from slave labour, and toughening up the current toothless anti-slavery rules.

Finally, the Government should act in line with our closest international allies and use Magnitsky sanctions against Chen Quanguo, the architect of the misery in Xinjiang.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady’s excellent speech. Does she agree that there is also a case for labelling products that may have been produced in the context of the genocide, in that they were subject to Uyghur exploitation, so that consumers themselves can decide whether they want to buy ethically produced products?

[Ms Ghani]

I do agree with the hon. Gentleman. Our constituents want to know the heritage of the products that they are consuming, quite apart from the environmental impact. There is nothing to prevent the Government from ensuring that these products are labelled “stained with slave labour from Xinjiang”.

The tribunal spent a year, in London, amassing the most comprehensive body of evidence in existence on the Uyghur crisis. It took testimonies from academics, legislators and witnesses, and that is how it was able to make a legal determination. There was evidence of, for example, a massive drop in Uyghur birth rates in Xinjiang, which represents just one of the five markers of genocide. In one Uyghur region, birth rates are down by 84%. That accords neatly with the marker: the destruction of a people by stopping them having children, in just one generation. The tribunal labelled it “the biological genocide”.

Nowhere else in the world are so many women being violated in one place at the same time. Although the Uyghur region accounts for just 1.8% of China’s population, 80% of all birth control device insertions in China were performed in that region. Is the Minister really going to challenge the evidence with which the tribunal was presented? It heard that:

“Pregnant women, in detention centres and outside, were forced to have abortions even at the very last stages of pregnancy. In the course of attempted abortions babies were sometimes born alive but then killed.”

Those are the facts that were presented to the tribunal.

Witnesses’ testimonies were so horrific that I cannot list them all, but the Board of Deputies of British Jews compared this to the holocaust. Its president, Marie van der Zyl, wrote:

“Nobody could…fail to notice the similarities between what is alleged to be happening in the People’s Republic of China today and what happened in Nazi Germany 75 years ago”.

Having considered this evidence, the tribunal said that it was

“satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the PRC, by the imposition of measures to prevent births intended to destroy a significant part of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as such, has committed genocide.”

I urge the Minister not to maintain the Government’s position of “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil”. That is straight out of the CCP’s playbook. We have moved on, and the Government must now act. I am going to give the Minister some time in which to consider rewriting her speech, because the Government have now been told of the ICJ’s 2007 ruling, and we do not want to hear a rehearsal of their previous arguments.

Let me try to help the Minister by pre-empting some of the points that she may make. In the past, the Government have deferred to their holding statement that this is a matter for competent courts. That is irrelevant to today’s debate. The House now knows that the ICJ’s Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro 2007 ruling has blown that argument out of the water. Let me say it again: countries have a

“duty to act...at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of. the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.”

That duty has long been triggered. When the Minister recently praised the tribunal for

“building international awareness and understanding of the human rights violations occurring in Xinjiang”,

that triggered the duty to act. Not only that, but when she

“urged the Chinese Government to engage with the evidence provided by the Uyghur Tribunal”

during a recent meeting with the Chinese ambassador, that triggered the duty to act. So does she agree with the ICJ ruling and agree that it is the duty of Governments, not courts, to continually assess whether there is a risk of genocide? Is she today going to change Government policy?