Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Milling]

Taking a couple of points there, on Peng Shuai, we have called on the Chinese authorities to ensure her safety and we are following her case very closely. Everyone should be allowed to speak out without fear of repercussions. All reports of sexual assault, anywhere in the world, should be investigated. No decisions have been made by the Government on attendance of the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics next year.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It has now been published that, in a number of speeches back in 2014, President Xi drove his authorities to carry out the genocide that is going on in Xinjiang among the Uyghur. China is a country that has trashed an international treaty with the United Kingdom over Hong Kong and is arresting everybody who disagrees with it and persecuting them. What more does it take for my Government to make a clear decision that they will not attend the winter Olympics and will not allow officials to do so? The other day, the Leader of the House indicated that no tickets had been bought. That is not good enough. Can we now have a clear answer that we will not attend and neither will our officials?

[Amanda Milling]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. We have taken robust action in relation to human rights issues in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and we have imposed sanctions on those responsible. As I said, no decisions have been made on Government attendance at the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics in 2022.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq]

I will take an intervention in a minute, but I want to make a little more progress.

The Leader of the House told me in March that Iran was holding us to ransom. He said that

“the UK Government do not pay for the release of hostages”—[Official Report, 11 March 2021; Vol. 690, c. 1014.]

I see the logic of this principle but, in the truest form of the word, this is not a ransom; it is a debt. It is a debt that we as a country owe Iran. It was ruled in international tribunals that we owe Iran this money. Anyone hiding behind the fact that it is a ransom is wrong. They need to see the ruling in international courts to understand that we owe this money.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and congratulate her on securing the debate. I will also take this opportunity to say exactly how brave Richard has been throughout this ordeal, on behalf of his whole family. He is here today. As I am a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions, I wonder whether the hon. Lady might ask the Government this question in due course: how is it that the United States, Australia, France and Germany have all now successfully negotiated the release of their citizens who were arbitrarily detained in Iran, yet we have made no progress? Perhaps she could challenge the Government on that.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. He is absolutely right, because those countries have brought their people home. Indeed, Australia actually managed to bring Nazanin’s prison cellmate back home, while Nazanin herself is still in Iran. So I hope that the Minister will pay attention to what the right hon. Member has just said, because he makes a very important point.

Regarding the debt, I will come back to something that the Secretary of State for Defence has said:

“With regard to IMS Ltd and the outstanding legal dispute the government acknowledges there is a debt to be paid and continues to explore every legal avenue for the lawful discharge of that debt.”

So if anyone questions whether we owe the money, we definitely owe the money, as has been stated several times. It is not a ransom; it is a debt that we as a country should lawfully pay back to Iran.

Cyber-attack: Microsoft

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if he will make a statement on the reported Chinese state-sponsored cyber-attack on Microsoft exchange servers.

[The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa (James Cleverly)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for asking this important and timely question. Yesterday, on 19 July, the UK Government joined like-minded partners to confirm that Chinese state-backed actors were responsible for gaining access to computer networks around the world via Microsoft exchange servers. As the Foreign Secretary made clear in a statement yesterday, this cyber-attack by Chinese state-backed groups was reckless, but sadly a familiar pattern of behaviour. The Chinese Government must end this systematic cyber-sabotage and can expect to be held to account if they do not.

The attack was highly likely intended to enable large-scale espionage, including acquiring personally identifiable information and intellectual property. At the time of the attack, the UK quickly provided advice and recommended actions to those affected. Microsoft has reported that, at the end of March, 92% of customers had installed the updates that protected against the vulnerability.

As part of that announcement, the UK also attributed the Chinese Ministry of State Security as being behind activity known by cyber-security experts as APT40 and APT31. Widespread, credible evidence demonstrates that sustained irresponsible cyber activity emanating from China continues. The Chinese Government have ignored repeated calls to end their reckless campaign, instead allowing their state-backed actors to increase the scale of their attacks and act recklessly when caught.

Statements formally attributing Chinese responsibility for the Microsoft exchange attack and actions of APT40 and APT31 were issued by the EU, NATO, the UK, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Japan. That co-ordinated action by 39 countries sees the international community once again calling on the Chinese Government to take responsibility for their actions and respect the democratic institutions and personal commercial interests of those they seek to partner with. The UK is calling on China to reaffirm the commitment made to the UK in 2015 as part of the G20 not to conduct or support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property or trade secrets.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I simply make the point that it is a surprise that it has taken you, Mr Speaker, to bring the Government to the Dispatch Box when they could have made a statement yesterday.

This is the latest form of Chinese attack—it is not a one-off—on the west, which has included espionage, economic sanctions against Australia, wolf warrior diplomacy and naval aggression in the South China sea to name but a few.

I have some questions for my right hon. Friend. Will he explain why the Government did not come to the House yesterday to make a statement? Given that this is an aggressive attack, why are the Government allowing the UK’s largest silicon chip manufacturer, Newport Wafer Fab, to be bought by a Chinese firm when they know very well what they are up to? Why is it that the US Justice Department, also with this, brought federal criminal charges against four named MSS officers over their role in the hacking of the American targets, yet no such charges have been brought against operatives here?

The integrated review said clearly that Russia was a threat to the UK, but China was merely a competitor. I wonder why, if China goes on attacking us and trashing us, we continue with this deceit when it is quite clear that China is a clear and present threat. Beyond tearing up the treaty, conducting a genocide and upsetting the international order, China has now been found to be conducting systematic attacks on targets in the UK. Will the Government now finally agree to a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing winter Olympics to make their statement clear?

On a personal note, you will know, Mr Speaker, that I set up, with others, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China—politicians left and right in 20 countries who are concerned about China’s activities. There are over 200 members. I understand now that there is intelligence from Five Eyes sources that shows that a very active and direct threat from the Chinese Government is aimed directly at the co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. Some of the co-chairs, of which I am one, have now been warned by their intelligence services in receipt of this that they should be very careful and that they will be supported. Can I ask my right hon. Friend to confirm whether his Government are in receipt of this same intelligence and, if so, why have they not informed the co-chairs and others here in the UK, as other allies have done?

Finally, Mr Speaker, China is not just a competitor. These attacks tell us that they are a clear and present threat to the United Kingdom and to our beliefs in freedom, justice, democracy and the rule of law and human rights. It is time that the Government stood up, made that clear and boycotted these Olympic games.

[James Cleverly]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the points that he has made. The unanimity of voice among the international partners—the 39 countries that I listed—is incredibly important to us, and we will continue to seek to work collaboratively with our international partners in our response to this. My right hon. Friend makes the point about Chinese investment, or Chinese purchasing—specifically Newport Wafer Fab—and that is a decision that the Government are looking to review. He asks about the differential language between China and Russia. Our response is based on the actions, and we will continue to react robustly to any and all cyber-attacks that occur. He will understand, I am sure, that I am not necessarily going to go into details here and now about what further measures we might take, because to do so might undermine their effectiveness, but we will continue to work with international partners; and, as I said in my answer to his question, the Chinese Government should expect to be held to account if they do not come back into compliance with norms of behaviour.

With regard the Olympics, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has said that we have not as yet made a decision on formal attendance at the Olympics. The attendance of athletes is ultimately a decision for the British Olympic authorities. On intelligence matters, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) will understand that we do not discuss intelligence-related issues on the Floor of the Chamber, but I take his point about making sure that people who are potentially the target of overseas intelligence actions are given the opportunity to defend themselves against them.

Beijing Winter Olympics and Chinese Government Sanctions

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Furthermore, I remember mentioning in this House the fate of Tibetans who had been protesting in the Mall and were arrested and stuck behind crowds and, in some cases, had their homes raided by the police, and were arrested before they could go and protest. That is not the way we do things in this country, yet for some reason we kowtowed to the Chinese authorities at that stage. That must never be repeated, and we must not resile from calling out those sort of tactics, which the Chinese will use in their own country and wherever they can gain influence.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I was reflecting on my hon. Friend’s earlier comments about the Olympics in Beijing. We were told in 2008, as I recall, that the awarding of the Olympics would be a key moment in the movement to get China to acknowledge and uphold human rights to a greater degree. That was in 2008. Does he think that it has made much progress?

[Tim Loughton]

That is exactly the point that I have been labouring to make. It was all a sham, and we all know how human rights in China have gone from bad to worse.

Back ahead of 2008, the Chinese authorities also had to clean up the environment around Beijing, as it looked at one stage as if everyone would have to compete in masks. Thirteen years on, China remains the world’s largest polluter, responsible for some 26% of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. It has burnt more coal over the past 11 years than the rest of the world put together and now imperils the world’s third pole, the Tibetan plateau glaciers that service the water needs of billions of people. Of course, the energy needed to produce artificial snow in Beijing for the winter sports, as will be needed, will not exactly win any environmental awards.

Like it or not, China will make this global sporting event a global political spectacle. It is incredible, frankly, that the winter games were awarded to China in the first place, a sign of the much-too-cosy relationship between the Chinese Government, the IOC and its president, Thomas Bach, who during President Xi’s visit to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne back in 2017 claimed that he wanted to give the Chinese President a set of medals because

“he is the true Olympic champion for the youth”.

Yuck.

On virtually every level, the awarding of the games to China should never have happened. It flies in the face of the Olympic principles as encoded in the Olympics by the IOC, which states that

“Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles... The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity…sports organisations within the Olympic Movement shall apply political neutrality. They have the rights and obligations of autonomy, which include freely establishing and controlling the rules of sport, determining the structure and governance of their organisations, enjoying the right of elections free from any outside influence.”

Finally, it states:

“The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

How on earth does a genocidal, industrial scale human rights abusing, free speech intolerant and planet vandalising regime square with those principles?

In 2017, Xi Jinping claimed the international Olympic movement, in its over 100 years, had played a positive role in enhancing all-round human development, deepening friendship between nations, and promoting peace, development and progress. Everything that China has done since then and is still doing makes a mockery of that claim if the Beijing Olympics are allowed to go ahead in the form that the Chinese Communist party wants, its behaviour is allowed to be normalised, and it is allowed to score the major soft power propaganda victory it craves.

That is why a motion passed by this House urging a diplomatic boycott is so important, emphasising again that we will not turn a blind eye to industrial scale human rights abuses, and hopefully impressing on the Government the need to enact such a boycott so that no Ministers, diplomats, royal family members and other VIPs dance to the tune of the Chinese Communist party. The loss of face it will suffer will show how serious the United Kingdom is.

To date, the Chinese Government have taken no notice. Just last week, the Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat social media platform deleted dozens of LGBT accounts, sparking fears of a crackdown on gay content online and gay rights generally, again in defiance of Olympic principles and echoing the actions of Russia suppressing LGBT organisations ahead of the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate; I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for securing it. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I had a discussion last year with the UK Olympic committee. I had been making a bit of a fuss about why we were holding the Olympics, so they asked to come and see me. They asked what my position was. I said, “Look, as far as I am concerned, it is up to individual athletes what they choose to do. I would like them to understand where they are going and what they will be involved in. I expect the Government to take a position, and I expect they will take the view that attending, giving the games diplomatic credibility and having UK officials, Ministers and so on at the games is no longer feasible given the nature of the Chinese Communist party regime.” That was before a lot of the stuff that we now know came out. The committee’s reaction was, “We could live with that. We can understand that. That’s fair. We won’t complain about that. We understand why you would do that and leave it to individual athletes.”

My view is reinforced by what we know now. Since that conversation, Adrian Zenz laid bare the evidence of the abuses through the documentation he produced showing that the Uyghur atrocity is really a genocide. We eventually managed to publish that through the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and other institutions. We also know much more about the forced labour camps in Tibet, where we think there are 1.5 million or even more than 2 million people. My hon. Friend deserves due credit for raising that long after anyone else cared again to raise it. The list goes on. The Chinese Government are aggressive abroad and aggressive at home. They have killed Indian soldiers as they seek to dispute the border with India, they have taken over the South China sea even though the UN has said they have no historical right over the area, and they have threatened and continue to threaten Taiwan.

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee was in his place for the urgent question earlier about the UK semiconductor company to be sold to a Chinese company. One thing I did not raise but we know is that China has strategically said that semiconductor production must come to China and that it must dominate globally. More importantly, it wants to use that production as a weapon against Taiwan, which is probably the biggest single producer of semiconductors. China wants to stop that cash flow to Taiwan, so one of China’s reasons for taking over the UK company is to increase its own capability and stop Taiwan. Not a single thing that the Chinese Communist party does has not been thought through to the final degree. It knows where it is going, and it does not even hide it. It was said that the Chinese Government threaten that anybody who affronts them will have their head bashed against a wall of steel. I do not think that when something like that is said, everybody laughs. Imagine if the British Government were to say that about anybody who disagreed with them. We would all be up in arms and everybody around the free world would be complaining.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am delighted to support my right hon. Friend in his powerful speech. Does he remember the words of the Chinese ambassador to Stockholm, who said only a few months ago:

“We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns”?

Has he ever heard another diplomat use such language?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

No, I really have not. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that. The funny thing about the Chinese Government is that President Xi says exactly what he is going to do and, intriguingly, he does it. Sadly, Governments such as my own to some degree and those around the western world think he does not really mean it, and they hope that, because he did not mean it, there will be a different outcome. They make stupid excuses such as to say, “Do you know what? If we give them these games, they will uphold human rights.” That is what they did in 2018, and I do not recall much of that. Then they say, “Don’t worry. If we trade more with China in a golden decade, they will liberalise their politics and head towards democracy.” That is what was done in a Government of which I as a member.

I tell hon. Members who is naive in all of this: it is all of us. It is the western democracies who set policy for what they wish would happen. They do not remember the history of the 1930s. We have forgotten what happened when we appeased another ghastly dictatorship: 60 million people died as a result of our failure, and we are bound on the same course today.

This debate today about boycotting the Olympics is not just a token; we know that China is sensitive when it gets global criticism, when people shine a torch on what goes there. We know that it reacts. Why do we know that? Because it sanctions people such as myself and many of my colleagues in this Chamber and in the European Parliament.

I applaud the Members of the European Parliament and the members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China who have been sanctioned, because they have stopped the European Union having a trade arrangement. What have we done? Our Government now talk about doing more trade arrangements, while we sit here as sanctioned individuals. I want the Government to act. It is simply not good enough for us, on the one hand, to say that we are horrified about what China does, and then, on the other, to make plans to seek more trade relationships with it and to say that we do not want to interfere with the Olympics.

Everything is political in a communist regime. Every single aspect of people’s lives is governed by a communist political regime. Our Government must recognise that they are no longer dealing with a decent organisation that would uphold freedoms; they are dealing with a dictatorial, militaristic, intolerant and oppressive regime. Every time that we give China public demonstrations such as the Olympics, we do ourselves and, worse, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans and all those oppressed people a disfavour. Let us stand up for freedom, democracy and human rights and not back these games.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)]

May I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing this debate? We have heard some passionate and well thought-through speeches throughout the afternoon. I am grateful to all hon. and right hon. Members for their contributions, and I will try to respond to as many of the points raised as possible before I hand back to my hon. Friend.

On the substantive issue of whether there should be a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 winter Olympic games, as I made clear at the Dispatch Box a couple of weeks ago at oral questions, and as the Prime Minister has previously made clear, no decisions have yet been made about UK Government attendance at the winter Olympics in Beijing.

One or two Members have mentioned that they would not like to see the games go ahead at all. Of course, the participation of Team GB at the Olympics and Paralympics is a matter for the British Olympic Association and the British Paralympic Association. They operate independently of Government, as is absolutely right, and as is also required by International Olympic Committee regulations.

The Government have consistently been clear about our serious concerns about the human rights situation in Xinjiang. In response, we have taken robust action, as has been pointed out by a number of hon. and right hon. Members. We have led international efforts to hold China to account for the gross human rights violations in Xinjiang. We have imposed sanctions on those responsible, and we have announced a package of robust domestic measures to help to ensure that no British organisations are complicit, including through their supply chains.

The Foreign Secretary has consistently raised our concerns directly with Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, most recently at the end of May. He has also, on 22 March, announced asset freezes and travel bans under our global human rights sanctions regime against four Chinese Government officials and one entity, who we believe are responsible for the gross human rights violations in Xinjiang. Importantly, those measures were co-ordinated alongside sanctions from the United States, Canada and the European Union. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) said that we should be working alongside the European Union. We have done, and that is why we have delivered those sanctions alongside the EU.

We believe that those actions send a clear message to the Chinese Government that the international community will not turn a blind eye to such serious and systematic violations of basic human rights. It speaks for itself that, while 30 countries were united in sanctioning those responsible for the violations, China’s response was to retaliate against its critics, a number of whom are in the Chamber today.

As the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have made clear, China’s attempts to silence those highlighting human rights violations at home and abroad, including its targeting of right hon. and hon. Friends and peers in the UK, are completely unwarranted and unacceptable. The freedom to speak out in opposition to human rights violations is fundamental, and the Government stand firm with all those who have been sanctioned, including my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and other right hon. and hon. Members.

On that point, on 26 March, I summoned the Chinese representative in the UK to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, where I lodged a strong formal protest at the actions of China. The sanctions we imposed in relation to Xinjiang followed the Foreign Secretary’s announcement on 12 January of a series of measures on UK supply chains. Those measures, which included a review of export controls, the introduction of financial penalties for organisations that fail to comply with their obligations under the Modern Slavery Act and robust guidance to UK businesses on the risks faced by companies with links to Xinjiang, will help to ensure that no British organisation—Government or private sector, deliberately or inadvertently—profits from or contributes to human rights violations against the Uyghurs or other minorities.

We have also consistently taken a leading international role in holding China to account, and we have used our diplomatic influence to raise the issue up the international agenda. On 22 June, a global UK diplomatic effort helped to deliver the support of 44 countries for a joint statement at the UN Human Rights Council. That underlined our shared concerns and called on China to grant unfettered access to the region for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The growing caucus of countries expressing concern about the situation in Xinjiang sends a powerful message about the breadth of international opinion. That caucus of international countries, which has called out China’s actions, has grown from 23 countries to 44 in just over a year, which is a tribute to it. I pay tribute to the UK’s diplomatic leadership, including our network across the globe, and the Foreign Secretary’s influence with his counterparts. Under our G7 presidency, both G7 leaders and Foreign and Development Ministers registered strong concern about the situation in Xinjiang. We will continue to work with partners across the world to build an international caucus of those willing to speak out against China’s human rights violations and to increase the pressure on China to change its behaviour.

I turn to some of the points raised by hon. and right hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, in his powerful and eloquent speech, made a very strong case. I thought he was a little unfair on one of my heroes, Sir Paul McCartney, when he sang at the opening of the London games, but he also raised the issue of sanctions, as did the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford). It speaks volumes that, while we join the international community in sanctioning those responsible for human rights abuses, the Chinese Government sanction their critics. If Beijing wants to credibly rebut claims of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, it should allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights full access to verify the truth, a point the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) agreed with.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I do not want to hold him up for very long because he is in the last part of this speech. With regard to slave labour chains and supply in Xinjiang, on two occasions in the last four weeks, the Prime Minister has, from the Dispatch Box, said that the UK Government have import controls on those who are suspected of being suppliers through that chain. I have asked a series of questions of both the Minister’s Department and the Department for International Trade. The one answer that comes from the Department for International Trade is that it has no import controls and no plans to make any. Could the Minister tell me what Government policy is on import controls?

Uyghur Tribunal: London

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if he will make a statement on the treatment by the Chinese Government of witnesses giving evidence to the Uyghur Tribunal in London.

[The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)]

We are disturbed by reports of attempts to intimidate those appearing at the recent hearing of the Uyghur Tribunal. We have previously made it clear that any attempt by China to silence its critics is unwarranted and unacceptable. The United Kingdom supports freedom of expression both as a human right in and of itself and as an essential element for the enjoyment of a full range of other rights. The freedom to speak out in opposition to human rights violations is fundamental.

The Government have repeatedly expressed our serious concerns about the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and the United Kingdom has led international efforts to hold China to account for its human rights violations in the region. Yesterday’s G7 leaders’ communiqué called on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang. In March, the Foreign Secretary announced sanctions against four Chinese officials and one entity responsible for those violations, alongside the European Union, the United States and Canada. In January, we launched a package of measures to help ensure UK businesses and the public sector are not complicit in human rights violations or abuses in Xinjiang. The Foreign Secretary has consistently raised the UK’s serious concerns directly with the Chinese Foreign Minister, State Councillor Wang Yi, most recently in a phone call on 27 May.

Rather than continuing to issue denials in the face of overwhelming evidence and seeking to silence their critics, we call on the Chinese Government to address the breadth of concerns being raised internationally about Xinjiang. As a matter of urgency, China must grant the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights or another independent fact-finding expert unfettered access to Xinjiang to verify the facts on the ground.

I reiterate that the Government welcome any rigorous and balanced initiative that raises awareness of the situation faced by Uyghurs and other minorities in China. I met Sir Geoffrey Nice in April to discuss the Uyghur tribunal, and we are following its work. My officials will study any resulting report very carefully indeed.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The Uyghur tribunal is an independent investigation of alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in the Uyghur region, led by Sir Geoffrey Nice. It started its hearings between 4 and 7 June in London and will reconvene later in the year. It was set up because the Chinese Government have reservations on the genocide convention and a veto at the UN Security Council, which prevents investigation by the International Court of Justice, and China is not party to the International Criminal Court.

It is a disgrace that, on Wednesday 9 June, the Government of the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region held a press conference featuring relatives of Uyghur exiles abroad, who were coerced to give statements that claimed to falsify the testimony of those who had given evidence to the Uyghur tribunal. We know already that the Chinese Government monitor, intimidate and harass Uyghurs living abroad, including UK citizens. We have also seen attempts to intimidate Members of this House. An Amnesty International report collated evidence from more than 400 Uyghurs in 22 countries, including the UK, who live in daily fear of the Chinese authorities. The harassment included aggressive messages and threats.

The first question is whether the Government will give evidence to the tribunal. If not, perhaps the Minister could explain why.

Rodney Dixon, QC, has alleged that Uyghurs are deported from third countries to China, where they go on to face genocidal atrocities. What assessment have the Government made of the credibility of the harrowing evidence provided by the Uyghur tribunal, and how will they act on its findings?

Do the Government support the involvement in the UK economy of firms that are complicit in the surveillance and monitoring of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, including surveillance firms such as Hikvision and telecommunications firms such as Huawei? Why have the Government rejected the recommendation of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee to require companies operating in Beijing to provide convincing evidence that their supply chains are not tainted by forced labour? Where are the provisions in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to give force to those concerns?

As I said, China exerts pressure on foreign states to deport Uyghurs who have fled the country back to China—states including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Will the Government immediately commit to complaining formally and publicly to those countries, and tell them to stop that process at all costs?

[Nigel Adams]

I thank my right hon. Friend yet again for his work in this area and for bringing this important issue to the House’s attention. As I said in my opening remarks, we welcome any rigorous and balanced initiative that raises awareness of the situation faced by Uyghurs and other minorities in China. We will follow the tribunal closely and study any resulting report carefully.

Of course, my right hon. Friend knows that it is the policy of successive UK Governments that any determination of genocide or crimes against humanity is a matter for a competent court. We are therefore not in a position to provide evidence, testimony or other official support to the tribunal.

My right hon. Friend is right to mention the press conference held by Chinese authorities. We are disturbed by reports of attempts to intimidate those appearing at the hearing. We have previously made it clear that any attempt by China to silence its critics is unwarranted and completely unacceptable. As I have said, we have engaged with Sir Geoffrey Nice. We have pointed him to some open-source information to be of assistance, which is some of the most compelling evidence on what is going on in Xinjiang.

With regard to the Select Committee report that my right hon. Friend referenced, we announced on 12 January that we will work with the Cabinet Office to provide guidance and support to UK public bodies to exclude suppliers where there is evidence of human rights abuses in any of their supply chains. That work is continuing. As he will appreciate, that is a BEIS-led approach.

All our policy towards China is agreed by the National Security Council, and detailed implementation is co-ordinated by the National Strategy Implementation Group for China. These are senior officials across Whitehall. These governance structures are kept under review to ensure that effective co-ordination at all levels is always upheld.

Human Rights in Hong Kong

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Ms Ghani, it is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your stewardship.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) for securing this debate, on what is indeed the issue of the moment. It has not gone away; it will not go away. The debate is timely, because the G7 starts its meeting tomorrow and, frankly, if its major conclusion is not that China has become the greatest threat to liberal democracy here and around the world, it will have failed. It is as simple as that.

Today, we are talking about Hong Kong, but we could just as easily be talking about the suppression—nay, the genocide—of the Uyghurs; or about the suppression—nay, the genocide—of Tibetans; or about the increasing pressure on the Inner Mongolians, the Falun Gong or Christians. This is a regime that is intolerant, dictatorial and brutal. It accepts no difference from its dictated opinions and views, and any attempt to question it is treated with brutality and incarceration, without any possibility of a free or serious trial.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling is quite right to have made the point that this regime has now trashed a particular international agreement. It has broken what it agreed to do regarding the rights, privileges and freedoms in Hong Kong under the “one state, two systems” model. I suspect that the real reason for that is that the Chinese Communist party signed the original Sino-British agreement only because it believed that it would act as a magnet for the reintroduction of Taiwan completely under the umbrella of its state authority. The problem is that the elected Government in Taiwan rejects that future. On that basis, China can see no reason why it should continue with this troublesome area in Hong Kong, where people have been campaigning —we would say legitimately and freely—for the right to express their views, for a free press, and for democracy. For the Chinese Government, that is no longer necessary. The suppression that has followed has been swift, but in a way somewhat predictable; without the reason for Hong Kong to exist in this separate state, it must now be crushed.

It is quite interesting to see what they have done in the past month. They have fired civil servants and the rest of the leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement; introduced national security education for children as young as six; amended Hong Kong’s electoral system to bar pro-democracy parties from running; and passed an immigration law that would allow officials to restrict freedom of movement into and out of the city. Arrests, prosecutions and jail sentences have been happening behind closed doors.

I question why British judges are still earning a living in Hong Kong. I believe it is no longer possible for them to argue that they are modifying or ameliorating the situation. All they are doing is giving, in a sense, a bit of succour to a brutal, intolerant and debased regime. The Bar Council here should speak to those who are earning a living in Hong Kong and say, “It is time to draw stumps and come home.” I call on them to do that.

The arrests and prosecutions are staggering: 10,000 people have been arrested and 2,300 charged since the anti-extradition protests started in 2019. Imprisonment for 10 years to life is now the norm, and subversion, secession, collusion with foreign political forces and terrorism are the new laws. They could have just put down terrorism because they are going to find them guilty anyway, so they might as well make it simple; I don’t know why they bothered with the others. However, they have gone through this prolonged process—no doubt they think it somehow persuades people.

I am worried about the way this is going. Children as young as six are being taught to memorise the four crimes under the national security law that I have just mentioned. Schools are to inform police and parents about incidents involving political propaganda, and Hong Kong universities have now fired pro-democracy academics and cut ties with their student unions, following direction from Beijing.

The real question is: what can we do? We have already done a lot, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling has mentioned. The BNO passports are key, although the Chinese are threatening not to recognise them, nor to allow people to leave the country on those BNO passports. I am saddened, but not astonished, by Germany’s response. I do not know if the German Government will one day wake up to the idea that no matter how much they appease the Chinese, it never works. The idea that they depend on Chinese manufacturers for their own requirements and therefore do not want to upset the Government is one of the grave errors taught to us by history. Once started down that road, such a dependency leads further and further, so I hope they will review that.

I want more Magnitsky sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials, and I would extend those further to those involved in the dreadful Uyghur massacres. We must also offer assistance to Hong Kong residents born after 1997. The BNO visa scheme currently does not cover Hongkongers born after 1997, including many young Hong Kong students who are now vulnerable to arrest. I say to my hon. Friend from the Foreign Office, the Minister for Asia, that we should work with like-minded partners to ensure that there are lifeboat schemes for these young Hongkongers.

Ministers should ensure that Hong Kong is on the agenda at the G7—I started with that point and it is vital, so I want to come back to it at the end. I want the Government to review the rules around UK investment in companies that are complicit in human rights abuse and to be much more explicit about the supply chains, so that every single business or investor in the UK or abroad knows what the links are to the main companies all the way down the chain. That has not happened and it must happen.

I believe that this is the single biggest threat facing liberal democracy that currently exists. We are being complacent. We have run to China to do business and, across the western world, we have therefore turned a blind eye to the abuses taking place for too long. The lessons of the 1930s tell us that if we assume that what Governments say is not what they mean, then we are destined to be trapped in the reality of what they do. That is where we are now.

At the G7, which starts tomorrow, I would like my Government to insist that by the end of the meeting we make a clear, unequivocal, united statement that we will no longer put up with the abuses and the nature of the Chinese Government in their attacks on their neighbours and on their own people who live in China. If we do that, then just maybe we will have started the beginning of the change that will secure and rescue our own democracy and our own people’s freedom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Gentleman always makes decisive points. I will come on to the other two points later, but with regard to the Olympics, that is a matter for the British Olympic Association; it is not a matter for the Government to intervene in.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nigel Adams]

I need to crack on. If it is on the Olympics—

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is on the attendance of the Prime Minister.

[Nigel Adams]

No decision has yet been made about diplomatic attendance at the Olympics, but I can tell my right hon. Friend, as the Minister responsible, that that is very much at the forefront of our minds.

We responded quickly and decisively to the enactment of the national security law. The day after the law was imposed, the Foreign Secretary announced to Parliament that, after discussions with the Home Secretary, the Government would introduce this bespoke immigration route for British nationals overseas and their dependants, providing a new path to citizenship. This opened on 31 January, and the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has implemented a welcome settlement package for those who wish to take up the offer. Prior to that, on 20 July, the Foreign Secretary announced the indefinite suspension of our extradition treaty with Hong Kong, and the extension of our arms embargo on mainland China to Hong Kong. The extradition treaty will remain suspended until we have safeguards to ensure that it will not be misused under the national security law.

We have also led action in the international community, holding China to account through our presidency of the G7. I will be very surprised if this issue is not discussed either on the agenda or in the corridors of the G7 meeting taking place this week. On 6 October, with Germany, we brought together 39 countries to express our grave concern for Hong Kong and Xinjiang in a joint statement at the UN General Assembly third committee. The Foreign Secretary, in his high-level segment to the Human Rights Council on 22 February, called for the UN to respond, and he undertook to continue to raise international support. More recently, on 5 May, he called on China to act in accordance with its international commitments and legal obligations and to respect Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, rights and freedoms.

I acknowledge that many Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), and the hon. Members for Vauxhall and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), called for sanctions in respect of the events in Hong Kong. As right hon. and hon. Members will know, with the experience of our sanctions regime in Xinjiang, we do not speculate on listings, as to do so would potentially undermine their impact.

In the time I have left, I would like to address some of the points that Members have made. On the issue of young people born since 1997 without family ties who are not eligible for the BNO status, these individuals can still apply using our existing routes to live, work or study in the UK. Specifically, Hong Kong nationals aged between 18 and 30 are eligible to apply to our youth mobility scheme.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling raised the prospect of Germany not recognising BNO passports, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. We have raised our concerns with the German Government; they have assured us that all UK passports, including BNO passports, are recognised for the purposes of entry and stay in Germany. I have only a minute left. There are a number of issues I need to respond to, so I ask hon. Members to take up my offer of coming to see officials and me in the FCDO and I can address them then, or write to them following this debate.

While the turmoil on the streets of Hong Kong may have lessened since 2019, the underlying situation has certainly deteriorated further. After three breaches of the Sino-British joint declaration in nine months, since March the United Kingdom has considered Beijing to be in a state of ongoing non-compliance with it. There is a stark and growing gulf between Beijing’s promises and its actions. We must and we will continue to stand up for the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong. I give my assurance as Minister for Asia that we will continue to work hard and in good faith towards that goal. We will hold China to the obligation that it willingly undertook to safeguard the people of Hong Kong and their way of life.

Human Rights: Xinjiang

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on securing this debate and leading on the BEIS Committee inquiry and the excellent report on which this debate is based. It is a remarkable feat to have done both. I concur with my hon. Friend’s tribute to our right hon. Friend Dame Cheryl Gillan: I came into Parliament at the same time as her and she was simply a remarkable woman. It was right to mention her in this debate because she stood with us on every one of the votes that we had in the recent debates on genocide. Even though she was ill and housebound, she stayed with us throughout; that shows some courage and some bravery and I salute her for that.

I want to raise one thing before I come to the other points of debate. I have been listening to people over the past week, and I now worry about the environment, which may seem a peculiar issue to raise first but I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to take note of this. I have noticed a number of people saying how important and vital it is—of course—for China to be involved in and sign up to all these pledges on the environment. My slight worry is that China will use the process to leverage any action that we may wish to take, so I want to make sure that when we talk about China and the environment, we no longer try to use it as a balancing point for why we should not take action against China in areas such as the genocide against Uyghur women, the treatment of Tibetans, the appalling treatment of inner Mongolians, the treatment of Christians, the organ harvesting of the Falun Gong and the treatment of other groups. All are abuses that must be called out: whether or not we need China to co-operate on other matters, we cannot simply say that one matter is worth some sacrifice over the other. It is not, and I for one will continue to call that out.

Let me come back to the main points of the debate, which are the ones raised by the Select Committee. They are really important points and my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden touched on a number of them. I wish to highlight a couple. First, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, whose inquiry is ongoing, has said that his inquiry is

“certain—unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt—that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”

That is the organ harvesting of victims in the power of the state. I thought that we, collectively as nations, decided never ever to see this happen again. In the 1940s, Nazi Germany practised organ harvesting and strange science on people in captivity—mostly the Jewish people, but others, too. How can we hear that and lock it away in a box? It is astonishing that we should even be thinking that it is just an item for debate. It is not. It is redolent of the terrible times that we and others went through, and we decided never again. But it is again, and on an industrial scale.

The Conservative party human rights commission report shows four years of human rights deterioration in China between 2016 and 2020. The Select Committee report clearly identifies how Uyghur slave labour operates in supply chains. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden said, the 84% drop in birth rates is significant and shows categorically that forced sterilisation is taking place.

There are others out there who have been brave enough to call this out. BBC journalists covering mass rape and Uyghur abuse have been driven out of China. I see that even Sky faced up the other day and produced a report about the slave labour and the fact that these people, particularly men, are thousands of miles away from their homes in factories that are hidden from view and denied, but there they are—it is slave labour, forced labour.

The Better Cotton Initiative withdrew from the region in October 2020, citing:

“Sustained allegations of forced labour and other human rights abuses”

leading to

“an increasingly untenable operating environment”.

That is the reality of a wealthy, powerful country that intends to be wealthier and more powerful—perhaps the dominant economy and dominant military power—and that believes it can get away with anything. So far, too often, it has. That is the point of this debate and what the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden was all about. She clearly laid out the definition of genocide: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. These are the definitions of genocide. On every one of those counts we have evidence to show that a genocide is taking place, specifically of the Uyghur people, but very likely, as I said, of others like the Tibetans as well. We know that the Chinese have been killing members of the group and causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. All these things are going on.

If we believe that there is evidence on every one of those counts, the question is: why have we not declared this a genocide? I urge my hon. Friend the Minister and the Government to rethink their position on this. We will not gain any particular friendship by not calling out genocide from the Chinese. It is simply not a tradeable item. The UK has said endlessly, and I understand this, that only a competent court can declare a genocide. That was absolutely the original plan, but the problem is that getting to a competent court is impossible. At the United Nations it is impossible to get to the International Court of Justice. It is impossible to get to the International Criminal Court because China is not a signatory to that and therefore will not obey it, and anyway we will not be able to do that because it will be blocked in the debates at the UN. The whole purpose of the belt and road project is to protect China from any action taken at the UN. It has now collected a coalition of nations that are being given huge sums of money by it. In many cases, they vote with it in the UN regardless on matters like these.

Therefore, we have a problem—how can we get there? The only way, really, is what other countries have taken to doing now. The United States has made it clear that it believes that this is a genocide. Holland has followed suit and so has Canada. I hope, therefore, that today we will do so too. If we think that the American Administration that has just come in is going to somehow walk away from the previous Administration on this, it is worth quoting what is being said in the United States. The new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said:

“My judgment remains”—

he is referring to the statement by Mike Pompeo, his predecessor—

“that genocide was committed against the Uyghurs and that has not changed.”

So now two Administrations in America line up behind this and still stand up for it. On 22 February 2021, Canada’s Parliament voted unanimously on a motion to declare the situation in Xinjiang a genocide. On 25 February 2021, the Dutch Parliament, the States General, passed a non-binding motion declaring that the treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang amounts to a genocide. What do we have to know? We have to have significant reports, witness testaments, satellite imagery and Chinese local governmental data, and we have all of that. It is out there in the public domain now, and more and more is being

collated.

Let us think a little bit about the victims, whose relatives are out on the square today protesting about their treatment, and who speak terribly of what has happened. The former detainee Tursunay Ziawudun said that every night they were removed from their cells and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She went on to say that she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men. That is the evidence that we need as part of our statement that this is a genocide, and that evidence exists. That is but one of a whole series of people who have given such evidence, so we have to hold China to account.

Others want to speak, so I conclude by saying to my hon. Friend that, today, this Parliament has a historic chance, together—regardless of party difference in most other matters—to hold its head up, stand tall and stand for those who have no voice. We, the mother of all Parliaments, should today take pride in the fact that if this motion goes through unopposed, it is the voice of the United Kingdom Parliament—the Parliament of a free people, who believe in human rights and in freedom and human rights for others around the world. Let us make the statement today, loud and clear, that the UK has not forgotten the Uyghurs and others, and that we will stand for them and insist that our Government do exactly the same by calling this a genocide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con) [V]]

Another day, another debate on the industrial scale of human rights abuses by the Chinese regime. Here we are again, and I am delighted that we are; I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who has so championed the cause, and wholeheartedly endorse everything she said. Together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and the rest of the magnificent seven parliamentarians, she and I wear our sanctioning with a badge of honour.

I hope that the message has now got through that the productivity of the seven of us has increased sharply since that inept act by the Chinese regime of putting us on the arbitrary and ridiculous sanctions list. Let me tell the Chinese Government: they ain’t seen nothing yet, because this will go on every day of every week that we can possibly raise it in this place and on the platforms afforded to us as parliamentarians. They have really fired us up to make sure that that is a promise we will deliver.

I wholeheartedly support the motion, to which I have added my signature. Although Tibet is not within its strict scope, everything that has been said so far applies to Tibet and its people, who have been oppressed with similar tactics for the last 62 years, since the occupation of that peace-loving people in the Tibetan region of China back in 1959.

I absolutely take up the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green made about the environment. China is guilty of abusing not just its own people, but the planet, more than any other nation on this earth. Neither is acceptable; one is not a trade-off against the other, if that is the attitude that it wants to take when it comes to COP26. Both need to be called out, and on both it needs to mend its ways—they go hand in hand.

It is a shocking reality that genocides have never properly been called out and thwarted at the time that they happen—genocides against the Jews, genocides against the Muslims in Srebrenica, genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur, and the many other genocides that go unnamed and are not properly detected, as the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned. I include in that list the Armenian genocide of 1915 and 1916, when 1 million to 1.5 million men, women and children died at the hands of the Ottomans. On Saturday, in Yerevan and around the world, tributes will be paid and flowers laid; I will do so on behalf of the all-party parliamentary group on Armenia at the Cenotaph tomorrow in commemoration of that terrible genocide, which this country needs to recognise, more than 100 years on.

We talk about debating the subject. Under article I of the UN convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, the United Kingdom is obliged, along with all other UN members,

“to prevent and to punish”

genocide—not just to talk about it, although it is good that we are doing that, but actually to do something about it.

We have heard all the clear evidence on what is going on in Xinjiang province; I will not repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden said. We know that China formally recognised the Uyghurs as an ethnic minority among its exhaustive list of the no fewer than 56 ethnic groups that comprise its population, along with the Tibetan people. Under China’s own constitution, those minorities and their cultures and identities should be protected, but they are being obliterated. China is trying to assimilate them within its main population, so whatever we may think in terms of international law, it is falling foul of its own constitution. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) said, the Chinese regime, in doing what it has done to suppress free speech, has committed an act against this Parliament and the privileges that we have in this Parliament. It is a naked act of aggression against free speech.

It is clear that what is happening is genocide. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden put it starkly: if a state-orchestrated and race-targeted birth rate plunge of two thirds in two years is not genocide, what is? If mass internment, slave labour, systematic rape, torture and live organ harvesting, mass sterilisation, womb removal, forced abortion, secretly located orphan camps, brainwashing camps and the psychological trauma of these combined atrocities do not amount to genocide, under any of the definitions, what does? There is a saying, “If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and walks like a duck, it is a duck.” This sounds like, looks like and is genocide, and it needs to be called out loud and clear for what it is.

I urge the Minister again, who has been very supportive. We are very grateful for the very supportive words of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Minister, who I am glad to see here again today, and of the Speaker and the Lord Speaker in support of the magnificent seven. But why, oh why, are we not going further in the sanctions against people who are clearly guilty of waging genocide on other Chinese citizens? Chen Quanguo absolutely needs to be on that list; he has been committing genocide against the Uyghurs since 2016, having learnt and plied his trade in Tibet against the Tibetans before that.

We need to do more to support those businesses that are being thrown out of Xinjiang and that are in some cases taking a stand. We need to have a proper audit of our universities and schools. I hear that the Prebendal School in Chichester, in my own diocese, is now under threat of being taken over by the Chinese, and this is on top of no fewer than 17 senior schools around the UK that are now under the control of senior Chinese figures in the Chinese communist party. This is happening in our country, on our watch. We need to flush it out; we need to put the spotlight on it.

The contacts the Chinese have within our military research and their activities within our infrastructure projects—we have to have a full and thorough audit of the tentacles of the Chinese regime in UK society up and down this country. There are still artificial intelligence firms with links to persecution of Uyghurs funding research at British universities. They are funding places at PhD and post-doctoral research positions at Surrey University, for example, despite having been placed on a US blacklist in 2019. I pay tribute to the University of Manchester, which cancelled an agreement with the Chinese electronic company CETC after warnings that it supplied the tech platforms and apps used by Beijing’s security forces in the mass surveillance of the Uyghurs. We need to do more to make sure we are not aiding and abetting these parts of the Chinese regime.

Last month, the Foreign Office admitted that the Uyghurs were being harassed and abused in the UK itself, so it is not just happening within China. As the Foreign Secretary said, this is being done to intimidate them into silence, and they are being urged to report on other Uyghurs to the police.

Rahima Mahmut, the UK director for the World Uyghur Congress, who has bravely stood up and is one of the mouthpieces for the Uyghur population here, was in Parliament Square earlier. In an article in The Telegraph, she gave some chilling examples of Uyghur exiles in this country being intimidated by the long tentacles of the Chinese regime while in the supposed safety of this country. Those exiles are ominously reminded that they have relatives back in China. A Uyghur woman received texts every day from the Chinese police urging her to spy on other Uyghurs in the UK and saying, “Remember, your mother and your sisters are with us.”

This regime does not stop at its own borders and we need to stand shoulder to shoulder and offer whatever support we can to protect those Uyghur refugees, Tibetan refugees and other victims of oppression by China who find themselves in this country. They deserve our safety and our succour, and we need to give them more to protect them from the dangers that they are going through.

I also urge the Minister: we should be encouraging our diplomats to speak out. Last week, I cited the example of the new British ambassador in Beijing who had been hauled over the coals for just mentioning the free press to the Chinese Government. John Sudworth, the BBC correspondent in Beijing, has had to flee from Beijing, after reporting on human rights abuses, because of fears for his own safety and the safety of his family. We must encourage these people to continue to speak out.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Given that list of people and organisations that have called things out, does my hon. Friend not find it strange that no UK university that is receiving funds from the Chinese has condemned any of the action that is going on publicly, or, for that matter, condemned the action of the Confucius Institutes, which spy on Chinese students in universities?

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have long been calling out the Confucius Institutes, which are not only on the campuses of UK universities, stuffing gold into the mouths of vice-chancellors, but, increasingly, in our schools as well. When I visited a secondary school in my constituency, which teaches Mandarin, I was alarmed to see that it now has a Confucius Institute classroom sponsored by the Chinese. The Chinese are not doing this because they just like to be nice to our schools; they are doing it because they have an agenda and they are trying to control people around the world and suppress people who want to speak out against them.

I echo the closing words of my right hon. Friend. Today, we stand up in this place for those without any voice. That is an advantage of being a parliamentarian—we use our voice to stand up for, speak out for and protect those without a voice and those who are in danger. Let us, with that voice—loudly and clearly—make sure that this motion goes through today to show China once and for all that it has been called out, that there will be consequences, and that there are consequences, for its industrial scale abuse of human rights, and that, in this country at least, freedom and the freedom of speech, of faith and of worship count for something and it had better acknowledge that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)]

I am incredibly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) for securing this debate, and I pay tribute to her, and to all hon. and right hon. colleagues who were the recipients of those ill thought-out and ludicrous sanctions announced by China recently, for their continued work on this important issue.

I of course acknowledge the strength of feeling across the House on this critically important issue. We have heard some powerful speeches from all parts of the House today. Parliaments and individual parliamentarians rightly play a pivotal role in drawing global attention to human rights violations, wherever they occur. I am very grateful for all the contributions and I will try to answer the points raised within the context of my speech. I am conscious that I need to leave my hon. Friend some time to wind up the debate.

As we have heard from across the Floor, the situation faced by Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang is truly harrowing. We have repeatedly emphasised our grave concern at the serious and widespread human rights violations occurring in the region. There are credible reports of the extrajudicial detention of over 1 million Uyghur people and other minorities in political re-education camps since 2017, extensive and invasive surveillance targeting minorities, forced separation of children from their parents, forced sterilisation of women, systematic restriction on Uyghur culture, education and the practice of Islam, and the widespread use of forced labour.

The evidence of the scale and severity of the violations in Xinjiang is extensive. That includes, as the whole House knows, satellite imagery, the testimony of survivors, credible open-source reporting by journalists and academic researchers, and visits by British diplomats to the region that have corroborated reports about the targeting of specific ethnic groups. United Nations special rapporteurs and other international experts have also expressed their very serious concerns.

Meanwhile, leaked and publicly available documents from the Chinese Government themselves verify many of the reports that we have seen. Those documents show guidance on how to run internment camps, and lists showing how and why people have been detained. They contain extensive references to coercive social measures and show statistical data on birth control and on security spending and recruitment in Xinjiang.

In the face of that evidence, the United Kingdom has acted decisively. In March, the Government took the significant step of sanctioning four senior individuals responsible for the violations that have taken place, and which persist, against the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. We also designated the organisation responsible for enforcing the repressive security policies across many areas of Xinjiang.

The sanctions involve travel bans and asset freezes against the individuals and an asset freeze against the entity that we are designating. These individuals are barred from entering the UK and any assets that they hold in the UK are frozen. By acting alongside our partners, the United States, Canada and the European Union, on an agreed set of designations, we have sent a clear and powerful message to the Chinese Government that the international community will not turn a blind eye to serious and systematic violations of basic human rights. These countries amount to a third of global GDP.

On 12 January, we announced robust domestic measures to help to ensure that UK businesses and the public sector avoid complicity in human rights violations in Xinjiang through their supply chains, including a review of export controls as they apply to Xinjiang, the introduction of financial penalties for organisations that fail to comply with their transparency obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and robust and detailed guidance for UK businesses to target those who profit from forced labour and those who would support it financially, whether deliberately or otherwise.

We have also acted internationally to hold China to account for its policies in Xinjiang. In February, in the first personal address to the UN Human Rights Council by a UK Foreign Secretary in more than a decade, my right hon. Friend underlined his call for China to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, or another independent expert,

“urgent and unfettered access to Xinjiang.”

That point was made powerfully by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and was reinforced by the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock).

Working with our partners, we have built an international caucus of countries calling China out for its gross human rights violations and increased the diplomatic pressure for Beijing to change course. On 6 October 2020, alongside Germany, we brought together 39 countries to express grave concern at the situation in Xinjiang in a joint statement at the UN General Assembly Third Committee. That was an increase on the 23 countries that supported the UK-led joint statement a year earlier.

We continue to raise the human rights violations in Xinjiang directly with the Chinese authorities. I had direct conversations recently when I summoned the chargé to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has raised his serious concerns on a number of occasions with his counterpart, Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi.

The motion before the House is that the situation in Xinjiang amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. The UK of course treats all allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity with the gravity they demand. As a nation, we have a strong history of protecting global human rights, but as the House is no doubt aware, the UK’s long-standing position, like many countries around the world, is that determining whether a situation amounts to genocide or crimes against humanity is a matter for competent national and international courts, after consideration of all the available evidence.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Nigel Adams]

I will on that point, although I am conscious that I need to leave a few minutes at the end.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I will be very brief. Will my hon. Friend now commit the Foreign Office and the Government, given that they do not want to say genocide, to co-operating with and giving full evidence to the Uyghur tribunal led by Sir Geoffrey Nice? Can he now give that commitment that they will co-operate and give evidence? It will define genocide, and then the Government could sign up to it.

[Nigel Adams]

I have made our position clear. Incidentally, I have met Sir Geoffrey Nice. I met him yesterday, along with Lord Anderson of Ipswich. We had a very constructive dialogue, and we will continue to have dialogue with Sir Geoffrey. Our policy is that a competent court should determine genocide. Sir Geoffrey is an eminent lawyer and he has done fantastic work in this area, but his tribunal is of course not a criminal court. That is our policy.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Will you give evidence?

[Nigel Adams]

What I will say to my right hon. Friend is that competent courts include international courts such as the ICC and the International Court of Justice, and national criminal courts that meet international standards of due process.

Genocide and crimes against humanity are among the most egregious of all international crimes. We believe —my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) concurred with this in his powerful speech—that the question of whether they have been committed is for a competent court of law to decide. Genocide and crimes against humanity are subject to a restrictive legal framework under international law. In particular, a finding of genocide requires proof that relevant acts were carried out with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Proving such intent to the required legal standard can be incredibly difficult to achieve in practice.

For these reasons, we do not believe it is right for the Government to make a determination in this, or in any other case where genocide or crimes against humanity are alleged. Parliaments in Canada and the Netherlands have passed motions saying it is a genocide, but the Dutch Prime Minister’s party voted against the motions and Prime Minister Trudeau’s Government abstained.

The United Kingdom is committed to seeking an end to serious violations of international human rights law wherever they occur, preventing the escalation of any such violations and alleviating the suffering of those who are affected. Our approach has not prevented us from taking robust action to address serious human rights violations, as we have done and will continue to do in the case of Xinjiang. We are also committed to ensuring that, where allegations are made, they are investigated thoroughly, including, where appropriate, independent international investigation by relevant bodies and experts. The Foreign Secretary has been clear that we wish to see the UN commissioner for human rights or another independent observer have full and unrestricted access to Xinjiang to investigate the situation on the ground. Today, I again call on China to grant that without further delay.

A number of colleagues mentioned the issue of the winter Olympics. The Prime Minister has made it clear that we are not normally in favour of sporting boycotts, and of course the participation of the national team at the Olympics is a matter for the British Olympic Association, which is required to operate independently of the Government under International Olympic Committee regulations. The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) mentioned the recent announcement of the official development assistance cuts in China. We have cut the budget to China by 95%, but every single penny of the remaining budget for China will be spent solely on open societies work and human rights work.

The Government understand the strength of feeling on this issue and share the grave concerns expressed by Members. I commend the efforts of hon. and right hon. Members to draw attention to the deeply troubling situation in Xinjiang. We have taken robust action. We have introduced sanctions, we are tackling Uyghur forced labour in UK supply chains, and we are ramping up pressure on Beijing through UN human rights bodies. We will continue to work with international partners to hold China to account for its gross violations of human rights against Uyghurs and other minorities in the region.

Chinese Government Sanctions on UK Citizens

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. The reality is that the UK has always wanted a mature, positive relationship with China. That has to be based on mutual respect and trust. There is still considerable scope for constructive engagement and co-operation, but we will not sacrifice our values or our security. It is worth getting it on the record that China is an authoritarian state with different values from the UK. We continually act on matters on which we do not agree, including human rights and Hong Kong.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Hong Kong. The prosperity and way of life for Hongkongers relies on respect for fundamental freedoms, which includes an independent judiciary and the rule of law. We are fully committed to upholding Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and rights and freedoms under the joint declaration. On the national security law, the imposition of the new rules including disqualifying elected legislators and changes to election processes, clearly constitutes a serious breach of the joint declaration. We consider Beijing to be in a state of ongoing non-compliance with the Sino-British joint declaration.

On Taiwan, yes, we are clearly concerned by any action that raises tensions in the Taiwan strait and risks destabilising the status quo. We have a long-standing policy that the Taiwan issue needs to be settled peacefully by the people on both sides of the Taiwan strait through constructive dialogue. We continue to work with Taiwan constructively on economic trade, education and cultural ties, and I think our relationship brings huge benefits to both the United Kingdom and Taiwan.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con) [V]]

I thank Mr Speaker for his opening statement of support, which is absolutely right, and the Minister for his response. Surely the key question is: where do we go with our relationship with China? China has sanctioned, without reason, British politicians, people beyond the political sphere and organisations. It has also sanctioned people in Europe and in America. Surely it is now time for the Government to lead our allies in Europe and the United States in saying to China that there can be no preferential trade, economic or commercial deals done while our citizens are sanctioned. Will the Minister resist any moves by any other part of Government to water down any of the measures in the new National Security and Investment Bill, which is going through Parliament?

[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.

Human Rights Update

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. He makes an important and focused point about the fact that the requirements under the Modern Slavery Act, particularly in respect of the transparency of supply chains, apply across the board. He is absolutely right on that, and it is an issue on which we ought to work with businesses but ultimately be willing to fine them if they do not comply.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

What China has been doing to the Uyghur people and others, including the Tibetans, is nothing short of absolutely appalling. Frankly, as the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), said, we are dancing elaborately around the whole idea of genocide when it is clear that that is what is going on.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on making this statement. He knows that I and many others in this place have called for action for some time, so I welcome it. As I understand it, though, two people are not on the list. First, Chen Quanguo, the political commissar of the infamous Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps—which is on the list, but he is not—is the architect of what is going on in Tibet and in Xinjiang. Will my right hon. Friend please take that into consideration?

Secondly, the buck for all this stops with the President of China, who was recently quoted as saying that the Chinese should show the Uyghur people “no mercy”. When do we start calling his name up?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend. First, may I pay tribute to him for his campaigning efforts in this regard? I know he will feel no small sense of accomplishment today, because has eloquently and powerfully made the case in the House. I will certainly look at any names he has. Of course, we have a clear, specific legal regime, and I and the Government have to assess the evidence based on it, but we should be willing to call out. The action we have taken both today and more generally, with the Magnitsky sanctions regime, shows that we not afraid not just to talk, but to act.

Hong Kong: Electoral Reforms

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. He will have heard the response that I gave to the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), on Magnitsky sanctions. With regard to CGN’s involvement in our nuclear sector, obviously, investment involving critical infrastructure is subject to thorough scrutiny and needs to satisfy our robust legal, regulatory and national security requirements, and all projects of this nature are conducted under that regulation to ensure that our interests are protected.

As with all foreign policy priorities, the FCDO recognises the importance of cross-Whitehall collaboration, particularly on Hong Kong. The Foreign Secretary regularly chairs a ministerial group meeting attended by Ministers from across Whitehall and a number of Departments. We obviously take any threat to the joint declaration very seriously, but we need to wait and see what comes out of the National People’s Congress before making an assessment. We have already called a breach twice last year, but the hon. Gentleman will need to wait until we have seen what comes out of the NPC.

On BNOs and the integration of BNO passport holders, that is a really important question. We are working across Government and alongside civil society groups and others to support the integration of those thousands of people who will be taking up that route and arriving here. We encourage and look forward to welcoming applications from those who wish to make the United Kingdom their home. The Foreign Secretary has met the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to discuss exactly this issue. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been in contact with one of the Ministers at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and we look forward to seeing the outcome of those discussions, because it is absolutely crucial that we support those individuals who are coming here from Hong Kong.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con) [V]]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on securing his timely urgent question. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that we have heard a lot of this already before. The problem that we have in waiting for the National People’s Congress to come to a decision is that we know what will happen. The Chinese Government have already dismissed the Foreign Secretary’s comments about their failures and essentially told him to mind his own business, despite the fact that we are co-signatories to that agreement. Furthermore, we have evidence from Xinjiang, Tibet, the Christians, the Falun Gong, the entries into the South China sea, and the abuse on the border with India.

The real problem is that we sit and wait for something really substantial to happen. Other countries have moved, but we have still not come forward with Magnitsky sanctions, which were promised again and again. When will this happen? That is the only real action we can take that tells the Chinese that we have had enough of their behaviour and that they now have to step back into line with the international order or they will be sanctioned.

[Nigel Adams]

My right hon. Friend asks about action. Well, the action that we have taken on Hong Kong is substantial. He knows the answer on Magnitsky sanctions—we do not speculate on whom, and this is a policy area that is under constant review. Let me give him an example of our action. In response to the arrests in January, the Foreign Secretary issued a joint statement alongside his Australian, Canadian and US counterparts underscoring our concern. He also released a further statement following the charges of conspiracy to commit subversion brought against 47 of those arrested. We have made the very generous BNO offer. We have made it clear that in our view the national security law violates the joint declaration, and its use in this way to stifle political dissent contradicts the promises made by the Chinese Government as a co-signatory.