Human Rights Update

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

There is no question but that this is a welcome step, and I welcome the moves by the EU today and other partners. I am sure the whole House will stand in solidarity with our fellow European parliamentarians who have been sanctioned by the Chinese Government in response. This is an unacceptable attack on democratic lawmakers simply for highlighting the horrific evidence from Xinjiang.

However, the Foreign Secretary has just read out the evidence that we have known about for years. He rightly called it barbaric, but when it has come to taking concrete steps, for years he has not listened. He did not listen to his hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) or his right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). He did not listen to us. He did not listen to the Board of Deputies. He did not listen to the World Uyghur Congress. Yet suddenly today the Foreign Secretary has discovered a new-found sense of urgency about the desperate plight of the Uyghur, despite that mounting evidence over several years. The truth is that the timing is grubby and cynical; it is designed to send a signal first and foremost not to the Chinese Government but to his own Back Benchers. It is motivated primarily by a desire to protect the Government, not the Uyghur. For all the talk of being a force for good in the world, it is only when this Government are staring down the barrel of defeat that they discover a moral centre. Only now that the US and the EU have acted has the Foreign Secretary finally moved to take this step.

I urge all Members, especially those brave and conscientious Conservative Members, to think carefully before accepting that this signals a change of approach from this Government. This week we learnt that, despite his protestations, the Foreign Secretary has been talking up a trade deal with China in private at gatherings with Beijing officials. This week, the Prime Minister launched his global Britain policy, signalling a closer economic relationship with China. Members had eagerly awaited details of the Indo-Pacific tilt; we did not dream for a moment, from the talk over the last year, that it would be a tilt towards China.

Today is perhaps the most acute example of the Government’s decade-long incoherent, inconsistent approach to the Chinese Government. On the day the Foreign Secretary finally announces sanctions on some of the officials responsible for human rights abuses in Xinjiang he is also pulling every trick in the book to stop Parliament gaining the power to block any bilateral trade or investment agreement with China based on a determination of genocide.

I ask hon. Members to pause and ponder: if this is about co-ordination, why has it taken so long? The Government could have taken co-ordinated action with the United States when it brought sanctions in July last year, or if they felt so strongly they could have moved independently from the EU, as they have done in sanctions on other countries over the last year. Where are the sanctions on officials in Hong Kong when the US took that step this week? We should be taking a leadership approach given our historical commitments in the bilateral treaty, which China is in breach of. We are signatories to the joint declaration, not the United States. Where is the tougher sanctions regime that brings corruption into scope? Why did the Foreign Secretary say at a private gathering earlier this month that he had no reason to think that we could not deepen our trading relationship with China? Why did the Prime Minister say last month that he was committed to strengthening the UK’s ties with China

“whatever the occasional political difficulties”?

If this signals a change in approach, why on earth on the same day as the Government are announcing these sanctions are they twisting the arms of Back Benchers who want to support the genocide amendment?

Today I urge all parliamentarians to stand firm: to stand with the public, who overwhelmingly support a principled stance on genocide; to stand with their consciences; and most of all to stand with the Uyghur people. After a decade of rolling out the red carpet for Beijing and turning a blind eye to human rights abuses, this is the moment when we will finally force a change in Britain’s foreign policy, live up to our values as a country and be a force for good in the world.

[Dominic Raab]

I think the hon. Lady welcomed the step, notwithstanding everything she said that followed, but let me correct some of the—frankly—false statements she made. First, she said I talked up a free trade agreement with China—