Great British Energy Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in congratulating and welcoming today’s perfect pitch, well-judged and outstanding maiden speeches, may I also scatter some stardust in the direction of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who I admire and like? The Government are fortunate to have him to drive forward their Great British Energy Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, was right to remind us that this relatively small Bill carries a large ticket—some £8 billion of taxpayers’ money—and as the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, and my noble friend Lady Hayman said earlier, it will rightly be subject to scrutiny and amendment in your Lordships’ House.

I support a mixed economy of ownership: partnerships between the public and private sector and more community-owned energy, along with diversity of supply—everything from ever more resources for nuclear fusion technology to hydrogen, wind, solar and tidal barrages. In another place during the 1980s and 1990s, I founded and was chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for a Mersey Barrage. Although the then Government promised me they would consider the barrage project as part of the non-fossil fuel obligations and renewable energy policy, it never happened. The Mersey barrage would deliver enough clean, predictable energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes for 120 years, creating thousands of local jobs and turning the Liverpool City Region into a worldwide centre of excellence. I hope the Minister will agree to meet me and Steve Rotheram, the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, to help ensure that the unique opportunity provided in this Bill is not squandered, as it was some 40 years ago.

In introducing the Bill in another place, the right honourable Ed Miliband rightly pointed to the absurdity—referred to by noble Baroness, Lady Winterton, earlier—of the city of Munich owning more of our offshore wind capacity than do the British Government. He has a point, but the missing reference was, to mix a metaphor, not to the elephant in the room but to the CCP dragon, and that is what I want to address my remarks to today. We all know that dragons wallow in sulphurous caves, snorting fire. Perhaps that is why China is responsible for around one-third of global CO₂ emissions. It has pumped out more pollution in eight years than the UK has in 220 years. It is building the equivalent of two new coal-burning power stations every week. It is doing this to build its industrial and military might and certainly not to do its bit toward tackling climate change.

Mingyang Smart Energy, China’s largest wind turbine firm, is involved in several projects in the North Sea. What are we thinking of, handing over such important capability in the net-zero transition to an entity that comes from an authoritarian and hostile state, and doing so as the European Union is launching its antitrust investigation into Chinese turbine manufacturers? Recall that the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security says that China has been able to

“successfully penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy”,

that

“Chinese money was readily accepted by HMG with few questions asked”,

and that external experts concluded

“very strongly that HMG did not have any strategy on China, let alone an effective one”.

Instead of resilience, we have dependency. We currently have a trade in goods deficit of £32.3 billion, which we seem intent on adding to. A Civitas report documents over £140 million paid to United Kingdom universities by Chinese companies. Some are involved in military projects and some have links to institutions complicit in, facilitating or directly involved in the Uighur genocide, nuclear development, military research, espionage and hacking. Civitas identified “an existential threat” and says that China’s ambition at a global level is

“to become a technological and economic superpower, on which other countries are reliant, that represents the greatest risk to the UK”.

In recognising that threat, your Lordships’ House gave all-party support to my successful amendments to the Procurement Act, the Health and Care Act and the Telecommunications Security Act, and to remove some of the 1 million Chinese-made surveillance cameras now in the UK. I have also raised with RUSI the flooding of our markets with Chinese-made electric cars, Chinese-made cellular modules that are components in non-Chinese-made cars, and other electronic equipment which can be used to spy on us and to displace cars made by workers in democratic countries. South-east Asia is awash with Chinese EV car plants and sales, and it is producing electric long-haul lorries and mass-produced cheap EV cars for the mass market.

China is doing this to dethrone and destroy our automotive industry and to enhance its ability to withstand a blockade following the military occupation of Taiwan. It will also cost around 100,000 European car workers their jobs by the end of the decade. Many will lose those jobs because we simply cannot compete with slave labour. The Secretary of State has said that there should be no modern slavery in any part. So, can the Minister say what assessment has been made of reports that there are 96 companies relevant to the automotive sector and the production of electric cars operating in the Uighur region, including 38 that have documented previous engagement in state-sponsored labour transfer programmes, as highlighted by the International Labour Organization, and reports from Human Rights Watch detailing the use of slave labour in aluminium production, with Xinjiang accounting for 9% of total global supply?

I note the call from 50 legislators for Volkswagen to end its presence in Xinjiang and the damning red flag notice to Volkswagen from Morgan Stanley Capital. A US congressional select committee has found that two Chinese EV battery producers—CATL and Gotion High-tech—have links to companies operating in Xinjiang and forced labour programmes. The committee’s report connected both companies to XPCC, a Chinese paramilitary company sanctioned for its links to gross human rights violations in Xinjiang. Its customers include BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Volvo, Stellantis and Renault. I note that Hikvision and Dahua, now banned across the UK from so-called sensitive sites and with links to Uighur internment camps, are selling EV chargers and kit boasting a facility to—I quote from their own advertisements—“scan licence plates and check them against the DVLA database”.

The supply chain story does not end there. Quite recently, as part of an inquiry into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I took testimony from Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr Denis Mukwege. He raised concerns about Chinese exploitation of critical minerals for green technology in the DRC. Cobalt is essential in making lithium-ion EV batteries. Around 75% of global cobalt supply comes from the DRC and 80% of its output is owned by China. CATL is linked to the Chinese state enterprise CMOC, which operates multiple copper cobalt mines in the DRC. Some 25,000 children are working in cobalt mines. Dr Mukwege asked what weight is attached to the use of child labour when it comes to our own purchasing policies. I hope the Minister can tell us.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the report of Sheffield Hallam University’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, entitled In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains. It indicates that the PRC has placed millions of indigenous Uighur and Kazakh citizens from Xinjiang into what the regime calls “surplus labour” and “labour transfer” programmes, or as we should call them, modern-day slavery state-operated programmes. To be clear, workers cannot refuse the work or refuse employment, or challenge the inhumane conditions of work. We are talking about the forcible transfer of a population and enslavement. The report concludes that the solar industry is particularly vulnerable to forced labour in the Uighur region and identified 90 Chinese and international companies whose supply chains are affected.

In 2023, another report from Sheffield Hallam University, Over-Exposed, found that transparency has decreased in the solar industry, making it increasingly difficult to verify whether supply chains are free from risk of Uighur forced labour.

In responding to these findings, could the Minister ask his friends in the Ministry of Defence what response it has made to the December 2023 BBC report that the British Army was investing £200 million in solar panels made by companies believed to have an exceedingly high exposure to forced labour in China? The PRC’s global market domination across the solar photovoltaic supply chain has been expanding rapidly, with 93% of global polysilicon and about 2.1 million tonnes used in almost all solar panels produced in China, and about half of that is produced in Xinjiang. The Secretary of State has confirmed that he is worried about slave labour in the supply chains. Was the Secretary of State warned about companies involved in solar panel production in Xinjiang before awarding contracts to them and, if so, why did he go ahead?

I want to talk also about the Forced Prison-Made Goods Act 1897. Given that Xinjiang has been referred to as a vast prison, and that British law prohibits the importation of prison-made goods, what consideration has been given to the compatibility of the importation of goods made by Uighur prison labour with that Act of Parliament?

Against the backdrop of the 2021 House of Commons decision to name a genocide by the CCP against Uighurs in Xinjiang, the admirable Labour Member of Parliament Sarah Champion, chair of the International Development Select Committee, tabled in another place an all-party amendment to this Bill to tackle what she called,

“a sinister dependency on … forced labour programmes”—[Official Report, Commons, 29/10/24; col. 734.]

in the supply chains for solar panels. She said also that the UK has become

“a dumping ground for dodgy solar”—[Official Report, Commons, 5/9/24; col. 486.]

and tainted solar goods.

That has other implications for the UK. In July, during the Kings Speech debate, I raised the Mallard Pass solar project, which uses Xinjiang-produced solar panels. On 1 August, in reply to a Written Question, the Minister said:

“Ethical procurement is considered at paragraphs 4.104-109”


of the Secretary of State’s planning decision. Is it not the case that, elsewhere in the planning decision, it states that human rights concerns are not a reason to refuse a planning application? If so, why is that? Should not this Bill be used to change it?

Today, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer met Xi Jinping. Reports suggest that he raised sanctions against seven parliamentarians, of whom I am one. These are trivial in comparison with Uighur genocide. Can the Minister tell us whether that issue was raised? If so, what was the response?

On several occasions, I have been privileged to stand with the Minister when he moved amendments on forced organ harvesting in China. In a powerful speech, particularly relevant to this Bill and to Uighur slave labour in Xinjiang, he said:

“It is now a multimillion-pound commercial business in China”.


He went on to say:

“Millions of Chinese citizens are currently detained in labour camps. UN experts estimate that at least 1 million Uighurs are being held in camps in the region of Xinjiang… Companies from the West are complicit in this. Adidas, Nike, Zara and Amazon are among the western brands which, according to a coalition of civil society groups, currently benefit from the forced labour of Uighurs in Xinjiang. In July this year, a 13-tonne shipment of hair products from Xinjiang, worth more than $800,000, was seized by US Customs and Border Protection. This shipment included wigs made from human hair, which is hugely concerning considering the many reports and personal testimonies of female Uighur Muslims having their heads forcibly shaved in the camps”.


The now Minister then reminded the Grand Committee that parliamentarians had the opportunity to strengthen the legislation and

“prevent British complicity in such crimes and to send an important signal to other countries”.

He reflected that issues such as 5G and potential Chinese investment in new nuclear energy presented dilemmas but concluded that,

“there must be a time when we make a stand”.—[Official Report, 28/10/20; cols. GC 141, 142.]

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, was sanctioned with me for doing precisely that. Although she is unable to participate today, we will work together at later stages in moving all-party amendments to create a human rights-centric approach to greener energy supply chains. Let us put that insistence in the Bill and amend it accordingly. Let us do as the Minister said and make a stand.