King’s Speech

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. As the gracious Address rightly notes, antisemitism, political fragmentation and alienation are challenges that demand we work far harder to renew our institutions and put the national interest first. Two issues that I want the Government to address are resilience and dependency.

The most pressing challenge is the deadly quartet—as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, referred to them—of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. I have some skin in the game as I have collected sanctions from each of them. Their lethal challenge to the liberal democratic order represents one of the most severe threats since World War II. Consider how that axis works. It utilises Hong Kong, for instance, for the shadow fleet of tankers selling oil to China and for companies producing tech parts found in Iran’s drones and ballistic missiles. The BBC reports that at least 11,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to fight for Putin in Ukraine—some have been used as human minesweepers. Iran has provided Putin with weapons, ammunition and technology. In facing this axis, our national resilience undoubtedly needs to be bolstered by increased defence spending now, before it is too late, and by a coherent strategy to defend our citizens and values.

In travelling through many dictatorships, including the former Soviet Union, Burma, North Korea and China, I have seen at first hand an inspiring desire for the liberties we often take for granted. That desire is exhibited courageously in Ukraine and vibrantly in Taiwan. On Monday, I co-chaired a meeting in Parliament addressed by Thae Yong-ho. He was the deputy North Korean ambassador in the UK and defected in 2016, choosing democracy over dictatorship. We discussed a United Nations commission of inquiry report documenting North Korea as a state that

“does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”.

The report called for its crimes against humanity to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. It never has been. In its political prison camps, hundreds of thousands continue to perish. This is a country where a 22 year-old boy was publicly executed for listening to South Korean music.

In China, I visited persecuted Christians, witnessed the suppression of Buddhists in Tibet and met Uyghur Muslims enduring genocide, as referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. In Hong Kong in 2019 as an international election monitor, I saw an unprecedented turnout, with pro-democracy candidates gaining a landslide victory in the city’s last fair and free elections. The CCP communist regime responded by destroying “one country, two systems”, disqualifying elected legislators, enacting the national security law and imprisoning up to 1,900 political prisoners in Hong Kong. They include people such as the young man Joshua Wong and the remarkable British citizen Jimmy Lai, who, unless released, will undoubtedly die in solitary confinement.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I have the privilege to chair, identified China, in its report on transnational repression, as the greatest internal threat and called for it to be placed in the advanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme. In our report on supply chains and slave labour, we called for radical change to the Modern Slavery Act to prevent slavery in global supply chains. Will those recommendations feature in forthcoming legislation?

For British industry to be able to provide jobs and to compete, there must be an end to unfair competition based on slave labour. Resilience demands that we address a trade deficit of £43.5 billion with China rather than adding to it. We must urgently wean ourselves away and trade instead with partners such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India and other emerging democracies. Our ability to rebuild a resilient manufacturing base, to compete fairly and to protect jobs against rising unemployment will always be compromised by states such as China that use slave labour. As the JCHR report on supply chain transparency and my amendment to the Energy Act made clear, national energy resilience cannot be dependent on solar panels made by Uyghur slave labour.

The dangers of the moment, including prohibitive energy bills, also require us to open new gas and oil fields and responsibly utilise natural resources. As with the challenge from AI, currently being examined by the JCHR, we risk making the same mistake of the 1980s of too rapid deindustrialisation and using state handouts, which are no substitute for the dignity of work. No one should be better off on benefits than in doing a day’s work.

A resilient democracy must bolster its citizens and its international alliances, acting confidently in promoting the rule of law and democratic values. To that end, the Government should accept, for instance, the JCHR recommendation to extend universal jurisdiction against perpetrators of mass atrocity crimes, an issue to which I will return in the balloted debate which I have secured for 4 June and through my Private Member’s Bill on genocide determination. I hope that, when those measures come forward, the Government will demonstrate that they mean what they say when, in the words of the gracious Address, they will take measures which contribute to the UK’s

“strength on the world stage”.