Trade Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

We owe it people such as him, the incarcerated Uighurs, the suffering Tibetans, the Falun Gong and other religious believers persecuted for their faith, to stand four-square with them in that quest. By voting for these amendments, we will demonstrate—to arrested lawyers such as Hong Kong’s Martin Lee; young jailed pro-democracy campaigners such as Andy Li, Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow; to imprisoned newspaper owner Jimmy Lai; and defiant women like the brave Grandma Wong—that we will uphold the human rights of place such as Hong Kong and Xinjiang. We will put our belief in the quest for human freedom before menacing intimidation, brutal suppression of human rights and trade based on slave labour. It is for those reasons that these amendments are so important, and I will have no hesitation in voting for them tonight.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 8 and my own Amendments 10 and 45—that is 10 and 45, not 11 and 45. I have been monitoring proceedings—watching them upstairs in my office—and I have popped down to the Chamber for this debate. I shall attempt to be brief because much has been said, in such wonderful ways and in such a powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, whom I regard as my noble friend, and by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury—I think it is the first speech I have ever agreed with him on, although he may not find that helpful.

My Amendment 10 is designed to emulate the excellent Amendment 9 of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, because I seem to recall that, when he moved his amendments in Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, commended the approach of involving the courts, and I thought, “That amendment has got some traction”. As such, my amendment on human rights—not genocide—follows the structure of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. For the human right abuses, I have selected, in the main, the principal ones from the European Convention on Human Rights. I do not intend to push my amendments to a vote because I hope Amendment 8 will succeed, and I will vote for it.

The only little quibble I have with Amendment 8 concerns subsection (5)(d) of the proposed new clause. Subsection (5) talks about “serious violations” and lists “genocide”, “torture”, “inhuman or degrading treatment”, “slavery” and so on—but paragraph (d) then talks about

“other major violations of human rights”

and lists:

“the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

My worry here is that one is getting down to less important human rights, some of which I regard almost as motherhood and apple pie. My concern is: would the Government use this as an excuse not to go down this route?

Yes, of course, they might accept genocide, slavery and torture, but I question reporting to Parliament every time that one of the more minor human rights is contravened. We may consider this terribly important in our western liberal democracy, but I suspect that, if you look at the huge range of UN human rights, the protocols and the additions to them, almost every single country in the world could be accused of breaching one of them. That is my concern, and it is why, in my Amendment 45, to which Amendment 10 refers, I listed the main ones from the European Convention on Human Rights:

“The right to life


Freedom from torture


Freedom from slavery


The right to liberty


The right to a fair trial …


Freedom of expression


Freedom of assembly


The right to marry and start a family”


and so on—because it is important to concentrate on the main ones.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has set out in detail the incredible abuses of the Uighur people in China. I put it this way: would we dream of doing a trade deal with the regime in Burma, considering what it has done? Would we do a trade deal with the late and highly unlamented Mugabe of Zimbabwe, after his extermination of 20,000 of the Matabele people? No—of course not. Yet in China—again, I distinguish between the people of China and the communist regime—the regime is equally as bad as Burma or Mugabe, and, as the noble Lord described, it is doing genocide in slow motion, whereas Mugabe exterminated 20,000 Matabele in a few months.

Of course we would not do a trade deal with those countries or other regimes, but we are trading with China because it has got a grip on us: we are overreliant on trade with it and overdependent on it. This is not the time to get into and debate this with my noble friend the Minister, but I wish all success with Project Defend, which is aimed at trying to make sure that we reshore some of the things that we are dependent on China for or that we source them from other countries. Even something as bog-standard as paracetamol, which costs about a penny a tablet, should not be 99% sourced from chemicals in China and then produced in India; we must source more of these vital products and services from other countries. That is why I support Amendment 8.

To save time, because we are running rather late tonight, I intend to withdraw from speaking on Amendment 9, but I completely support it. I will vote for it, and I hope it passes because it is probably the most important amendment we have dealt with today or tomorrow—or whenever we will address this Bill again; it is the most important amendment, and I think the Government can easily, and should, accept it. If the wording is slightly wrong, they have time to clean it up in the other place for us to get it back here during ping-pong. With those remarks, I will conclude and let others speak.

I would be grateful if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, would make a comment, if he can bear it, on my point about some of the more trivial human rights abuses in case that weakens the argument. I may be totally wrong, but if he has a chance to comment on it, I would greatly welcome that.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who will be followed by the noble Lord, Lord Curry.