Trade Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

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

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is with great pride that I support this amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has just said, he and I have been involved in discussions around this crime for some time, and we have engaged with some of our most senior lawyers and judges on how it can be addressed.

Genocide is the most serious crime in global law; for that reason, it stands apart and is distinct and singular. The term was first coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944; he was a Polish Jewish lawyer who was undoubtedly absolutely bereft as he watched the horrors of the Holocaust and its atrocities unfold. He also drew on the history of previous instances in which entire nations or ethnic or religious peoples had been destroyed. His urgency was a new legal suggestion, and, although it was mentioned at the Nuremberg trials, it was mentioned in descriptive terms rather than as a legal term. It was immediately after the Second World War that genocide was coded as an independent crime under international law, in the 1948 Genocide Convention. That came into force on 12 January 1951; 12 January 2021 will be its 70th anniversary. Think how fine it would be for us to be a nation that had just put some teeth into the law against this most egregious of crimes.

The legal definition of genocide is precise and includes an element that is very hard to prove: intent to commit genocide. This is a very high bar and an evidential hurdle that is great; this is something of which those of us who practice law in this field are all too conscious. It involves efforts to exterminate and dehumanise a people—a whole set of people. You have already heard the horrors experienced by the Uighurs described in this House. I declare immediately that I co-chair the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China—IPAC—and, like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I have travelled to the refugee camps where the Yazidis give accounts of the most horrifying events that have taken place to that people. Witnessing and knowing about the detail of genocide can only convince decent, good people that we have to try to find ways of making this a crime that has no place in this world.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, explained the purposes of this amendment: the genocide amendment. Its purpose is to ensure that there is a preliminary determination by the High Court, not any lower court, as to whether there is genocide. It is pre-emptive: the whole purpose of the Genocide Convention was to prevent genocide by placing a duty on nations to act to prevent it. I will say immediately what this genocide amendment is not: it is not, to use the language of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, an effort to swamp the courts. The bar is so high that such a case could not possibly be brought before the High Court of this country and have any serious reception if it were not presented with a whole body of evidence that was highly persuasive and involved eminent lawyers who could testify to the bar having been passed on the definition of genocide.

What else is it not? It is certainly not a breach of the separation of powers—a constitutional issue—because, of course, no court will be determining that a trade agreement has to be revoked. It would be for the court to determine whether the bar had been met—that is, whether events documented a genocide that needed to be prevented. That preliminary determination of the courts would then, of course, have great import for any Government committed to human rights and their treaty obligations on genocide. One would expect any such Government then to revoke a trade agreement. All our trade agreements going forward would contain a clause indicating that, if there were a determination by the High Court, this would be the basis on which an agreement could be revoked.

The final thing that this is not is that it is not about determining the liability of individuals for criminal offences. That is not what the High Court would be doing in this case at all. Individual determinations of criminality would not be before the court and would not be determined by the court.

What does this amendment do? It creates new law; we are not pretending that this is not novel. It is, clearly and distinctly, something new. We have no doubt, given the interest shown in it by international lawyers from other nations, that it would be a great moment in the development of law—a role that Britain has often played. If passed into law, in time many other nations would follow suit. It is a way of giving teeth to international law. One of the questions we have always asked has been, how do you make international law have an impact? How do you get things before a court when we have a Security Council bound up with nations that will never agree to matters getting before certain courts? What we are seeking to do here is really to make a new development in law, which will undoubtedly be copied by other nations and signals the importance we attach to this crime above all crimes. We are going to see it on our statute books as a way of giving it pre-eminence in the world. I have no doubt that other states will replicate it.

I cannot bear the expression, “virtue signalling”. Yes, we will be signalling something about our values. We will be signalling that we will not stand by and do business and trade with countries that are destroying whole peoples. That is something we should be proud to be taking a stance on. Let us please extinguish that ghastly expression “virtue signalling” from the language, because we should be taking stances that show we can express our values and our virtues, without any snide grandstanding by onlookers who are not prepared to act.

I urge this House to vote for this amendment if the Government do not agree to it. I really want them to agree to it, because, as I say, genocide is a crime above all others and we should not demur in our commitment to seeing it end.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to support this amendment, following the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He reminded us that this is not the first time we have discussed this matter. I took part in a debate with him on such an amendment back in March 2016, almost five years ago. The noble Lord has raised this issue on more than 300 occasions, ably supported, as he was back in March, by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for whom I have the most enormous admiration. At a time last week when, thanks to the First Minister, it was difficult for me to get beyond my garden gate, the noble Baroness was visiting yet another war zone. The whole House should be extremely proud of both the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who is speaking later in this debate, and the indefatigable energy which they have shown in pursuing this cause. I therefore join with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of the Shaws, and other noble Lords from across the House in supporting this amendment, in order to send a clear message once and for all that we as a nation will not be complicit in genocide.

This amendment introduces a mechanism to equip a competent court to make an interim determination of genocide. It provides for what is a novel, I accept, but crucial approach in effectively responding to genocide, especially as Governments of all shades have lamentably failed in their duty to respond as horrific genocides have unfolded. When we had the debate in March 2016, I spoke about the horrors facing Yazidis and Christian minorities—people who use the language of our saviour, of Christ himself—and we were unable to reach out and help them. I asked how much longer we were prepared to stand by and not acknowledge what was going on, which was a systematic attempt to destroy Christianity throughout the Middle East.