Trade Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, has just said. It resonated with me as I am sure it did with others, and we must take her arguments seriously.

We in this Committee are spending a great deal of time dealing with what in the end are second-order questions, because the first-order question is: what is the driving and determining force behind the proposed legislation? I am convinced that the omissions with which we are concerned are not oversights; they are part of a deliberate policy in driving towards an unregulated and, as some would see it, free society untrammelled by the responsibilities which we have grown to take so seriously over the decades.

That is why—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, was right about this—it is essential to have these important amendments in the Bill, so that the muscle of Parliament is backed up by what is said in the legislation. I believe that most of us right across the party divides understand that the rule of law is not just a matter of law which we must in a disciplined way follow; it is a matter of rational conclusion about how we can order our affairs, best protecting and enhancing the well-being of our people.

The conventions to which the amendments refer are vital, including the conventions covering collective bargaining. Most important are the conventions governing the rights of children, who are very vulnerable and at risk in the world as it is at the moment. The amendments talk of parliamentary sovereignty, and that is right too, but that does not mean sovereignty for Number 10 or for the backroom boys there with their ideological commitments: it means real, effective parliamentary scrutiny, which is the essential essence of sovereignty. I know that many of those on the government Benches would not dissent from the analysis that I have given, but the trouble is that we are faced with driving forces that rely on populism and that are determined at all costs to fundamentally change the nature of our society.

The problem is not just the Bill that we are considering now: noble Lords should think of what is going on at the BBC at the moment. What are we about? We are at a real moment of destiny in our country; we really have to take the gravity of the situation extremely seriously. I therefore commend the amendments in this group; the sooner we have them in the Bill, the better.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to be able to take part in this debate. I am speaking in support of Amendment 33, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I have listened carefully to what the noble Baronesses, Lady Falkner and Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, had to say, particularly the detailed criticism voiced by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, of the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, was clear in his opening remarks that he was prepared to rewrite and scale back the amendment, but as my noble friend Lord Rooker said, is it not the purpose of Committee stage to test out ideas, see what noble Lords think, consider the Government’s response and then refine amendments for Report? I hope that the noble Lord, Lorde Alton, will stick to his guns on this and do just that.

My noble friend referred to the Henry Jackson Society report, Breaking the China Supply Chain, which, as he said, found that 229 separate categories of goods that the UK is strategically dependent on China for our supplies. As he said, it is surely right that we must consider moving the UK away from a position in which its economic dependency can be weaponised to discourage the UK from championing human rights or a rules-based order. As he said, my particular interest is in relation to the abhorrent practice of forced organ harvesting taking place in China and the importance of ensuring that the UK is in no way complicit in supporting it.

I raised this both in the telecommunications Bill and in the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill. So far, the Government have been disappointingly slow to respond, relying on the World Health Organization’s view that China is implementing an ethical voluntary organ transplant system. That is simply not credible; it is based solely on a self-assessment by China itself.

A much more objective assessment comes from the China tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. The judgment released in March 2020 came to the conclusion that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and Falun Gong practitioners have been one—probably the main—source of organ supply. In regard to the Uighurs, the tribunal had evidence of medical testing on a scale that could allow them, among other uses, to become an organ bank. Adidas, Nike, Zara and Amazon are among the western brands currently benefiting, according to a coalition of civil society groups, from the forced labour of the Uighurs in Xinjiang. A shipment recently seized by US Customs and Border Protection in July included wigs made from human hair, which is hugely concerning, considering many reports and personal testimonies of female Uighur Muslims having their hair forcibly shaved in the camps.