Procurement Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 11th September 2023 Lords Chamber

I started my speech by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the departmental officials who have worked on the Bill. I should like to end it in that spirit as well. I greatly appreciate the concerted engagement from the Minister, the quiet diligence of officials and the Government’s openness to moving on this important issue. In conjunction with that, I also thank Sam Goodman of Hong Kong Watch, of which I am a patron, as I have said, for some helpful background work. Given the commitment today by the Minister at the Dispatch Box to the publication of a timeline, a definition of sensitive sites and the allowance of some parliamentary oversight, I will not be moving this amendment to a Division. However, the House can be sure that I will watch this with an eagle eye and return to it, should the need arise in the future.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 102A and 102B. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I very much agree with the thrust of what he said and look forward to the results of his eagle eye, which I am sure will come to your Lordships’ House over the next months and years. Like him, I also thank the Minister for her stewardship of the Bill. It has taken so long that I recollect that on our first day in Committee, the noble Baroness herself had laid many amendments which she seemed to have to refute later on in proceedings on the Bill. At least she knows how it feels to have a government Minister reject so many well-argued points.

I thank the Minister also for what she said about the Government’s view of the appalling atrocities being committed in China, with the removal of organs from a living prisoner of conscience for the purpose of transplantation, killing the victim in the process. It is state sanctioned and widespread throughout China. The victims at the moment are known to be primarily Falun Gong practitioners, but most recent evidence suggests that Uighur Muslims are also being targeted on a massive scale, particularly in Xinjiang.

My amendment was supported by noble Lords all around the House on Report. Essentially, it gave a discretionary power to exclude suppliers from being awarded a public contract if they have participated in forced organ harvesting or unethical activities relating to human tissue, including where they are involved in providing a service or goods relating to such activities. The effect of the amendment would have been to prevent any service or goods that may have been involved in, or developed off the back of, the forced harvesting trade entering the UK. When it went back to the Commons, the Government took the provision out in Committee. This was challenged on Commons Report, led by my honourable friend Marie Rimmer. Despite support from MPs of all parties, that was not successful, so I am asking noble Lords to send it back to the Commons for further consideration.

My reasons, briefly, are threefold. First, the scale of the atrocities being carried out in China, specifically in Xinjiang, are becoming ever clearer and more horrific. Secondly, I believe that Ministers were wrong in dismissing the need for the amendment, both in the response they gave in the Commons to my colleagues and in the comments that the Minister has given tonight. Thirdly, I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that the context in which this is being debated is, frankly, that government policy towards China is completely inadequate to the threats that country poses to the interests of the United Kingdom.

On the scale of the atrocities, I can do no better than to quote what Sir Iain Duncan Smith said on Report in the Commons. He referred to the 2022 UN report, which found serious human rights violations in Xinjiang. He said:

“They seem to be about the most significant human rights abuses currently happening in the world,”—[Official Report, Commons, 13/6/23; col. 205.]


whether we use the term “genocide” or not.

What the Minister has essentially said is first that we do not need to do this because there is a discretionary power in the Bill already, and secondly that there is no evidence, as far as the Government are aware, that a supplier to the UK public sector has been involved in forced organ harvesting. On the first point, I believe that there is considerable merit in making explicit reference in the Bill to this matter, so that public authorities are in no doubt whatever that they can use a discretionary power to deal with companies that may be dealing, maybe inadvertently, in this abhorrent trade. Secondly, I think there is evidence of taxpayers’ money being spent on companies involved in forced organ harvesting. For example, pharmaceutical companies may be supplying immunosuppressant drugs to hospitals that have been reported to remove organs from prisoners of conscience.

As I have said, we cannot consider these matters without seeing them in the context of UK policy towards China. I am not going to repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, nor to requote. We have now had our Lordships’ Select Committee, then chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, in its report only last month on the Indo-Pacific tilt policy. They all draw attention to the Government’s woefully inadequate response to the threat that China presents and to the very ambiguity there is in policy. We can see the obvious tension between our security, on one hand, and the willingness and wish of the Government to trade with China and to encourage Chinese investment, but I am afraid that, in trying to get a balance, we have ended up with a Government with a wholly inadequate and incoherent policy.

My amendment is very modest. All it does is give the decision-maker discretionary powers to exclude a supplier from a procurement contract if it

“or a connected person has been, or is, involved in … forced organ harvesting, or … dealing in any device or equipment or services relating to forced organ harvesting”.

It would be the first piece of UK legislation to include and define forced organ harvesting. It would be a huge step in preventing UK complicity in forced organ harvesting, and I urge the House to support it.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I was a signatory to earlier amendments and we have just heard the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, make a very cogent case for the Commons to think again about his amendments. I will be very brief, given the hour. The noble Lord built on what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, outlined just now, and his case is backed by international investigation and evidence. Thus, for example, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, not an institution that would say this lightly, concludes in relation to Xinjiang:

“Allegations of … torture … including forced medical treatment … are credible”.


The Minister in the Commons and now the Minister in the Lords have argued that current legislation covers the problem identified in this amendment, but noble Lords will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, make a very persuasive case that this is not so. My noble friend Lord Fox will comment further shortly but, if the noble Lord decides to put this to a vote, from these Benches we will support him.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

At end insert “and do propose Amendment 102B instead of the words so left out of the Bill—

102B: Schedule 7, page 110, line 31, at end insert—
“Involvement in forced organ harvesting
14A (1) A discretionary exclusion ground applies to a supplier if a decisionmaker determines that the supplier or a connected person has been, or is, involved in—
(a) forced organ harvesting, or
(b) dealing in any device or equipment or services relating to forced organ harvesting.
(2) “Forced organ harvesting” means killing a person without their consent so that their organs may be removed and transplanted into another person.””