Human Rights: China

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. I will touch on Taiwan in a moment, and I commend the work he does in the British-Taiwanese All-Party Parliamentary Group, of which I am a proud member. The noble Lord sought to give us a little detour away from Beijing, to Belfast. I admire him for squeezing that in. After four long days in Committee on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, the Minister will be relieved that I am not asking him about this—although I did ask on a number of occasions what the Prime Minister’s views on the Northern Ireland protocol were.

The right reverend Prelate is to be commended on bringing this debate. He should not have had any reluctance or reticence to bring it to the Grand Committee, because it is of profound importance for the future of our country. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, indicated, on 20 October we debated in Grand Committee the International Relations and Defence Committee’s report on China. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, is an esteemed member of that committee, on which I served, and he was absolutely right to say that we were challenging the void in the Government’s strategy on China. Indeed, the terminology in the committee report highlighted a void.

When it comes to the serious issue of Taiwan, of significance are not simply the UK’s foreign relations with Taiwan but the UK’s strategic interests with Taiwan as a major trading partner. We are reliant on technological imports from Taiwan. It is also a significant export partner for some of our key export sectors. Therefore, the consequences of what will happen in the relationship between the PRC and Taiwan are of direct UK interest.

Not only that—there is also a soft power interest. I have been to Taiwan on a number of occasions. On one of my visits, I was there with our former colleague, my noble friend Lord Steel, and we met with President Tsai Ing-wen. She said that it was Lord Steel, as leader of the Liberal Party, who inspired her to be involved in politics in Taiwan; she was studying at LSE at the time. The fact that Taiwan and the UK both have strong, deep views on the principles of democracy and rights is of great importance. Therefore, it is an appropriate prism through which to look at UK relations with China, human rights and China’s increasingly aggressive posture.

I join the right reverend Prelate in saying that the relations between the people of the UK and the people of China are of deep and significant importance. You cannot go to a campus, speak to a business or go to a high street and not see that depth of relationship. But of course, as in our previous debate on our relations with India, that does not mean we should be blind to some of the serious challenges that exist.

In the context of having reviewed the Government’s integrated review and the Minister’s response to the Select Committee, I read the US Department of Defense’s recently published national defence strategy. It now refers to the PRC by highlighting its

“increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive activity towards Taiwan”

along with the risk of destabilisation, risk miscalculation and threats to peace and stability. It also mentions China’s other abilities, including using cyber and digital technology. The US now considers the PRC as

“the pacing challenge for the Department”.

However the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is right that at the same time the UK’s posture is confusing, to say the least. In the debate in the committee, I asked about the status of the China strategy because the Government had said that it was held by the National Security Council. That council was then abolished; now it has apparently been recreated under the Prime Minister. It is interesting that the Government say they have recreated the National Security Council but the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, told me that it had not been abolished in the first place. That is a microcosm of the lack of clarity about where we are.

The seriousness of this is that in many of our key sectors, as highlighted by the director-general of MI5, and by me in many of our debates on trade policy and elsewhere, we in the UK are overreliant on imports from China. That dependency is a worry. This is in the absence of a strategic industrial strategy for the UK which would look at digital, ecommerce, privacy, intellectual property and supply chain resilience, as well as some of our key areas. One area we raised in the past is wafer technology. When the Government refused to call in a purchase, we were told repeatedly that there were no concerns. Then after parliamentary pressure, I think, the Government did call it in and the news this week is broadly welcome. That highlights how it does not seem as though BEIS, the Treasury and the FCDO are working in complete alignment.

Last year, I raised the fact that we had the biggest trade deficit on goods imports for any country in our nation’s history. It was more than £40.5 billion. That has declined slightly but by only £2 billion, so we now have a trade deficit with China of £39 billion on imports, which means that we need an industrial strategy and a resilience review across the key sectors. It also means that we should be looking at screening investments by UK firms in some of those key sectors in China. The recent reports that the German Government are operating this should be an indication that we need to do the same. I say this because the latest trade figures with China, published on 2 November, highlight a 20% increase in UK investment in China and Chinese enterprises, including state-owned enterprises. I simply do not know what the Government’s strategy is when we hear from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, what the new Prime Minister had said; now that is represented in the growth of investments in these enterprises.

The final thing I raise regarding Hong Kong and the UK is that the Government have not moved fast or far enough in reviewing what property assets party leaders and state-owned enterprises in Hong Kong have in London and the UK, which individuals have them, how transparent that is and how much they have invested in UK investment funds. I have repeatedly questioned whether any of the agreements signed by David Cameron and President Xi in 2015 have been reviewed, because they offer increased UK market access to Chinese enterprises, including investment in UK pension funds. I do not know whether state-owned enterprises, party leaders or those who have been either directly linked with or complicit in human rights abuses in China are increasing their purchases of British pension funds. Local authorities, individuals and investors need to know. It is the Government’s responsibility to tell us. We need a China strategy as well as resilience, because we cannot simply bemoan human rights abuses in China if we are silent at home.