China: Human Rights and Security

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a debate of fitting quality at the end of this calendar year. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for bringing it to us. In some respects, I hope this final debate of 2024 might frame some of the early debates we have in 2025, when we look at the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s visit to Beijing and other Ministers’ visits to China. I hope they will be able to take the contributions from this debate into consideration when they form their views, because we have served a challenge function and reflected on some of the subjects we need to debate.

As my noble friend Lady Smith said, tis the season of another government approach to China. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, outlined the previous Administration’s approach, so we can see the word salad of “protect”, “co-operate”, “prioritise”, “challenge”, “align”, “compete” and “engage”. The word that is missing is “strategy”, and you could add “published” in front of that. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Fox, because he outlined in such clear terms why we need to have one.

I say this with great respect, because I both understood and agreed with much of the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, but I felt there was a contradiction, to some extent, in seeking to move away from trade dependency on China towards other trading partners in the CPTPP who also predominantly have seen growth as a result of trade with China and are now basically a vehicle for us to have enhanced trade with China. This seems to be the Government’s adopted approach for trade. It seems that “European Union” are the two words that dared not speak their name in the debate. If we seek to diversify away from trade dependency on China, it might be that we should have stronger trade links with our European neighbours.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

Just to clarify, my proposal, which was not clear at all, was that we should help and encourage those countries that have a trade dependency with China—that is, those CPTPP partners—to move away from that trade dependency and use our role to do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I can understand that as a theoretical approach, but of all the current CPTPP members, it is the United Kingdom—the newest country —that has the largest trade deficit of them all with China. Those members would look to us to diversify away from China, so the whole ambition is the other way around. We hope, if the Government are doing a strategic audit, that their analysis will come to the fore, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, indicated, there are worrying signs that the audit may not be published or that it may be delayed until the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been in Beijing. We may not even have it presented for debate in Parliament, so I am starting to be quite concerned.

As my noble friend Lord Fox indicated, we need this because of the industrial-scale economic surveillance, and the scraping and capture of data from the UK economy, as a tool for industrial espionage, for state advantage, and for state enterprises to strategically undercut and underprice in certain key sectors of our economy. As my noble friend Lord Fox’s work on other elements of our key technology and infrastructure says, we need to enhance our resilience, especially now when we see what China is doing globally in seeking software and hardware for global ports of entry systems, for shipping and for telecommunications.

China is not a passive global actor. I acknowledge that neither are we, and nor is it a criticism that it is not, but the strategic aim for China is to have a sphere of influence in a multipolar world. That is distinct from how we see the world, which we feel should be based on a liberal, international order of rules. There are differences in how we see global diplomatic and development interactions. The UK—working with partners, of course—should be clear that our perspective of the world is distinct.

In previous Questions and Statements, the Minister has been honest with us and said that she did not know whether the new Government’s approach to this will work. She has said that in this Chamber. However, she said that it was worth trying. It is worth trying if we are seeking to grow our economy, but the cost of the growth of our economy, while being a supplicant at a trade deficit in key sectors, means that we are unlikely to see a level of sustainable growth, or the protection of human rights and national security. Of course we should be partnering in certain areas, but we should not do it blind.

That is why the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, and others have said, as I did in my question to the Minister just this week with regard to the National Security Act—on which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and I worked very hard—that the approach should be evidence-based, taking into account national security considerations and threats. It should not be subservient to economic development or to one perception of economic development. That is why we need to look at elements of our relationship with Taiwan, as the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, said; we have a strategic economic partnership with Taiwan, which is a liberal, open democracy that does represent our thinking.

With regard to China, there are further actions that this Government can take, which the previous Government did not take, when they look at auditing UK-based assets owned by the CCP and at the potential use of Magnitsky sanctions against those responsible for the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms. We can pursue further areas of human rights, and I hope that the Government will not set them aside as a result of the Treasury’s approach.

Last weekend, on a fascinating visit to the Doha Forum, I saw the approach that many developing nations and economies are taking to China. I sat in a session with President Kagame of Rwanda, Prime Minister Mottley of Barbados and a Chinese operative. What was fascinating was that President Kagame said that, when he speaks to potential western investors, “We get tons of lectures, not goods”, but Prime Minister Motley said that all her interactions and developing nations’ interactions should be based on “global principles”. There was a contradiction that I heard from them. I pointed out that when it comes to China and Africa, for example, the UK is a bigger investor in Africa than China at the moment. We can assert ourselves with the values of Barbados on global principles and not accept the narrative that there are lectures, but we should be an active participant in this area.

I close by coming back to what my noble friend Lady Smith indicated when it comes to the need for there to be a coherent approach, and perhaps this is referencing the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Godson. It seems that the new Government’s approach is to

“find a way of engaging with China in a more meaningful and deeper relationship that recognised the threat, but also sought to try to co-opt China into the international order”;

an approach that understands

“that many of the world’s biggest challenges like climate change or biodiversity loss were not going to be solved without engagement with China”.

That is a direct quote from George Osborne’s evidence to our International Relations and Defence Select Committee, which my noble friend and I had the pleasure of serving on, when we concluded our report in September 2021.

That report’s title was The UK and China’s Security and Trade Relationship: A Strategic Void. It called for the Government to

“produce a single, coherent China strategy, as recommended by the Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2019, and a plan for how it will execute that strategy”.

We still need that. If the Government believe that they will have a 10-year period in office rather than five years, the need for a single, coherent, published China strategy is vital, and I hope the Minister may agree to it.

As I sit down, I wish all Members a happy Christmas and a merry New Year. He is not in the Chamber at the moment, but this will be the last occasion when Mr Cameron-Wood, the Deputy Principal Doorkeeper, will carry the Mace out as the House rises, after 13 years of sterling service to this House. I wish him and all the staff a very happy Christmas and New Year.