Trade Bill

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) for speaking so exceptionally well for us on the amendments.

Tonight I will support the amendments protecting our NHS, child safety, parliamentary scrutiny, our environment and animal welfare, but I shall use my short time this afternoon to speak on the amendments on the most serious human rights abuses and genocide, which is clearly the most heinous crime of all. Those Lords amendments would help us to ensure that our trade policy was in line with our words—and if not now, when? Today, I have time to give voice to just one example, and I want to make it about the Uyghur people in Xinjiang in China. In 2006, tired of racism, Gulbahar fled with her family to France. Ten years later, she was told that she had to return to sign important documents. She returned, and was immediately detained. Her daughter had been at a Uyghur rights demonstration in France, and Gulbahar was therefore branded a terrorist. She was imprisoned in a re-education camp and endured more than two years of humiliating, terrifying, torturous abuse and violence from the Chinese state; and she was forcibly sterilised. She came to understand that the strategy was

“not to kill us in cold blood, but to make us slowly disappear. So slowly that no one would notice.”

Finally, she was found innocent on the trumped-up charges and released.

Such practices are part of a systematic abuse of human rights aimed at millions of Uyghur Muslims. Perhaps, legally, it still is not classified as genocide, but the Uyghur people deserve a fair hearing. We must hear them. I believe our courts must be empowered. If the very worst abuses are going on, it is clear that our trade policy must change. We have heard from holocaust survivors about the importance of that change, and I believe it is about living up to our words when we say “never again”. Every year, we make that commitment for Holocaust Memorial Day. I hope that on that day, next week, the UK can say that it is acting decisively to give those words substance.

Today we should do the right thing, because if we do not, tomorrow we will certainly be judged. Let us not be found wanting in our duty to act.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con) [V]]

It is a great privilege to be called in this debate. I spoke on Second Reading, but today I am speaking in opposition to the Lords amendments. Before I say anything else, I should make it clear that I am a huge supporter and a friend of Lord Alton, a person of tremendous integrity, and I respect what those who are supporting the amendments are seeking to do, but are we really saying that on genocide—the most heinous crime imaginable—the Government’s trade policy should be reliance on the ability to go to a court? Surely to goodness, if we in this House believe that genocide is occurring, we should be acting a lot more swiftly and a lot more decisively than simply seeking the opinion of judges. It is this Parliament and this House that should be acting, and forcing a Government of any persuasion to take action against any country in the world engaged in genocide.

I urge colleagues to think carefully about what they are seeking to do. What would happen if Parliament decided that genocide was occurring and action had to be taken, but the courts felt that the bar for what determined genocide was not met? What action would be taken then? Would that tie the hands of Government? Would it mean that action, whether on trade or otherwise, was constrained? That would be one of the concerns with the amendment. I do not believe that supporting this measure would, to use the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), give us moral courage. The opposite is true. It would allow some people to say, “It is now up to the courts to decide. It is not a matter for Parliament.” If we believe in moral courage, it is for Parliament to show it, take action, challenge the Government, and hold them to account when we believe that genocide or any other significant human rights abuses are occurring, whether in relation to trade or anything else.

I am also very much reassured by the contribution from the Minister for Trade Policy. As a member of the Select Committee on International Trade, I can say that we will use all the powers available to us—and will seek more powers as time rolls on—to make sure there is scrutiny, and that Parliament carries out its role and looks at continuity or rollover agreements. This is not a matter of accepting continuity agreements as they stand. As those agreements move from being continuity rollover agreements, as they are now in most cases, to something country-specific or trade bloc-specific, this House absolutely needs more of a voice in making sure that nothing in there is detrimental to the British people.

Above all, it is important that this Bill goes through; after all, is it about ensuring that trade takes place and the prosperity of our constituents is protected. More importantly, it is about vulnerable countries around the world—ones that are desperate to trade with the UK in order to enrich their populations and take themselves out of poverty. It is really important that this Bill goes through to allow that to happen. It has my support.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD) [V]]

The Liberal Democrats will today vote to put human rights at the centre of our country’s trade policy. Our party has a long history of leading the way in upholding human rights, from our opposition to South African apartheid to the late Paddy Ashdown’s role in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with colleagues in all parts of this House on that frontline again today.

The world is watching us, and we have a choice: to make a bold, confident statement about our fundamental commitment to human rights or accept this Government’s buccaneering approach to trade, in which effective scrutiny, rights and freedoms are trumped by self-interest. We of course back Lords amendment 2, which requires the Government to conduct due diligence and report to the House on the human rights implications of trade deals, but I wish to focus in particular on Lords amendment 3, the so-called genocide amendment.

Is there anything that blackens humanity’s soul more than genocide? Edmund Burke famously said:

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

For too long, in cases of suspected genocide, despite many good men and women raising the alarm, nothing has been exactly what happens, and it is time to change that. I believe that what is happening to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang is genocide. Of course, it is not the only instance of genocide being committed in the world right now, but it is not for me or for this Government to make the legal determination; that is quite rightly a matter for the courts, but the Chinese Government, by virtue of their position, regularly block routes to such determinations, and so we tie ourselves up in knots while the perpetrators of these gross atrocities go largely unchallenged, leaving victims and survivors without justice.

The UK needs a practical mechanism for fulfilling its international legal obligations on genocide, and Lords amendment 3 provides that. It is based on the world as it is, not the world as we hope it to be. Allowing UK judges to make an advisory, preliminary determination is a necessary step if the UK is to lead by example and meet its obligations. That determination can then be taken up in international courts, but we will have made our position clear.

The Government say that they would revoke an agreement well before we reached that stage. If so, why not just accept the amendment? It does not prohibit them from doing that. A number of colleagues have talked about Parliament taking action, challenging Government and standing up on this issue. Well, in 2016, Parliament voted unanimously to recognise the Yazidi genocide, and the Government ignored it. Can the Minister tell us what exactly has changed since then?

This amendment is backed by the International Bar Association, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Muslim Council of Britain and many others, and it has support on both sides of the House. Never again should we wring our hands in horror after the fact, saying we should and could have done more. “Never again”—words we use every Holocaust Remembrance Day, and words that we today have a chance to live up to.