Trade Bill

Debate between Mark Menzies and Lyn Brown

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.