Trade Bill

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I thank my right hon. Friend, but there is a crucial difference here. Yes, the Select Committee runs itself. It can make calls for evidence and produce a report, and we would expect it to report quite quickly if there were credible reports of genocide, so the Select Committee writes the motion, but there is still the protection that the matter then goes to a vote of the whole House. I find it hard to conceive that a vote of the whole House in which the Government had a majority would determine something along the lines suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) or my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I find that hard to conceive. I think we should have more trust in our Select Committees.

Going back to human rights, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office already publishes an annual human rights and democracy report, so there is no need for Lords amendment 2B

Turning to Lords amendment 3B on genocide and the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, it is the Government’s firm view that expanding the role of the UK courts in the manner envisaged is inappropriate and would carry harmful unintended consequences. First, it would be unlikely to work. Genocide is notoriously hard to prove, with a higher legal threshold. If a judge were unable to make a preliminary determination on genocide, which is highly probable, it would be a huge propaganda win for the country in question, effectively allowing that state to claim that it had been cleared by the UK courts.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Greg Hands]

I will take perhaps a final intervention from my hon. Friend.

[Ms Ghani]

I find it hard to believe that, if a country was investigated for genocide, that could in any way be seen as a propaganda event. It is not for us to determine how that decision is taken. The Government repeatedly say that that is for the courts, so we should allow the courts to come to a determination on the basis of evidence. We should never believe that people will not put a case forward to the courts because it might fail. That is just nonsense.

[Greg Hands]

I have to say that I disagree with my hon. Friend. I also think that the proposal made in the amendment tabled by the Chairman of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), is a superior process, which I am going to outline. So I disagree with her point, if I may respectfully say that.

As I was saying, if a judge were unable to make a preliminary determination on genocide, it would be a huge propaganda win for the country in question, effectively allowing that state to claim that it had been cleared by a UK court. That would be an awful result, and I encourage the House to think strongly about the implications of that before supporting this amendment. Rather than helping persecuted people, we would be setting their cause back. Further, any determination would be subject to appeal, which would create a more drawn-out process than that envisaged by the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Hands]

I am going to make more progress—sorry, I will not give way further.

The wording of that substantive motion will be provided by the Committee. A similar process would ensue in the other place to take note of the report. The process that I have outlined would be triggered in each case by the publication of the Select Committee report.

[Ms Ghani]

Will my right hon. Friend take a short intervention?

[Greg Hands]

I am not going to take further interventions —there is only an hour for this debate.

It is up to Committees how they report, but such a report could come about in response to evidence produced by their own inquiries or to a finding of genocide by a competent criminal court, whether international or domestic. Such an approach rightly puts Parliament, not the courts, in the driving seat on this issue, which is who generates a debate in Parliament. Our policy on the legal determination of genocide has not changed. It has long been the Government’s position that genocide determination is a matter for the relevant court, which includes international courts and domestic criminal courts. However, whether to have a debate in Parliament should be a matter for Parliament.

I hope the House agrees that the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Justice Committee is a reasonable middle ground: it delivers the result envisaged by the Lords amendment—that is, to have a parliamentary debate—and the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, but it does so through Parliament, not the courts. It allows Parliament to act quickly and decisively on the issue of genocide and, crucially, places a specific duty on the Government to act on the Committee’s concerns. It does so without upsetting the delicate separation of powers and without judicial encroachment. It ensures that Parliament has a clear role and that the Government have a clear duty when credible reports of genocide are raised with regard to a proposed bilateral FTA partner. I hope that Members from all parties will come together in support of the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Justice Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

I wish to make only three brief points. First, the House of Commons is the appropriate place to scrutinise the elected Government’s independent trade policy. That is why I am against Lords amendment 1B, because it actually gives powers away from the House of Commons. The amendment requires the House of Lords to give its permission for the elected Government to even have discussions on our future trade policy. I cannot believe that the Labour party’s position is to give the House of Lords a veto on what an elected Government in the House of Commons should or should not be able to do. I wonder sometimes whether this House is having some sort of collective democratic nervous breakdown, because it seems always to want to give its powers away to someone else.

As I said last time, I do not believe that the courts should have a say on the elected Government’s trade policy, either—whether prospectively or retrospectively—or on what we debate in Parliament. When it comes to the issue of genocide, what matters is what we do about credible accusations of genocide. We should not be waiting for judicial confirmation through the Trade Bill. We can assess evidence, assess intelligence and listen to eyewitnesses ourselves. Frankly, if we want to take action in response to the Chinese Communist party’s treatment of the Uyghur people, we should do so. We have given ourselves new powers. But the Trade Bill is not the appropriate place to deal with that issue.

On the impact, we are talking not about stopping trade with China or stopping companies doing trade deals with suppliers in China—the use of sloppy language that fails to differentiate between trade deals and free trade agreements, which are a different legal entity entirely, does not help the quality of the debate—but we do have a perfect right to take into account any state’s behaviour when it comes to a future free trade agreement, and our ability to do so is limited. I campaigned to leave the European Union because I wanted powers brought back from Brussels, but I wanted them brought back to this place, not given straight back to the Executive to exercise them on our behalf. When I was Secretary of State, I wanted to see Parliament given a vote on new trade agreements, as the previous Speaker would have attested. I still believe that that is most appropriate at the beginning, at the setting of the mandate, because if Parliament can agree then on the direction of travel, we are less likely to have the sort of misinformation that we had on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership and the ridiculous scare stories that we heard from the SNP spokesman today. If we do not have the ability to vote at the beginning of the mandate, it makes the CRaG process less credible.

The Government are making a rod for their own back. Today we have an opportunity to give power back to the House of Commons—not the House of Lords, not the courts, not the Executive. We should show a little bit of courage and faith in our own institution.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Today was intended to be a historic vote on a simple question: can we give effect to the Government’s own policy that genocide determination is a judicial matter, allowing us to assess whether our trading partners are committing that most heinous of crimes? Yet that most serious question—the destruction, rape, sterilisation, brainwashing and killing of an entire group of people from the face of the Earth —cannot be answered today. We have been denied a vote on the genocide amendment, which was improved to meet the Government’s objections—an amendment so powerful that it secured a majority of 171 in the other Chamber—and was on course to win the backing of the House today.

I am appalled at the parliamentary games played over such a grave issue, but we will not let the principle go away. We will do everything we can to ensure that we are not trading with genocidal states. Let us remember that it is the Government’s position, not mine, that genocide is for the courts. The Foreign Secretary said last month, “Whether or not it amounts to genocide is a matter for the courts”. The Prime Minister, last month, said that

“the attribution of genocide is a judicial matter”.—[Official Report, 20 January 2021; Vol. 687, c. 959.]

Why, then, is a meaningless amendment being backed that demotes this to the level of a Select Committee—and it has been rejected by a Select Committee—and deliberately excludes the Uyghurs and China? We are outsourcing genocide determination to the UN, which is handcuffed by China and Russia. Why not bring that back home? Why not take back control, in line with the Government’s own policy?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Will my hon. Friend reflect that the Government’s complaints that the previous amendment was flawed were taken into consideration such that under the current amendment the court would make a preliminary determination only, and it would be for the Government and Parliament to decide what to do about it at any stage?

[Ms Ghani]

Indeed. Some colleagues have said that we have bent over too much and that there is too much power with the Executive, but we have separated the power: the courts determine genocide, Parliament opines and the Executive are in charge.

We are unsure what the objections are now. I tabled a question to the Government to ask who determines genocide, and the response was:

“The determination as to whether a situation constitutes genocide is factually and legally complex and should only be made by a competent court following a careful and detailed examination.”

That means that any Select Committee paper would be rubbished.

The values of our country do not include enriching ourselves on the back of slave labour or using our new-found post-Brexit freedom to trade with states that commit and profit from genocide. Britain is better than that. Last week, the Board of Deputies of British Jews highlighted the plight of the Uyghurs and the chilling similarity to Nazi Germany: 2 million Uyghurs are in prison camps. The late Rabbi Sacks was once asked where God was when the holocaust took place. He responded that the real question was: where was man?

Let the record show that, on this day, men and women in this House were ready to vote on the genocide amendment, to lead the world in standing up to tyrannical regimes that commit genocide, to honour our vow of “never again”, to ensure that we are never complicit in genocidal trade, and to put Britain on the right side of history. Today, we were denied that vote, and this House was denied its say.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab) [V]]

This country should never trade with any country where genocide is being practised. We are as guilty as others when we seek to perpetuate that kind of trade. It is appalling that all five signs of genocide incorporated in the genocide convention are now present in China in Xinjiang province, and that President Xi is personally implicated.

It is no use us clasping our pearls, signing holocaust memorial books or weeping about genocide in the 1930s if we are not prepared to do every single thing that we possibly can today to protect the vulnerable. That means wielding every single instrument, national and international, commercial and diplomatic, to protect the victims of abuse. We failed for far too long because we delayed in the 1930s and ended up having to go to war. Their humanity is our humanity; we are involved in their lives and in their deaths.

China already makes it impossible for us to act in an international court or any international body, so of course we should use the UK courts. I say to the Chair of the Justice Committee that Lord Hope of Craighead made it absolutely clear that a preliminary determination of genocide should be located within the High Court precisely because it is not a criminal process. That is the whole point of the amendment. It should be the courts, not politicians, that make these decisions because they know how to sift evidence and are able to require witnesses and evidence to be brought before them.

I saw the amendment that has been presented, supposedly by the Chair of the Justice Committee, last week; it was very definitely a Government amendment long before it appeared on the Order Paper. It is as tawdry a piece of parliamentary jiggery-pokery as I have seen in my 20 years in the House. Select Committees already have every single one of the powers that are supposedly being given to us by the amendment. The Government already dismisses every single substantive motion agreed by the House if they just do not like it. They did so on the Yazidis, when the House’s view was unanimous, and they did so on the Foreign Affairs Committee reports on the Rohingya.

By constructing the amendment in the way they have, the Government have deliberately denied the House a clear vote on genocide and how we would like to tackle it in relation to trade. The bottom line is that the Government seem to do everything in their power to prevent us as a nation from standing clearly and unambiguously against human rights abuses in China, and up with this we will not put.