NHS PPE Supply Chains: Forced Labour

Steven Bonnar Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Rees. I applaud the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this vital debate and, more importantly, for informing us all so well about the subject. It really is abhorrent to think that, in the 21st century, we are still discussing the plight of slave workers and forced labour practices. This can and will only change when the Government change and their outlook on human rights changes too—becoming one of sympathy and compassion, not of collusion and indifference.

From the very start of the covid-19 pandemic, the UK Government’s remaining morals were unfortunately diminished. With the desire to sustain a harsh Brexiteer stance, the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), refused to take part in an EU-wide scheme to obtain necessary PPE and ventilators in a legitimate manner, choosing instead to favour companies responsible for committing some of the greatest humanitarian rights offences of recent times. Various pieces of evidence have emerged over the past two years, and I would like to share a few of them with the House.

In November 2020, The Guardian reported that the Government had sourced PPE from factories in China where hundreds of North Korean women had been working in modern slavery conditions. In December 2020, the BBC revealed that a charity set up by the Daily Mail to buy protective equipment for NHS staff donated 100,000 face masks that were suspected of being made via forced Uyghur labour in Xinjiang province. In February 2022, it was revealed that the UK had bought around £5.8 billion-worth of lateral flow tests from China, where the use of forced labour in re-education camps is a known UN human rights concern.

Even the British Medical Association report of July 2021 confirmed:

“Many of the masks and aprons distributed in the first six months of the pandemic were sourced from China and the majority of the 1.9 billion examination gloves were sourced from Malaysia”,

and that there are

“serious labour rights concerns in the production of PPE.”

No matter the circumstances and the dire need for equipment, purchases of any form cannot and should not occur when unethical practices are at play. Surely that is the very least that a compassionate Government should be ensuring. 

I welcome the steps taken in recent months to combat this issue. The UK Government recently announced that NHS England would be barred from using goods and services linked to slavery or human trafficking. Although we in the Scottish National party agree with such action, the question remains as to why more concrete action was not taken sooner. To fully rectify the issue of unethical supply chains, the UK Government could insert a “duty to protect” clause within the parameters of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, meaning that all procurement agencies would be legally obliged to ensure that all products imported into or sold in the UK were not obtained through unethical supply chains. 

On top of that, the UK Government still have a questionable track record on their efforts to deter forced labour products. In 2021, the Government opposed the so-called genocide amendment to the Trade Act 2021, which would have seen the High Courts of England and Wales establishing preliminary rulings on the occurrence of genocide in states, and then requiring the UK Government to revoke any trade agreements with countries where potential genocide was found by domestic courts. The UK Government have still never given an adequate answer to why they opposed the genocide amendment, so perhaps the Minister will enlighten us. From a human rights perspective, I believe there is no clear justification for the Government’s position. 

The Scottish Government have worked hard to ensure that PPE supply chains in Scotland are safeguarded from forced labour products. From the outset of the pandemic, the Scottish Government have worked with the NHS and Scottish suppliers, and on a four-nation basis, to ensure that Scotland has adequate stocks of PPE. In Scotland, 88% of PPE is produced locally, and overall costs of pandemic procurement were a third less than those in the rest of the UK. That proves that the Scottish Government have worked to significantly enhance domestic production of PPE to mitigate global supply chain problems that emerged during the pandemic.

The SNP is committed to retaining powerful safeguards on the use of public money in healthcare through strong procurement rules. We are fully committed to the safety and wellbeing of medical staff and healthcare professionals, while also ensuring ethical supply chains for all medical and protective equipment. I cannot urge the UK Government enough to follow suit and replicate this truly ethical model. More importantly, the Scottish Government did not engage in the cronyism and corruption of this Government in the acquisition of PPE. While the Conservative party flogged PPE contracts to party donors and friends of Ministers in their unlawful VIP PPE lane, the Scottish Government kept robust processes in place to ensure value for money, meaning that the Scottish Government paid a third less for PPE than the UK Government did.

Where possible, all PPE acquired will be used in Scotland's hospitals, care homes and other healthcare settings. Our stockpile of unused PPE is therefore vastly smaller than that of England. Instead of selling off unused PPE to Government contacts for pennies—as the Tories are doing—the much smaller amount of unused PPE in Scotland is being either maintained for use or donated to charities and shared with nations, such as Malawi and Zambia, which desperately need it.

I will end by saying that the fight against the covid-19 pandemic is a global one, and it is right that the Scottish Government support international partners and less well-off nations in their tackling of the pandemic. Donating excess PPE is one way of achieving that, and it is a model example that I hope the UK Government will also take forward.