Human Rights Abuses and Corruption: UK Sanctions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare an interest as one of only three Members of this House to be sanctioned by both China and Russia. My rather lightweight right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has been sanctioned only by China.

This is an important issue, and not just to us. It does not come up every day on the doorstep but, when our constituents understand, they feel strongly about it for three reasons. Our constituents expect our trading partners to respect basic human rights, to be transparent about the nature of the goods and services our constituents might buy on the high street, and to be transparent about jobs. We need that greater transparency.

I would like us to go further in legislation on authentic-ation and quality marks to show that goods are produced by countries, regimes and companies that maintain even basic ethical standards, free of slave labour or whatever, just as we increasingly expect to know about the environmental impact and origins of the goods we buy.

Secondly, our constituents expect our taxpayers’ money to be used for humanitarian and other purposes, and not to be used to aid corrupt regimes and bodies, as too often happened in the past. Thirdly, our constituents expect us to stand up for the rule of law and freedom of expression that we take for granted in the UK. If we cannot see that in the partners we deal with, we should be critical friends and have difficult conversations with them, however sensitive our relationship might be. It is important to our constituents for all those reasons.

The noble Lord Ahmad, a Foreign Office Minister, said earlier this year:

“By leaving the EU and moving to an independent sanctions policy, the UK has become more agile and has real autonomy to decide how we use sanctions and where it is in our interests to do so.”

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the UK plays a central role in negotiating global sanctions to counter threats to international peace and security, so we have an important, almost unique, position and we need to lead by example.

The Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 is a welcome start, but we are lagging behind in how we use it. I have banged on in this Chamber and in this House for many years about the Chinese communist Government’s abuses, not least in Tibet, where for 63 years, since the invasion of 1959, that peace-loving people have been subject to the most aggressive and hideous abuse and oppression. More than 1 million Tibetan lives have been lost, yet there have been no sanctions against Chinese Government officials. It is only recently, following the publicity on what is happening in Xinjiang, that the fate to which the Tibetans have been subjected for all those years has come to light.

China is effectively asking the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, to bury her highly anticipated report on human rights violations in Xinjiang, which shows the lengths to which China will go not to have this news get out. We have a duty to give a voice to the oppressed living under such regimes.

So what have we done in China? As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, there have been limited sanctions because of Xinjiang, against just four Government officials and the Public Security Bureau of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, but, as we mention in every debate, Chen Quanguo—the architect of so much oppression, first in Tibet and now against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang—is still not on our list. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps is a paramilitary organisation controlling large swathes of the region’s economic production, and it, too, needs to be properly sanctioned. In Hong Kong—where we had that unique historic responsibility—notwithstanding the brutal crackdowns, the undermining of the rule of law and the dismantling of democracy, despite the guarantees we were supposedly given in the Sino-British agreement, no one has been sanctioned by the UK, in contrast to the United States. The list given by my right hon. Friend started with Carrie Lam. Despite all the oppression for which she was responsible, she has never been sanctioned by us, but she has been sanctioned—along with 10 others —by the United States.

There was one very telling bon mot in the Prime Minister’s valedictory comments yesterday. His first piece of advice to his successor was

“ stay close to the Americans”.—[Official Report, 20 July 2022; Vol. 718, c. 962.]

We have the same interests as America in respect of how we deal with oppressive states. I simply do not understand why we are not mirroring the list of people whom it has rightly found to be in violation of the values that we hold dear, and has therefore sanctioned. I strongly echo the cry of my right hon. Friend: let us have all those people included by our Government as a matter of urgency. It would be a great, speedy achievement on the part of the new Minister if he were to bring that about.

I agree with the recommendations of the all-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions, and I pay tribute to its members who are present today. We need, very quickly, to increase the number of Magnitsky sanctions imposed by this Government. We need to co-ordinate better and follow the lead of some of our allies who share our values, and then take the lead; we need to resource the FCDO’s scrutiny of some of these people rather better, and we need to act as a global leader. We now have the powers to do that. We have the necessary legislation. It has been a great achievement in the last few years, but it is frustrating that we are not using it properly: that needs to be subject to greater parliamentary oversight. Finally, we need to be bolder in freezing and confiscating, in a speedy fashion—not just securing—the assets of those whom we know to be serial abusers of human rights, and whom we should be sanctioning now.

I urge the Minister to make a name for himself very quickly by taking on board all those recommendations, and everything that he has heard here today.