Import of Products of Forced Labour From Xinjiang (Prohibition)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the import of products made by forced labour in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; to require all companies importing products from Xinjiang to the UK to provide proof that the manufacture of those products has not involved forced labour; and for connected purposes.

The Bill has two simple aims: aims that are already deeply enshrined in our international human rights obligations, and which we now wish to implement. The first is to prohibit the import of products made by forced labour in the Xinjiang region, and the second is to require all companies importing products from Xinjiang to the UK to provide proof that their manufacture has not involved forced labour. I do not believe for a moment that this is in any way controversial, or is something to which the people of the United Kingdom would object. Indeed, I am convinced that people across these islands would want to know that what they pick up in their local supermarket or hardware store, or purchase from an online retailer, has not been made by slave labour.

In 2021, in its annual report on people trafficking, the US State Department reported:

“In Xinjiang, the government is the trafficker. Authorities use threats of physical violence, forcible drug intake, physical and sexual abuse, and torture to force detainees to work in adjacent or off-site factories or worksites producing garments, footwear, carpets, yarn, food products, holiday decorations, building materials, extractives, materials for solar power equipment and other renewable energy components, consumer electronics, bedding, hair products, cleaning supplies, personal protective equipment, face masks, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other goods—and these goods are finding their way into businesses and homes around the world.”

That is why, in December 2021, President Biden signed into law an Act, which had passed through Congress with support on both sides of the aisle, to ensure that

“all goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part”

in Xinjiang could not enter the United States unless businesses could prove that what they were importing had not been produced with forced labour. The Act puts the United States way ahead of the rest of the international community in confronting China’s abuse of the Uyghurs, because, crucially, it makes the assumption that goods coming from Xinjiang are made with forced labour, and businesses will have to prove that that is not the case before they can be brought into the country.

The US legislation has received widespread support from human rights campaigners and the Uyghur diaspora. Nury Turkel, a United States-educated Uyghur-American lawyer and a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, has challenged countries that are reluctant to follow the US lead on this issue, asking, “How do you propose to get China to change without going after the most important thing to the Chinese Government, which is their economic interest?” He is absolutely right, because whether we like it or not, the only thing that will make the Chinese Government change their behaviour is the imposition of meaningful economic sanctions. I think that consumers here in the United Kingdom would welcome the confidence that when they purchase goods that have been produced or imported from China, they are not inadvertently complicit in China’s horrific human rights abuses.