Trade Bill

I note that in the amendment passed by the Lords, tabled by Lord Alton, peers have removed the role that they had previously proposed for the High Court. Hon. Members will recall that it is the Government’s long-standing position that the determination of genocide is a matter for a competent court. As I have previously made clear, competent courts include relevant international courts and domestic criminal courts.

Let me be clear on this point: we are not changing settled Government policy here. But likewise, in supporting the amendment from the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, we are not asking Parliament to make a determination on whether genocide has occurred. We are instead supporting a process that guarantees scrutiny and debate where Parliament has established for itself that credible reports of genocide exist. That is not the same as a judicial finding; nor is it intended to be. It is both a lower bar and swifter to establish credible reports than it is to prove genocide itself, and it leads to a debate on a substantive motion. I believe that that is the right way forward.

That brings me to the latest amendment passed by a former Liberal MP, Lord Alton, in the other place, which seeks to give a quasi-judicial role to an ad hoc parliamentary judicial Committee to make preliminary determinations of genocide. Lord Alton proposes that this ad hoc Committee would be comprised of five Members from either House who have all held “high judicial office”. It should be clear that this approach is problematic, first, because it is in conflict with the Government’s settled policy. Competent courts must make determinations on genocide, not parliamentary Committees.

I know that some people believe that the choices we make as a country on with whom to sign trade deals should be entirely dictated by our commercial interests and that considerations about human rights should be dealt with entirely separately. But there is another point of view—I believe it is shared by the majority of people in this country and by the majority of MPs in this House—which is simply this: there is a line that needs to be drawn; there are certain countries whose crimes are so great that they cannot simply be ignored on the basis of commercial self-interest; and Britain as a country must be willing to say no to trade deals with countries that cross that line.

The Alton amendment, as advanced today by the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), seeks to draw that line by giving Parliament the power to debate whether Britain should sign any form of bilateral trade or investment deal with a Government held responsible for genocide by our country’s most experienced judges. Whether Members in this House decide to support the amendment today should have nothing to do with what party they represent. It should have nothing to do with the long overdue sanctions against Chinese officials announced by the Foreign Secretary earlier today. With all due respect to the Minister for Trade Policy, it should have nothing to do with the points of constitutional precedence that he made in his opening speech.

Whether we support the Alton amendment should only come down to the fundamental question, which is one we must all ask ourselves: should Britain be willing to sign trade agreements with Governments who are committing genocide? Should Britain be willing to sign trade deals with a Government who are engaging in torture, mass detention, slave labour, organ harvesting and non-judicial executions—not on an isolated basis, but on an industrial scale—against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang? Should Britain be willing to sign trade deals with a Government who are separating hundreds of thousands of children from their parents and re-educating them in different languages, religion and history in an attempt to wipe the Uyghur culture off the Chinese map? Should Britain be willing to sign trade deals with a Government who are carrying out the systematic sexual abuse, rape and sterilisation of hundreds of thousands of women in Xinjiang in an attempt to guarantee that this current generation of Uyghur children is the last?

I cannot see how anyone in this House can read the evidence of those crimes being committed against the Uyghurs and think that a potential trade or investment deal with China can be considered only on its commercial merits and not on the basis of morality. That is surely where we need to draw the line, and that is what the Alton amendment seeks to do. That is why I urge Members from all parts of the House to look into their souls this afternoon, to vote with their conscience and to make clear that this is the line that Britain is not prepared to cross.