My Lords, the House would not forgive me if I were to detain it long. We have heard extraordinary—perhaps an overused word during this debate, but I think a proper one—and powerful speeches from all sides of your Lordships’ House. I can only say that I am extraordinarily indebted to everyone who has supported Motion C1. I was particularly touched by some of the personal stories we heard during this debate.
If anyone outside this Chamber has any doubts about the purpose or point of your Lordships’ House, surely, having listened to today’s debate, they will have understood why we are here and that we are doing our duty in trying to demonstrate to the world outside that we would be prepared to go to the stake for the values we stand for in Parliament, in government and throughout the whole of our society.
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The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to Richard Cobden. He brought back to my mind that that arch-priest of free trade, who was a radical Liberal Member of Parliament from the north of England—who started a calico factory not very far from where I live in the north—and who went to Manchester and became this extraordinary figure in the great battles over the Corn Laws, opposed slavery and the opium trade, and he spoke eloquently in Parliament against them. He knew there were limitations, and we are trying to impose a limitation where genocide has been demonstrated to take place.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, reminded us that Raphael Lemkin saw over 40 members of his family murdered in the Holocaust but, prior to those events, had studied atrocity crimes. Like the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and I, he studied events in northern Iraq in particular; like the noble Lord, last year I visited the Yazidis and also the Assyrians. I went to a place called Simele, where the Assyrians were murdered in 1933. Lemkin wrote about that; he understood the enormities and horrors and what happens when you fail to take a stand. He felt it personally. He coined the word “genocide”, which is where the genocide convention came from.
Before we vote, let us remind ourselves what this high threshold in the convention says—no one has actually said it during this extraordinary debate. Article II defines genocide as
“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
We have heard during noble Lords’ speeches that precisely those things are happening in Xinjiang in China. However, they can be demonstrated to be a genocide only if a court is given the option to do so. That is why this amendment was laid before your Lordships’ House.
The noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, made a perfectly reasonable point about trade—I will draw my remarks to a close in a moment. He said that we were against having a free trade agreement with China. Yesterday he said in a Written Answer:
“China is an important trading partner for the UK, and we are pursuing increased bilateral trade.”
The only way we can deal with making agreements with genocidal states is to be able to demonstrate that there is a genocide. If there were to be a propaganda victory, surely such a victory would be able to demonstrate that the British Parliament did not care enough to put this in the Bill and make it into legislation.
I end by reminding the House of two heroes of mine—