My Lords, I apologise for my enthusiasm to get stuck into this vital amendment. I will speak to Amendment 213A in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, whom I also consider to be a noble friend.
Allow me to begin by stating the obvious: UK taxpayers do not want to be complicit in genocide. It feels strange that this still needs to be said in 2022, 73 years after the genocide convention was agreed and nearly 80 years after the world became aware of the abominations of Auschwitz. Yet here we are in the age of ESG and corporate social responsibility, when the UK boasts of leading the world in the fight against modern slavery, and what do we find? We find hundreds of millions in public money poured into the pockets of companies profiting from Uighur forced labour; hundreds of millions of pounds poured into a region that our closest ally, the United States, has identified as the site of an ongoing genocide—an area so tainted with forced labour that President Biden has just signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, banning all imports from Xinjiang province unless it can be proven that they are slavery-free.
Those wondering why this Bill and why now have the answer. Credible reports have demonstrated that our existing procurement policy has been insufficient to prevent the Government spending hundreds of millions on slave-made PPE. With noble Lords’ permission, I will address a concern with the amendment head on. I would normally favour this sort of regulatory reform to apply across all government departments and would therefore look askance at focusing on just one department solely, as I am today. However, health is a special case, especially during the current pandemic. According to its modern slavery statement from 2021, the first year that the department has produced any such statement, the DHSC procured 280 regular non-Covid-19 contracts, but how many contracts did it produce for Covid? The answer is 708—708 contracts to address the pandemic, with a heavy preponderance of contracts being awarded to China.
I hope that noble Lords will permit me a brief digression to note that the Government revealed in reply to a recent Parliamentary Question that a billion
lateral flow tests were procured from China despite some local production capacity. Why we would eschew British business in favour of companies in China, with all the attendant human rights risks, is beyond me.
Back to the point of his amendment: how many of those 708 Covid contracts went to Xinjiang-based companies? We simply do not know. What did the DHSC have to say about PPE widely reported to have been made by Uighur slaves? It said:
“This statement does not cover the Vaccines Taskforce (co-owned by BEIS), personal protective equipment (PPE) or UKHSA (formerly Public Health England (PHE) and Test and Trace) contracts.”
Those 708 contracts excluded a huge variety of other contracts by different organisations of our Department of Health and associated bodies.
Frankly, that is not good enough. If our laws do not prevent investment in modern slave-traders then, simply, our laws need to be changed. Noble Lords will recall debates surrounding genocide during the passage of the Trade Bill. Your Lordships voted by huge majorities in favour of allowing the High Court to make determinations of genocide, agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others that it was insufficient to outsource our genocide convention obligations to international courts, especially where those courts lack the power to hold back certain states, such as China. These efforts were resisted by the Government and the amendment before your Lordships today does not attempt to resurrect that campaign.
This brings me to the function of the amendment. Its first and core purpose is to apply a human rights threshold to government health procurement. If this new clause stood part of the Bill, it would be illegal for the Government to procure health service equipment from any regions in the world where they believe there to be
“a serious risk of genocide”.
That is a very high bar. It will be present only where the most serious human rights abuses are widespread. We would expect to see crimes against humanity, torture and mass enslavement in such areas.
The spirit of the Modern Slavery Act goes much further than this, discouraging business with companies which facilitate modern slavery offences. Modern slavery is much more widespread and common than genocide, affecting an estimated 40 million people worldwide. But the spirit of the law and the letter of the law are very different things. It is widely acknowledged that Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act, which seeks to regulate supply chains, lacks teeth.
This amendment seeks to give it some more teeth in a limited and proportionate way. It applies only to government health procurement, allowing us to get our house in order first before pointing the finger at business. It applies only to the most serious human rights abuses of all, those which indicate a serious risk of genocide. Best of all, it leaves the assessment of “serious risk of genocide” to the Government and allows broad scope for the Government to define a process surrounding these risk assessments through regulations. In short, it is a very reasonable amendment. Candidly, while Uighurs in Xinjiang province are being
forcibly sterilised, forced to work and detained in their millions, we ought to be doing a lot more. But this is a modest little amendment.
That brings me to the second purpose of the amendment, which is to move forward UK policy on genocide. We have heard ad nauseum from the Government that they have no view on genocide and will only use the word when “a competent court” has ruled on it. This policy has many problems, chief among them being that it makes genocide prevention impossible. The Committee may or may not be aware that our responsibilities under the genocide convention arise “at the instant” we become aware of a “serious risk” of genocide. Those quotes are direct from the International Court of Justice’s Bosnia v Serbia judgment in 2007. Let me repeat; it should happen at the very instant we become aware of a serious risk of genocide. That is when our convention obligations should apply. They do not arise when a court formally determines genocide, which usually happens many years after the genocide in question has ended. They arise at the instant we learn of a serious risk of genocide.
That simply means that the United Kingdom should be making regular assessments of serious risks of genocide and acting where appropriate. But we do not do this. This amendment before your Lordships’ Committee today puts that right and gives Parliament a limited role in ensuring that such assessments are performed in a timely manner, commensurate with the severity of the issue. It does not require the UK to make a formal determination of genocide, nor for the Government to behave like a court. It merely requires the Government to do a risk assessment—something we ought to be doing already.
I shall address the criticism that this is an “anti-China amendment”. This is false. The amendment makes no mention of China and would apply to every country. But I make no apology whatever for my motivation in bringing this amendment forward, which is to address President Xi Jinping’s heinous persecution of the Uighurs.
Finally, I was contacted the other day by the British Medical Association, which says:
“The BMA is deeply concerned about labour rights abuses in supply chains. Evidence shows that medical equipment, including PPE, has been procured from regions in which labour abuses are common, as this BMA report shows. The BMA notes the Uyghur Tribunal judgment, which found the PRC guilty of genocide, and the extensive procurement of NHS supplies from this region of China. This is deeply troubling; acquiring PPE from this region continues the systematic oppression of the Uyghurs and other minorities. The BMA believes all NHS supplies must be ethically sourced and this amendment would significantly reduce the risk of health service goods used in the UK being produced by individuals who are having their human rights abused.”
I hope I have demonstrated the need for this amendment. Having led the world in confronting modern slavery, the UK is falling behind—and we do not need to fall behind. The Covid pandemic has been a sorry period for many reasons, and making the UK taxpayer complicit in the persecution of Uighurs through PPE procurement is one of the sorriest. Let us take the opportunity to put that right: life-saving must not be dependent on life-taking. I beg to move.