Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (HL7673):
Questions by Lord Alton of Liverpool:
To ask His Majesty’s Government how they intend to respond to the findings of the report of Dr Adrian Zenz that “Xinjiang’s labor transfer program […] is predominantly designed to achieve Beijing’s wider ethnopolitical goals in the region.” (HL7673)
Tabled on: 09 May 2023
This question was grouped with the following question(s) for answer:
- To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report of Dr Adrian Zenz, Coercive Labor in the Cotton Harvest in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Uzbekistan, published in the Journal of Communist and Post-Communist Studies by University of California Press. (HL7671)
Tabled on: 09 May 2023 - To ask His Majesty’s Government what conclusions they have drawn following the assertion in the report of Dr Adrian Zenz that “state-sponsored forced labor is characterized by pervasive state-induced and systemic dynamics of coercion that are deeply embedded within sociocultural contexts” in Xinjiang. (HL7672)
Tabled on: 09 May 2023
Answer:
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon:
We are aware of Dr Zenz’s recent report. To date, the UK Government has taken robust action in response to forced labour concerns. We have provided guidance to UK companies on the risks of doing business in Xinjiang, introduced enhanced export controls, and committed to introduce financial penalties for organisations that do not comply with modern slavery reporting requirements. Additionally, the Procurement Bill enables contracting authorities across the public sector to reject bids and terminate contracts with suppliers which are known to use forced labour themselves or anywhere in their supply chain. We continue to closely monitor the situation in Xinjiang and to keep our policy response under review.
Date and time of answer: 23 May 2023 at 16:53.
