Amendment 18
Moved by
18: Clause 4, page 3, line 5, at end insert—
“(6) Financial assistance under this section must not be provided if there exists credible evidence of modern slavery in the energy supply chain of any company designated Great British Energy.”
My Lords, I thank all who have supported this amendment, both in Committee and tonight. It is an all-party amendment, so I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lords, Lord Offord of Garvel and Lord Teverson, and the other signatories in Committee, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, whom I see in his place. I am also grateful to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and its chief executive, Luke de Pulford, for its briefing note. I am always grateful to the Minister for the meetings we have had outside of the Chamber; I know that he cares as deeply about this issue, as I do. Whether or not there is a meeting of minds on the amendment this evening, I pay tribute to him for the work that he has done on this.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently conducting a full-scale inquiry into supply chain transparency and modern slavery. We have heard powerful evidence from Rahima Mahmut of the World Uyghur Congress, which I commend to the House. I also urge noble Lords to look at the links not just to Xinjiang and the appalling treatment of Uighur Muslims there but to other parts of the supply chain that would be caught by this amendment. That would include, for instance, children who are sent down mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are 25,000 of them, and we know that many are linked to Chinese-owned companies. Those children are forced labour too, and this amendment seeks to address that.
The amendment is also informed by the July 2023 report of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which warned against increased and deepening UK dependence on the CCP regime, and it urged greater national resilience. It said that China had penetrated “every sector” of the UK’s economy, underlined by three decades of trade deficits with China, which currently stand at £32 billion. The amendment goes right to the heart of this dependency—which the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has regularly raised—exposing a fundamental incompatibility between a rules-based liberal democracy that respects human rights and one that does not. It builds on our obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide, along with prohibitions from Victorian legislation, the Foreign Prison-Made Goods Act 1897, which I have mentioned to the Minister before. The amendment is modelled on, and consistent with, earlier all-party amendments, passed by substantial majorities in your Lordships’ House, to the Procurement Act 2023, the Health and Care Act 2022 and the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021, as well as the genocide amendment to the Trade Act 2021.
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In short order, the amendment seeks to prohibit the Secretary of State from using public money to fund any company designated as Great British Energy where credible evidence exists of modern slavery in any part of its energy supply chain. If your Lordships pass the amendment, it will enable the House of Commons to consider the question further. If incorporated, it would require the Secretary of State to determine a threshold for
“credible evidence of modern slavery”,
thereby excluding from procurement any company in the energy supply chain meeting that threshold. Although the Minister insists that the company will be, in his words, “operationally independent”, it would be disingenuous—we have heard these arguments around the House today—to suggest that, with £8 billion of public money involved, the Government should be absolved from their usual duties to uphold law enacted by Parliament.
I will give a brief illustration of what I mean. The Government have declined to give any estimate of the number and cost of solar panels which have been purchased from China over the past 10 years, or will be purchased over the next 10 years under the terms of this legislation, or how many will be required to meet to objectives of the Great British Energy Bill. The Government say it is “an absolute priority” to build
“resilient solar supply chains, free from forced labour”,
and, of course, I welcome that. But, in the next breath they says they do not
“hold data on the supply chains of individual businesses and therefore cannot provide details of overall expenditure or quantities of Chinese imports of solar panels”.
When I asked Government Ministers recently about shipments arriving from Xinjiang at UK airports via a company called European Cargo, I was told the Government make no checks and instead it was a matter for Border Force—but neither did it make any checks.
Last month, I sent the Minister a report by Ignites Asia which identifies funds run by global managers who had at least £1.4 billion linked to 14 solar and EV companies using slave labour in Xinjiang. I am told that we should rely on the Solar Taskforce to determine whether this is happening, but it is not mandated to exclude suppliers or companies credibly linked to forced labour, nor does it have a statutory basis for that purpose.
Last month, the Minister kindly hosted a helpful meeting with Jürgen Maier CBE, the former chief executive of Siemens and now the chairman-designate of Great British Energy, the private/public hybrid company being created by the Government. I asked Mr Maier directly about supply chains and Xinjiang. He told me, “There is law and regulation to which we should comply. We should be held to a very high bar”. Notwithstanding good intentions—and I believe him to be sincere—inadequate legislation is not much of a bar. Mr Maier will know his own history: in an earlier generation—in 1944, at the height of World War II—Siemens had a workforce that included 50,000 slave labourers running factories in concentration camps, and it was not alone. Good intentions are not enough. Therefore, I hope that this all-party amendment will address that issue.
Is 2025 Xinjiang so very different? The PRC has placed millions of citizens from the Uighur region into what it calls “surplus labour” and “labour transfer” programmes. In one recent year, more than 3 million people were transferred and conscripted on to work programmes in factories and farms. I will not repeat what I said in Committee and at Second Reading at some length, but I urge noble Lords to go back and look at the record if they want to see the scale and the links that I am referring to.
There are other reasons—not to do with slave labour—that are connected to this amendment. The solar panels of Xinjiang have a higher carbon footprint that those manufactured elsewhere in the world. As we heard in an earlier debate, although China has been increasing the number of products connected with the green energy priorities of the future, it is also building the equivalent of two new coal-burning power stations every week; it is doing so to build its industrial and military might, and certainly not to do its bit towards tackling climate change.
While the Secretary of State agonises and, presumably, beats himself up, he can be sure that Xi Jinping is losing no sleep over targets or the use of slave labour to achieve his objectives. His regime has become the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world: 15 billion tonnes of carbon a year. China uses coal to power heavy industry and to export steel and cars, which we once produced in the UK, in the workshop of the world. British labour will never be able to compete with slave labour or industries that are heavily dependent on cheaper and dirtier energy. The UK should be tooling up, creating British jobs and, with our allies, seeking alternatives to supply chains dependent on Uighur slave labour. Procurement should strengthen national resilience. It should reduce dependency on states which pose a risk to our national security. It should protect British manufacturing from competitors that use slave labour, or grossly exploited labour.
This amendment puts it to Parliament: do we want a slavery-free green transition, or are we content to allow the Government’s objectives to be achieved through forced labour in a state accused by the House of Commons of genocide? It should be inconceivable that the UK, which did so much to end the scourge of slavery around the world, would today accept or be willing turn a blind eye to products made by a state with an imposed system of forced labour. Good does not rest on the shoulders of a wrong. I beg to move.
I intervene very briefly to support the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, moved. I thank him for the campaign he has run on this issue for several years now, and for the way he has defended those who are enslaved or used in other countries—China in particular, but in other parts of the world as well. It is right and proper that we bear this in mind when we legislate and when we set up an organisation of the sort we are discussing.
I do not think that any of us, in any party in this House, would want to see us benefiting from the sort of suffering that has happened in other countries. The noble Lord mentioned China, but there are other countries where this happens. It is a consideration that should come into the deliberations we have as we build a new organisation with immense responsibilities and resources at its disposal. Those should not—in any shape or form—be used to support people who are being exploited in the way that they are in some overseas countries. I have no doubt that the Government would agree with that as an approach; the question is how we turn it into practice.
In supporting this amendment, I say that I too have links with Siemens. I am sure that we would not want to paint it with a brush of what happened during the war. Many other companies that have emerged in the post-war world would not want to have too much exploration of what happened during the Nazi regime. Having said that, I very much hope that there is some way in which the Government can respond to this amendment and that some guidance can be given to Great British Energy to ensure that no advantage is taken of those who are not in a position to defend themselves.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
My Lords, I offer Green support for Amendment 18 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and a range of other distinguished Members of your Lordships’ House. I will also speak to my Amendment 19, which goes further than the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, but which demonstrates just how moderate and reasonable his amendment is. Your Lordships’ House, the British Government and many parts of British society have long expressed their absolute horror at modern slavery, so surely we can put this into this important Bill, where it is such a crucial issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, identified.
The noble Lord mentioned the Democratic Republic of the Congo and how the issues of modern slavery there, as well as child labour amounting to modern slavery, are very much an issue in terms of the energy supply chain. My amendment refers to
“credible evidence of deforestation or human rights abuses”.
I will take human rights abuses first. Much of what is happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo might not fit the definition of modern slavery, but it absolutely fits the definition of human rights abuses. I note that I was at a briefing today with the DRC Foreign Minister, Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, who gave us the news, which has since been more widely reported, that, sadly, the ceasefire that had been called in the eastern Congo had been broken by M23, backed by the Rwandan Government. We have already seen nearly 3,000 people killed and some 3,000 people injured, and we heard from the Foreign Minister that, sadly, they expect those figures to rise very significantly. These are violent human rights abuses—there is simply no other term.
To tie this to the Great British Energy Bill, it is worth noting that the DRC produces 70% of the world’s cobalt, yet it somehow disappears without trace and reappears out the other side as legal, apparently appropriately sourced material, without any traceable chain to account for that. Of course, the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo do not benefit financially from that. It is others—damaging, dangerous, aggressive forces—who benefit from it.
I wrote the amendment in this particular way because it goes back to the passage of what became the Environment Act, during which a number of noble Lords here today had much the same debate, with the tying together of deforestation and human rights abuses. One of the issues here is that indigenous people are responsible for protecting huge amounts of the world’s forests, and abuse of their rights is very much tied to the destruction of deforestation. I will note just one stat: if deforestation was a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon behind China and the US. Much of that deforestation is of course linked in particular to agriculture. But in the DRC and parts of Latin America in particular, mining and deforestation are intimately linked.
So, your Lordships’ House has before it two amendments. I do not plan to push mine to a vote, but I offer the Green Party’s strongest support to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his amendment. How could we not vote to ensure that there is action on modern slavery?
My Lords, I will speak also in favour of Amendment 18 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and the noble Lords, Lord Offord and Lord Teverson. I will speak briefly and will not repeat the arguments that I made in Committee.
We believe in people and planet, and we should never have to choose one or the other. The two are intertwined and co-dependent. Our goal of reaching net zero must not come at the expense of supporting repressive regimes that do not support the human rights of their own citizens, or on the back of slave labour.
In brief, we are very supportive of the intentions behind this amendment, but we feel that the ultimate solutions lie above and beyond GB Energy. The real solutions in the UK are about working with our allies and partners to develop our own manufacturing capacity for solar panels in particular, so that we are free of those from China. California has made progress on this; it can be done, particularly working with our European allies. This is really important stuff that the Government need to get to grips with.
We do not want to see GB Energy put at an unfair disadvantage vis-à-vis every other private contractor or engineering company doing solar panels in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has already spoken about this, but I know that noble Lords will be very grateful to Jürgen Maier for having come and spoken to us. Unfortunately, I was off at the time, but my understanding is that it was a very good and productive meeting, and that he gave very strong and powerful arguments and responses to questions that were put to him on these issues. GB Energy, as we know, also has lots of stringent reporting requirements in place, including under the Modern Slavery Act.
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We had very much hoped that further progress could have been made between Committee and Report. That, clearly, has not been possible. We will support this amendment if it is put to a vote, to allow more time for conversations to take place. My hope is that those conversations can happen either before Third Reading or when this amendment goes back to the other place. In either case, it is absolutely essential that some solutions are found, so that GB Energy is not put at a disadvantage against other companies. But the real, long-term solutions are about validating supply chains, developing our own solar manufacturing panel capacity, strong and determined diplomacy, and working with our allies to develop new forms of manufacturing processes.
Just briefly on Amendment 19, we are supportive of it, although I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has said she will not call a vote on it. But on the deforestation point, will the Minister kindly say whether government Amendment 38 would be relevant here?
My Lords, very briefly, I was pleased to add my name to this amendment and, like others, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for his long-time work on this crucial area. On supply chains, those companies involved in fitting solar or anything else in this area should really be concerned about their supply chain in terms of scope 3 emissions, where they have to track their supply chain backwards, so I would hope that was also a method to check means of manufacture as well. I am also very sympathetic to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.
My Lords, Amendment 18 is a simple yet essential safeguard that ensures that public funds will not support companies tainted by modern slavery in their energy supply chains. The UK has long stood against forced labour and exploitation. If we are serious about a just and ethical transition to clean energy, we must ensure that Great British Energy, a publicly backed entity, operates to the highest moral and legal standards. There is a clear precedent for this approach. The UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires companies to take responsibility for their supply chains, yet we know that modern slavery remains a serious issue in the global energy sector, particularly in the sourcing of solar panels, batteries and raw materials such as lithium and cobalt.
This amendment does not create unnecessary bureaucracy or hinder investment; it simply ensures that taxpayers’ money does not fund exploitation. If there is credible evidence of modern slavery in the supply chain, public funding must not flow to that company. It is a basic ethical standard. It is also a matter of economic resilience, because reliance on unethical supply chains creates risk for businesses, investors and the public. Therefore, supporting this amendment strengthens the integrity of Great British Energy. aligns our economic ambition with our moral obligations and sends a clear message that Britain’s clean energy future must be built on ethical foundations. I urge all noble Lords to support this amendment.
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in this important debate, and particularly, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He and I have worked together on a number of these issues, particularly in relation to enforced organ donation in Xinjiang province, and I have always been tremendously grateful for the advice and support he has given.
On this debate in general, I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that behind it lies more fundamental changes that we need to see, including his point about the development, where we can, of a UK supply chain. He said that he is going to support the noble Lord, Lord Alton; I understand and accept that.
Let me say at once that the Government wholeheartedly agree on the importance of confronting human rights abuses, including modern slavery, in energy supply chains, and we are committed to tackling the issue. I am glad that the meeting with Jürgen Maier was helpful; he is providing some strong leadership in this area. I have had also had discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, between Committee and Report, but we have not quite found a way through as yet.
My understanding is that Great British Energy will already have a range of tools in place to support its efforts to identify and tackle human rights abuses in its supply chain. Indeed, as a state-owned company, it will be expected not only to abide by but to be a first-in-class example of adherence to the UK’s existing legislation and guidance. We support voluntary due diligence approaches taken by UK businesses to respect human rights across their operations and supplier relationships, in line with the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises.
The noble Lord, Lord Offord, referred to legislation passed by his Government, which I readily acknowledge. Under Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, Great British Energy will be required to prepare a slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year, in relation to its turnover of £36 million or more, outlining the steps it has taken in the financial year to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in any of its supply chains nor any part of its business. Once the Procurement Act 2023 comes into force—on which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I shared a common endeavour—it can reject bids and terminate contracts with suppliers which are known to use forced labour themselves or anywhere in their supply chain.
We will also use the modern slavery assessment tool known as MSAT to assess the supply base for modern slavery risks. With these tools, I am assured and am confident that Great British Energy will not ignore credible evidence of modern slavery and human rights abuses. I believe that its exemplary adherence to this legislation, which the Government rightfully expect, will not only ensure that the company is doing all in its power to combat modern slavery but also pull up the standards expected of the UK’s wider energy industry under the existing legislative landscape. I think the chair of GBE has reinforced that point.
It is our belief that any action that has to be taken must not only be robust but—to take the point of the noble Earl, Lord Russell—take a whole-of-government and society approach. We expect UK businesses, including GBE, to do everything in their power to remove any instances of forced labour from their supply chain. Our guidance and international principles encourage business to remediate or mitigate when instances are uncovered, such as industry collaboration or improved internal purchasing practices. Amendments 18 and 19 would not allow GBE the opportunity for mediation; they would only penalise it.
There is a practical question around how these amendments might work in practice and what their impacts on GBE and its operations would be. They do not define what is meant by “credible evidence”, and this could be left open to interpretation. I am not trying to be pedantic here because, clearly, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, suggested in his opening remarks that he wanted to give the Commons the opportunity to debate this matter. I agree that we should not be too pedantic about the wording of the amendment, but I wanted to mention that as one of the practical consequences of enacting the amendments as they are currently drafted.
Combating human rights abuses, such as modern slavery, across the whole energy industry is a much more effective way to make progress than applying measures on a company-by-company basis, as these amendments would do. We recognise that the landscape has changed since the Modern Slavery Act was introduced; that is why we are committed to improving our response to modern slavery and will set out next steps more broadly in due course.
I should inform the House that we are partnering with an expert institution to provide detailed and relevant information on what modern slavery statements should cover, including practical advice for businesses to go beyond compliance with their legal requirements and actively identify and remedy instances of modern slavery in their supply chains. GBE will follow that, of course.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, expressed some scepticism about the Solar Taskforce. Having been relaunched by my department, it will focus on identifying and taking forward the actions needed to develop resilient, sustainable and innovative supply chains that are free from forced labour. The aim is to support the significant increases needed in the deployment of solar panels to meet our ambition of seeing a large increase by 2030.
More widely, the Government are taking action to ensure that our clean energy supply chains are resilient as a key priority in the transition to net zero, in both de-risking the delivery of our carbon budgets and maximising the economic benefits from the transition. This will involve domestic action, such as investment in manufacturing, and international action, such as removing trade barriers and collaborating with our allies.
With respect to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I know that the House wants to see action from the Government. I can assure noble Lords that my department is working collaboratively across Whitehall on this important issue, including with the Department for Business and Trade and the Home Office, to assess and monitor the effectiveness of the UK’s existing measures, alongside the impacts of new policy tools that are emerging to tackle forced labour in global supply chains, including in the energy sector. We are not ignoring the points made by the noble Lord. We take this seriously and, as I said, we are strongly looking at this across Whitehall at the moment.
I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to which she spoke so eloquently. Let me be clear: the UK’s existing sustainability criteria put limits on the greenhouse gas emissions of the supply chain and already include environmental protections. Where biomass is sourced from forests, the land criteria include requirements around sustainable harvesting and maintaining productivity. This ensures that forests are managed well and in a sustainable manner, as carbon dioxide emissions released during combustion are absorbed continuously by new forest growth. The statement that we made on Monday in relation to biomass reflects how the Government are moving. They might not be moving as fast as the noble Baroness wants, but we are, I think, moving in the direction that she wishes to see.
I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that, as a public body, Great British Energy already has a duty to conserve and enhance biodiversity. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, was right to remind me of my own Amendment 38, which we will come on to at some point this evening. I do not want to repeat what I am going to say later, but it is a very important amendment and I hope it will provide considerable reassurance to the House.
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. I have taken my own remarks at something of a gallop this evening, but this has been a very worthwhile debate. It was good to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Lords, Lord Wigley, Lord Teverson and Lord Offord. The fact that there was so much agreement across the House about the scourge of modern-day slavery and the failure, 10 years later, of the 2015 legislation to deal with this problem effectively demonstrates the truth of what has been—
My Lords, in my remarks, I accepted that life has moved on since 2015. The Government know that we need to look at this further, which is why we are working across Whitehall at the moment. I wanted to assure the noble Lord that we do not ignore the fact that we need to move on from the 2015 legislation.
I accept that it is not the Minister who is at fault here. However, whether there is the same enthusiasm elsewhere across government is something that we can all speculate on. He will remember that, in Committee, I drew to his attention the report on 26 December 2024 in the Financial Times linking 14 companies to events in Xinjiang involving $1.4 billion of exposure.
I am sorry to challenge again the noble Lord but, seeing my noble friend Lord Collins on the Bench, I assure the noble Lord that I speak for the Government in saying that we are very concerned about this. We are not at all being complacent.
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I know that the Minister and his noble friend Lord Collins are concerned. The issues are not a problem here, but, as I suggested earlier, they may be elsewhere within government. Maybe we have to concentrate people’s minds, as the Minister and I have done previously on other legislation. He referred to the Procurement Act, when we were successful, together with other noble Lords, in concentrating the mind of the Government at that time. That is all I am seeking to do this evening.
The Minister referred to our duties. The Modern Slavery Act and its Section 54 are 10 years old. The author of that legislation was the noble Baroness, Lady May, then Home Secretary and who became Prime Minister. It was, at the time—everybody said it—landmark legislation. She recognises that the voluntary nature of Section 54, which is a tick-box exercise, does not do the job, but no one has brought forward changes to that. That is why the Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently conducting an inquiry into modern-day slavery and supply chain transparency.
The Minister will know that, on previous occasions, Ministers have said from that Dispatch Box that it cannot be done in this or that Bill at this time and that there will be other legislation and that will be the time to do it. It never is the right time. There never is the right legislation. The issue ultimately is whether we entrench dependency on a country run by a regime like that of the CCP or whether we have resilience in the United Kingdom and create supply chains between democracies that have similar values; otherwise, British taxpayers’ money, to the tune of billions of pounds, is going to pour into the coffers of a regime that is inimitably opposed to the values that we espouse. For all those reasons, I would like to test the opinion of the House.
Held on 11 February 2025 at 8.32pm
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Extended Remarks About The Amendment:
Clause 4, page 3, line 5, at end insert –
“(6) Financial assistance under this section must not be provided if there exists credible evidence of modern slavery in the energy supply chain of any company designated Great British Energy.”
I declare nonpecuniary interests as an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Uyghurs, Hong Kong, and Tibet and as a Patron of Hong Kong Watch and of the Coalition for Genocide Response and with Baroness Kennedy I have been sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair, is currently conducting a full-scale inquiry into supply chain transparency and modern slavery – hearing powerful oral evidence from Rahima Mahmut of the World Uyghur Congress – which I would commend to the House. It will also look at the links to child labour in the mines of the DRC.
The amendment had its genesis in the House of Commons where Sarah Champion MP. told MPs we have “a sinister dependency on … forced labour programmes in the supply chains for solar panels,” adding that the UK has become “a dumping ground for dodgy solar and tainted solar goods.
This all-party amendment seeks to address that.
It is also informed by the July 2023 Report of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security which warned against increased and deepening UK dependence on the CCP regime, urging greater national resilience. It said China has penetrated ‘every sector’ of the UK’s economy – underlined by three decades of trade deficit with China – currently standing at £32 billion.
The amendment goes to the heart of this dependency, exposing a fundamental incompatibility between a rules based liberal democracy which respects human rights and one which does not.
It builds on our obligations in the 1998 Human Rights Act, the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act and the 1948 Convention on the Crime of Genocide, along with the prohibitions in the Victorian 1897 Forced Prison Made Goods Act.
The amendment is modelled, and consistent with earlier all-party amendments, passed by substantial majorities, by your Lordships, to the Procurement Act 2023, the Health and Care Act 2022, the Telecommunications (Security) Act of 2021 and the genocide amendment to the Trade Act of 2021.
In short order it seeks to prohibit the Secretary of State from using public money to fund any company designated as Great British Energy where credible evidence exists of modern slavery in any part of their energy supply chain.
If passed, the amendment will enable the House of Commons to consider this question further and, if incorporated, would require the Secretary of State to determine a threshold for “credible evidence of modern slavery” – thus excluding from procurement any company in the energy supply chain meeting that threshold.
Although the Minister insists that the Company will “be operationally independent” it would be disingenuous to suggest that with £8 billion of public money involved that that the Government should be absolved from its usual duties to uphold law enacted by Parliament.
Let me give an illustration of why we need to act.
The Government has declined to give any estimate of the number and cost of solar panels which have been purchased from China over the past ten years or will be purchased over the next ten years or how many will be required to meet to objectives of the Great British Energy Bill.
The Government says it is “an absolute priority” to build “resilient solar supply chains, free from forced labour.”
But in the next breath it says it “does not hold data on the supply chains of individual businesses and therefore cannot provide details of overall expenditure or quantities of Chinese imports of solar panels.”
Opaque, ambiguous, and contradictory.
On one hand. the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds MP, says:
“I give … an absolute assurance that I would expect and demand there to be no modern slavery in any part of a supply chain that affects products or goods sold in the UK … I promise … that, where there are specific allegations, I will look at those to ensure that this happens. “
Good.
But when I asked Home Office Ministers about shipments arriving from Xinjiang at UK airports via a company called European Cargo, I was told the Government makes no checks. It’s a matter for Border Force.
But guess what?
In December the Home Office told me “Border Force does not routinely assess whether goods on freight entering the UK may have been made using forced labour…”
In another reply I was told that “Under Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, commercial businesses who operate in the UK and have a turnover of £36 million or more must report annually on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains by publishing an annual modern slavery statement.
This is purely voluntary and has no teeth. To how many prosecutions has it led? It’s a policy approach worthy of Jekyll and Hyde.
Last month I sent the Minister a report by Ignites Asia which identifies funds run by global managers who had at least £1.4 billion linked to 14 solar and EV companies using slave labour in Xinjiang.
I am told to rely on the Solar Taskforce.
But it is not mandated to exclude suppliers or companies credibly linked to forced labour, nor does it have a statutory basis for that purpose.
None of the Core Membership of the Taskforce are organisations from civil society or trade unions, that have the research capabilities and expertise to provide insight on slavery in the solar industry.
It’s really just another paper tiger.
Last month the Minister kindly hosted a helpful meeting with Juergen Maier CBE- former Chief Executive of Siemens UK and now the chair-designate of Great British Energy, the private-public hybrid company being created by the Government.
I asked Mr. Maier directly about supply chains & Xinjiang. He told me: “There is law and regulation to which we should comply. We should be held to a very high bar”.
But notwithstanding good intentions – and I believe him to be sincere – inadequate legislation, is not much of a bar.
Mr. Maier will know his history, that in an earlier generation, in late 1944, at the height of World War II, Siemens’ workforce included 50,000 slave labourers, running factories in the concentration camps. And they were not alone.
Is 2025 Xinjiang so very different?
The PRC has placed millions of citizens from the Uyghur region into what it calls “surplus labour” and “labour transfer” programmes.
In one recent year more than three million people were transferred and conscripted onto work programmes in factories and farms.
Anyone who refuses to work or attempts to walk away from their job risks internment or imprisonment. This forcible transfer of populations, forced labour, human trafficking and enslavement offends international law and fundamental human rights.
The outgoing US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, spelt it out: “the forcing of men, women and children into concentration camps, trying to, in effect, re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide.”
Both the Biden and Trump Administrations and the UK House of Commons have declared the mass persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang – including forced labour, described by a former British Foreign Secretary as “on an industrial scale” – to be a genocide.
40% of the UK solar industry is documented to be at risk of being tainted by Uyghur forced labour.
Two important reports, In Broad Daylight, and Over-exposed, say that the Uyghur “labour transfer programme has only increased in scale.” Canadian Solar, one of the companies named, was a major beneficiary in the solar development announcements made by the Secretary of State. Has that been investigated? What action has been taken?
In the UK we have no forced labour import bans, no rebuttable presumption – as in the United States where all goods sourced from Xinjiang are treated as unethically produced, unless clear and persuasive evidence can be provided to the contrary – no certificate of origin, and we hide behind the fiction of laws that do not do what Parliament intended.
And these products are not simply tainted by slave labour, they are made in the lair of a belching dragon.
The solar panels of Xinjiang have a higher carbon footprint than those manufactured elsewhere in the world.
China may have suddenly become the Government’s new best friend – but whatever else it is, it is not part of a green revolution.
Solar may have been increasing but still only generates about 2.5% of China’s consumption –with mined production of coal reaching an all-time high last year, burning more fossil fuel than ever before, pumping out more pollution in eight years than the UK has in 220. It is building the equivalent of two new coal-burning power stations every week and doing so to build its industrial and military might and certainly not to do its bit toward tackling climate change.
While the Secretary of State agonizes and beats himself up, he can be sure that Xi Jinping is losing no sleep over targets or the use of slave labour to achieve his objectives. His regime has become the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world – 15 billion tonnes of carbon a year.
China uses coal to power heavy industry and to export steel and cars which we once produced in the UK workshop of the world.
British labour will never be able to compete with slave labour or with industries that are heavily dependent on cheaper and dirtier energy sources.
The U.K. should be tooling up, creating British jobs, seeking, with our allies, alternatives to supply chains dependent on Uyghur slave labour.
Procurement should strengthen national resilience. It should reduce dependency on states which pose a risk to our national security. It should protect British manufacturing from competitors that use slave labour, or grossly exploited labour.
This amendment puts it to Parliament: do we want a slavery-free green transition, or are we content to allow the Government’s objectives -to be achieved through forced labour in a state accused of genocide?
It should be inconceivable that the UK, which did so much to end the scourge of slavery around the world, would today accept, or be willing turn a blind eye on, products made by a state–imposed system of forced labour. Good does not rest on the shoulders of a wrong.
