Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-07
Topic: Civil Rights
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I echo the final words of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and implore my noble friend on the Front Bench to heed what she said I will begin on a personal note: 75 years ago, at the time of the VE celebrations, my parents took me, a six year-old boy, to see newsreels. Among them was Belsen. My mother’s instinctive reaction was to put her arm in front of my eyes; my father’s reaction was to sit me on his knee and say, "The boy must see what evil people can do." It is one of my earliest and most vivid memories As a newly elected Member of the other place, 25 years later, at the invitation of the late Greville Janner, whose memory I honour, I became the first chairman of the all-party group—there were very few in those days—for the release of Soviet Jewry. I spoke on the telephone to those who had been to the gulags. I was refused a visa to Soviet Russia, but we smuggled out a volume of the Jewish scriptures for a young boy’s bar mitzvah gift. His father had been in the gulag. About 25 years after that, as chairman of the All-Party Group for Bosnia, I saw what happened in Srebrenica, which was almost the same time as those ghastly massacres in Rwanda Those who have brought this amendment before your Lordships’ House tonight have done us all a great service. The precision of the amendment is its most commending feature, because it concentrates on what the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, rightly referred to as the ultimate and most heinous of crimes: genocide A week ago, we debated that peculiarly named Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill. We had an amendment, on which a number of us spoke, which would forbid the authorising of young people under the age of 18 from committing crimes. I will certainly continue to support my amendment or others on that subject Why, my Lords? Because it is wrong. If anything is wrong on a gargantuan scale, it is of course genocide. We cannot and must not be fobbed off with an answer from the Front Bench that says that it is too difficult, that the wording of the amendment is wrong or that it does not fit in. Some of those excuses have already been rehearsed by those such as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has been pressing for the amendment, which I am also doing The Prime Minister talks very proudly of "global Britain". Global Britain must have a moral compass. Global Britain must not sacrifice its national integrity. The country that was responsible for the abolition of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions, in 1807 and 1833 respectively, must draw upon that proud heritage. What is happening in China to the Uighurs, as we have just been reminded in a very moving speech, is despicable and appalling. I believe that we should ensure that those who can pronounce on these things are able to pronounce on this. Is it genocide? I do not believe that there is any doubt that it is right that it should be a legal judgment and pronouncement; if such a pronouncement is made, it is absolutely right that we should not seek to trade on preferential terms with the People’s Republic of China—a great country with a great and civilised people who are having things perpetrated in their name that are the very negation of civilisation I say to my noble friend Lady Noakes and others that business does matter, but lives matter more: black lives, white lives, Chinese lives, Muslim lives and Christian lives—all lives matter. We should not in any way be complicit, even tangentially, in turning a blind eye to some of the most evil deeds that have been perpetrated in the past 50 years. I support this amendment.