Genocide Determination Bill [HL]
Thursday 4th June 2026
(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Genocide Determination Bill [HL] 2026-27 Read Hansard Text
Genocide Determination Bill [HL]
Friday 17th July 2026
(1 week, 3 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Genocide Determination Bill [HL] 2026-27 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Lord Alton of Liverpool
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Curran) (Lab)
My Lords, before we begin this debate, I remind the House that the advisory speaking time is strictly four minutes for Back-Bench contributions.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, on this politically auspicious day, as we mark the appointment of Andy Burnham Member of Parliament as the new leader of the Labour Party, we know that we have a parliamentarian who is passionately committed to the principle of public accountability and justice. It is serendipitous, perhaps providential, that a Bill which seeks to entrench both accountability and justice for genocide—the crime above all crimes—should receive its Second Reading in this House today, and I thank all noble Lords from all Benches who are participating.
Today is also International Criminal Justice Day, which marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome statute on 17 July 1998—the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, which seeks to protect people from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. What better day, then, to have the Second Reading of the Genocide Determination Bill, which manifests all these values and commitments to victims and survivors, to justice and peace? Noble Lords should be clear that the Bill is not actor or territory specific; it is about the crime above all crimes and our willingness to make a reality of the intentions of the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide.
Only a few weeks ago, with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, we had a constructive and helpful meeting with the Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, and he told us that genocide is the “apex crime”. There is no surprise there.
Over the years, whether in this House or the other place, I have raised the appalling genocides, crimes against humanity, that have occurred in too many parts of the world. As a young MP in the House of Commons, I raised the appalling genocide of Pol Pot against the Cambodians, and subsequently the atrocities in Darfur, western China, Burma, northern Iraq and elsewhere, all of which are documented in a book which I published with Dr Ewelina Ochab of the International Bar Association and the Coalition for Genocide Response, of which I am a patron. A few weeks ago, I also raised the dire situation of women and girls in Gaza.
There is no shortage of suffering globally. We need, however, to be very careful about the words we use, how we use them and the actions which must follow. So why does the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, describe it as the “apex crime” and why is our response to this crime above all others so inadequate? The word “genocide”, of course, was coined by the Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, over 40 of whose family had perished in the Holocaust. It is a hybrid word combining the ancient Greek word “genos”, meaning race or tribe or family, and the Latin suffix “cide”, meaning killing. It is a specific word with a specific meaning and is not to be used as a slogan. Genocide is an identity-based crime and describes the systematic destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It is the cutting of the human family.
We have heard it being used for situations globally, but genocide has a strict legal definition, and we always need to go back to it. Genocide and the 1948 convention which bears its name require us to show not only the underlying and prohibited acts, and I spell them out, of killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. To become genocide, these acts must be directed against one of the protected groups, whether racial, national, ethnic or religious, and this with specific intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part. Lemkin’s definition of genocide, as contained in Article II of the convention, was meant to establish genocide as what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, called the “apex crime”, the crime above all crimes, with the hope that, after the Holocaust, we would never witness anything of that sort again.
However, defining genocide did not stop such atrocities being perpetrated. More importantly, the convention is not only about defining what genocide is; it imposes duties on the signatories, of which we are one. Let us disassemble, if we may, the neglected duties. There is prevention. While not explicitly explained in the convention, it was later expanded and explained by the International Court of Justice. It is a duty to prevent and—I spell out its words—for states
“to employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible”.
The trigger for this duty is when the state learns or should normally have learned of the serious risk of genocide.
As for protection, consider the plight of women and girls in Sudan, the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. In a report I published for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan in April 2023, we specifically warned of the danger of a new genocide in Darfur. Of course, that has happened in El Fasher. We did not act on the warnings and the requirement to protect—not in relation to that genocide and not in relation to the genocide two decades ago. In Darfur, the first ever arrest warrant was issued by the ICC, but 200,000 to 300,000 lives were claimed, 2 million people were displaced and the warnings had fallen, then and again 20 years later, on deaf ears. There are no blue helmets and no protection for the civilian population. It is as if, in the grand scheme of things, these African lives do not matter.
As for punishing perpetrators, we are equally deficient. Let us be crystal clear: the impunity for the genocide two decades ago in Darfur has a direct link with the genocide that is being perpetrated before our very eyes now. So duties to predict, prevent, protect and punish at the moment are not worth the paper on which they are written.
I first introduced the Genocide Determination Bill only a few months after I laid amendments here and with colleagues in another place following a unanimous vote that had determined that the atrocities committed by ISIS against Yazidis, Christians and other minorities in northern Iraq and Syria was a genocide. It was the first time that the House of Commons had made such a determination. But, despite the calls from across the political spectrum for genocide determination and action to stop those atrocities, to prevent further atrocities, to protect the populations at risk and to avert the risk that the communities would be annihilated, the Foreign Office refused to accept the determination made in another place, arguing that such a determination could be made only by an international judicial body or a competent court, despite knowing only too well that there was no international judicial body that was going to look into those crimes committed by ISIS in Syria or Iraq. The Government also made it clear that they were not willing to move on that position.
That made me consider what would need to happen to implement the Government’s declared policy that only a court can decide and how we could create a route into our own courts to make that happen. If indeed the Government wanted court determination, my question was: could our domestic courts make such a determination? As it stood at the time, the only legislation pertaining to genocide was the International Criminal Court Act 2001, legislating and domesticating the Rome statute of the ICC. It enables our court to prosecute individuals for their involvement in international crimes such as genocide, but it equips domestic courts with only very narrow jurisdiction over international crimes: namely, active personality jurisdiction, which means that the alleged perpetrators must be British citizens or residents to fall within the purview of the legislation.
In the case of the Yazidis, it is very significant that the Foreign Office has changed its position and has said that a genocide is under way, and has done so because a court in Germany has declared it to be a genocide. While I welcome that, why is it that we are closing off a route to our own English High Court and to the Court of Session in Scotland: courts that would be more than competent to deal with this matter here? It was my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead who said that the 1948 convention was no longer fit for purpose—his words. He gave us his valuable expertise and help in drafting the original Bill, and I have talked this Bill through with him. I hope we will not hear from the Government that this is not practical or doable when such an illustrious Member of your Lordships’ House is one of the many who have given it support.
Instead of the cynical merry-go-round that we have at the moment, we need to establish an independent British judicial process to sift the evidence and make a preliminary finding triggering the provisions of the convention. If this is the apex crime, genocide has a high burden of proof, and rightly so. It is not a term to be thrown around lightly or to be misused. My Bill seeks to give force to the hopes of Raphael Lemkin and of Winston Churchill, who said that there was not a word in our language capable of describing the monstrosities which had occurred in the Holocaust. There were genuine attempts in the post-war period to address those questions. We need to return to those issues now and do something practical about it. I commend this Bill, which enjoys all-party support, to the House, and I beg to move.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow and support my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Although he sits in a different part of the House, I regard him as a friend, and I am very glad to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the tireless way that he has campaigned year after year on this critical issue. He has already outlined how his Bill will work, its purpose and its merits far better than I can, so I will try not to rehearse the points that he has made.
However, I do want to say why this Bill is so important. At first glance, it may seem like a limited measure tackling anomaly in process, but it speaks fundamentally to what sort of country we are and how far we are prepared to prioritise abiding moral imperatives over perceived geopolitical interests. These need not always be in conflict, of course, and even when they might be, it is worth remembering the immortal words of a past Member of your Lordships’ House, Lord Palmerston:
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies”.
Geopolitical interests can be transitory and subjectively defined, but our eternal and perpetual interests, to use Lord Palmerston’s words, must include those moral imperatives that this Bill pursues. As we have heard already from the noble Lord, it is not focused on a specific case or situation but seeks to ensure access to justice for victims and survivors of genocide who otherwise would not have such access.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has argued that there are limitations on what international courts can do to secure such justice, and the noble Lord has outlined them. For example, in relation to the genocide perpetrated by ISIS against the Yazidi people, neither Iraq nor Syria, where the genocide took place, is a party to the Rome statute, the treaty establishing the ICC. The ICC would therefore need the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Iraq and Syria to it, but no such referral has been made. Such a draft resolution in the case of Syria has been blocked in the Security Council, particularly because of vetoes by Russia and China, which appear to derive from their political interests in that region.
Sadly, this is not the only example of perceived geopolitical interests overriding action against genocide. Recently, the human rights academic Nathaniel Raymond—also mentioned by the noble Lord—alleged that the UK received more than two dozen briefings that the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan were preparing an assault on the city of El Fasher. Mass atrocities were highly likely. The UK was well placed, as a member of the UN Security Council, to galvanise international action, yet it did not escalate its response sufficiently—apparently because it prioritised its strategic relationship with the United Arab Emirates, a prominent backer of a rapid support force, over stronger action to prevent the anticipated atrocities in El Fasher.
Tragically, those were realised. Yet our Government continue to insist that action against those perpetrating genocide, or creating the risk of genocide, can be taken only by such international courts and competent courts. As a result, there has not been a single prosecution in this country of ISIS members for the crimes of genocide perpetrated against the Yazidi people, despite some estimates suggesting that there could be hundreds living in this country who should be prosecuted for such international crimes. China has been accused of dreadful atrocities in recent years against the Uyghur people and of systematic policies aimed at eradicating the indigenous Tibetan language, religion and cultural identity, yet the issue of genocide in the country has still not been adjudicated.
When US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, handmade signs displayed by the prisoners read “never again”. Sadly, that did not turn out to be the case. Genocide has been perpetrated again and again. The Government’s policy on genocide aims to protect and preserve the rights of people at risk of genocide and those who have suffered from it. However, this needs to be delivered. This Bill does that, and that is why I support it.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, as a general rule, I support most of the ideas the noble Lord, Lord Alton, brings to your Lordships’ House, as he is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the state of the world and those who live in it. I join the noble Lord, Lord Wills, in the tributes he paid to the noble Lord, not least because I share with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, a desire to see China—a country which can claim a long and civilised history, and which has brought great intellectual, artistic, scientific and many other benefits to us all—behave in the 21st century in a way that matches the best traditions of that great nation. However, there are far too many contemporary examples of Chinese government conduct towards their own citizens that rightly attract international criticism and condemnation—for example, what they are doing to the Uyghur people, Christians, free thinkers and supporters of freedom of assembly and expression, and to the man whose name should never be forgotten in this Parliament or any other democratic assembly: Jimmy Lai.
However, I query what practical effect this Bill would have on, say, China. My hunch—and it is only a hunch—is that the court would be reluctant to engage in an essentially political question, or at least, one with huge non-legal implications over which it has no control. Unlike Members of Parliament, judges do not table Early Day Motions. They do not initiate 10-minute rule Bills or Adjournment debates in the other place or in Westminster Hall. Although courts sometimes make findings of fact in the absence of contested evidence, I wonder how a court would look at evidence of, say, the alleged killing or mass incarceration of members of an ethnic group by the Chinese Government when we know that China, for good or ill, asserts its innocence of such crimes and the court is unlikely to have received direct evidence of guilt.
Arbitrating political arguments, as opposed to defining the hard facts and legal consequences of a given set of facts, would not be a welcome task for the court. Even if a United Kingdom court made a preliminary determination of a case of genocide, or that there existed a serious risk of genocide in, for example, the case of the Uyghurs, the relevant Secretary of State—for all sorts of good, bad and indifferent trade, political and diplomatic reasons—will have to ask whether, all things considered, it is in our national interest to make a reference under Clause 3 of the Bill. It does not take much imagination to work out what the answer is likely to be. The court will have been used to make a point over which it had no control and which it could not enforce. In reality, the court will have no power over the Secretary of State and even less over the international courts or bodies set out in Clause 3.
To take another regime, the military junta in Myanmar deserves nothing but vilification for what it has done to the Rohingya population. The Gambia brought a case to the International Court of Justice in November 2019, alleging that state-sponsored atrocities in 2017 which forced over 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh were committed with genocidal intent. In 2020, the ICJ unanimously ordered Myanmar to take provisional measures to prevent genocidal acts against the Rohingya and to preserve evidence. As far as I can tell, Myanmar has also been accused by rights groups of violating those orders, and it is highly unlikely that they have paid any attention to them at all. During hearings in January, the Gambia presented evidence, including testimony from Rohingya survivors, to demonstrate Myanmar’s genocidal policies. Of course, the Myanmar Government denied these allegations, arguing that the 2017 operations were legitimate counterterrorism measures rather than genocide. Eleven countries, beyond the Gambia, including the United Kingdom, have intervened in those proceedings against Myanmar. So far, so good—and all achieved, if anything has been, without the enactment of this Bill.
At the risk of being unhelpful or jumping on the cynical merry-go-round the noble Lord referred to a moment ago, neither China, Myanmar or any other possible candidate state or Government for censure will change their behaviour if this Bill becomes an Act. We need determined diplomatic, bilateral, internationally organised movement of power. What will affect China and Myanmar is sanctions, is trade being denied. The noble Lord referred to Lord Palmerston. He sent battleships to Piraeus and bombarded that city because one of our citizens had been treated in a disobliging way by the Greeks. We must get real about this. While I entirely accept what the noble Lord is trying to achieve—and yes, I can see the time—this is probably not the best way to do it.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for introducing this Bill, which I support, and for his unwavering commitment over many years to the prevention of genocide, the protection of persecuted communities and the advancement of human rights.
At the heart of the Bill lies a simple yet profound principle that every human life possesses equal and inherent worth. There is a clear inconsistency in our present arrangements. Successive Governments have rightly maintained that genocide is a matter for a competent court. However, in practice, the international courts capable of making such determinations are not always able to do so because of jurisdictional limitations or political deadlock. The result is that credible allegations of the gravest crime recognised in international law may never receive judicial determination. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, made this point compellingly in his speech.
There are legitimate questions about how the mechanism at the heart of this Bill will operate and about its relationship with foreign policy, as my friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, pointed out in his speech. Those are proper matters for Committee, but they do not undermine the principle behind the Bill. Rather, they challenge us to ensure that any mechanism is proportionate, carefully designed and properly resourced.
I have seen the importance of these principles close to home. My great-uncle, Mandy Morris, was a Holocaust survivor who, as a young boy, came to Yorkshire as a refugee with his family and rebuilt his life. In Newcastle, more recently, I have had the privilege of working alongside Smajo Bešo, a survivor of the Bosnian genocide, who found refuge in the United Kingdom and has dedicated his life to education and remembrance. Most recently I attended a Bosnian Genocide Educational Trust event at Newcastle Civic Centre, which was organised and led by Smajo. What struck me most was the response of the young people who took part. They expressed their reflections on the subject through art and poetry, and their work demonstrated remarkable empathy and compassion. They understood that behind every legal definition are individuals, families and communities whose lives have been for ever changed.
Recognition cannot undo the past, and it cannot restore those who have been lost or erase the suffering endured by survivors, but truth and justice matter. A willingness to examine credible evidence through an independent legal process affirms the dignity of victims and strengthens our resolve that such crimes should never be repeated. The Bill is ultimately an expression of confidence in the rule of law. It simply asks whether, where there is credible evidence of the gravest crime recognised in international law, there should be a lawful and independent means by which that evidence can be examined and in a timely manner. In that regard, I have a question for the Minister: what mechanisms do the Government believe are sufficient to ensure timely and independent identification of the risk of genocide? The Bill also gives an opportunity to strengthen our leadership in the area of foreign policy.
As we debate this legislation, I think again of those young people in Newcastle. In many ways, the young people in Newcastle captured the ethical foundation of this Bill better than any legal text could. They understood that every life has equal worth and that indifference is never an acceptable response to human suffering. I therefore support the Bill and look forward to its careful scrutiny in Committee.
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, in previous debates on atrocity crimes, I have said that we cannot continue to look away when there is credible evidence of genocide. The Bill before us today is an opportunity to address this challenge, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his continued efforts to find a way to formally determine genocide. His introduction clearly set out why that is needed.
The House of Lords Library briefing sets out the central problem with clarity. For decades, successive Governments have relied on the position that determinations of genocide should be made by competent courts, rather than by Governments or non-judicial bodies. Yet despite this position’s longevity, no Government have ever introduced legislation to give effect to it. As a result, when credible evidence of genocide emerges, British courts have no mechanism to assess it.
We have a policy that says, “Leave it to the courts”, but no legal pathway for our courts to act. As a Minister at the FCDO, I found this position inconsistent and difficult to defend, and I have supported the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his earlier efforts aimed at creating a mechanism for genocide determination linked to trade agreements. The Bill provides us with an opportunity to ensure that the UK does not turn away when credible evidence of atrocity crimes is presented. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said, the Bill will ensure that the UK Government act quickly on their existing obligations under the genocide convention, which legally binds signatories to prevent mass atrocities the moment a serious risk is recognised.
In earlier debates I have emphasised the importance of a survivor centred approach. This Bill embodies that principle. It empowers victims and survivors to seek a preliminary determination of genocide or serious risk of genocide from our own High Court or equivalent courts in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It gives those targeted by atrocity crimes a route to be heard in a British court. Once a determination is made, the Secretary of State must act. That action—referring the situation to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or other bodies—is not an expansion of government power. It is simply the implementation of our existing duties under the genocide convention: the duty to prevent and the duty to punish.
There may well be a concern that our judicial system is not structured to deal with cases of this nature, but if the Government wish to maintain their long standing policy of leaving genocide determinations to competent courts then, recognising the issues with the international courts that have been set out, they must introduce legislation that allows British courts to fulfil that role or provide any alternative. Otherwise, “Never again” is honoured only in rhetoric and never in practice.
Inaction empowers perpetrators. It signals that the United Kingdom is unable or unwilling to recognise genocide even when the evidence is overwhelming. It leaves victims without recourse and it leaves our international obligations unfulfilled. This Bill offers a principled, judicial, survivor centred mechanism that aligns with the Government’s own stated policy and with our obligations under international law. If we are serious about preventing genocide, we must be serious about recognising it.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, if, as the Government constantly assert, only a court ruling can determine acts of genocide, the courts must have the powers to carry out this function. At present, they do not. This renders the 1948 genocide convention no longer fit for purpose, and the commitment, following the Holocaust, to “Never again” becomes almost meaningless, as we have heard. This modest Bill seeks to enable any person or representative organisation affected by genocidal actions to apply to the UK courts to decide on whether genocide has taken, is taking, or is likely to take place. In so doing, a response from the Government is required and the relevant Minister would be obliged, within time limits, to refer the case to the appropriate international bodies—the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court or other international bodies.
The arguments for such powers have been well rehearsed over many years, and equally so too have the arguments against. Both sides were expressed in some detail in the course of the atrocity crimes debate in June in this Chamber. The arguments that this focused Bill is urgently needed can be in no doubt. The evidence lies in the numerous credible reports on past acts of genocide and on current threats of genocidal action.
A recent book, Genocide in Gaza, by the world-renowned Israeli scholar, Avi Shlaim, sets out in forensic legal details the actions—which he states are the absolute antithesis of Jewish values—perpetrated by the Netanyahu Government between 2023 and 2024 in Gaza in response to the murder of Israelis on 7 October 2023. Shlaim describes the Netanyahu policy as one of deliberate killing or persecution intended to partially or wholly destroy the people of Gaza. It is difficult to refute his conclusions of genocidal intent and actions on the part of the Israeli Government.
The independent International Commission of Inquiry, following the case brought before the ICJ in 2024 by South Africa into Israel’s conduct in Gaza, cites intentionally directed attacks on civilians, of whom many were women and children; forcible transfer of civilian populations; destruction of water and electricity infrastructure, which is indispensable for survival; starvation as a method of warfare; and wilfully impeding relief supplies. These actions more than fulfil the criteria for genocide as set out in the 1948 convention.
In April 2016, the House of Commons unanimously recognised the atrocities committed by ISIL against the Yazidis and other religious minorities in 2014 as genocide. At first, the Government declined to act due to the lack of formal determination by the courts, itself guaranteed by absence of both legal and procedural mechanisms to lodge a case. This underlined the disconnect between the policy of reliance on a competent court, where no court possessed the jurisdiction to make such a determination.
The UK continues to supply the Israeli Government with arms and political support and has refrained from naming the atrocities in Gaza as genocidal. Meanwhile, some UK members of ISIL involved in the Yazidi slaughter remain free and unencumbered by criminal charges. The UK is failing in its international obligations under the genocide convention to prevent and to punish genocide. In his response to the atrocities debate, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, stated that although the Government agreed with the underlying objectives of the Bill, they did not support the means proposed. It is to be hoped that this Bill will be allowed to reach its final stages, but if not, that the Government will instead publish their own Bill to meet the underlying objective, and in so doing meet their international obligations.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, it always gives me pleasure to be able to support my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He and I have worked extensively over many years, and I pay tribute to him, as others have. He comes to us again with this Bill, which aims to establish a formal legal mechanism to allow British courts to make preliminary determinations on whether genocide is occurring or is at risk of occurring. When we signed the Genocide Act we not only agreed to condemn genocide and bring perpetrators to justice but committed to preventing genocide. That is one of the major things about this. Prevention means monitoring for indicators, such as dehumanising language used by politicians with an undercurrent threat of annihilation, human rights abuses of minorities or of neighbouring peoples, dispossessing people of their homes and lands, the displacement of people, making conditions of life so intolerable that people are forced into exile, sexual violence against despised groups and all those signs of ethnic cleansing. We are seeing these things happening in many conflicts around the world. There were more than 60 conflicts ongoing at the last count.
I want to ask a number of questions of the Government about why there might be opposition to the Bill. I smile at my learned friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Saying no and being a naysayer are the steps that lead to accountability. These are the things we need to do if we want to have a just world. We must not nod our head and say, “It’s not going to work”, or “Who is going to listen? Are the Chinese going to listen?” I have worked very hard on the Uyghur issue. I know how hard it is, but we keep on keeping on.
It is easy when we can identify genocide, as we have in China, Myanmar and the Congo, and are currently doing in Sudan, but what do we do when a friendly state goes rogue? There is plenty of evidence of the UAE arming the RSF in Sudan and we do not say a peep about it. What about Israel, which has fallen into the hands of an extreme right-wing Government who are committing serious crimes against people? There has been a lot of silence in this House about that—a sort of omertà where everyone is frightened of being accused of being an antisemite when we are calling out things that we happily call out in other places.
I particularly want to talk about the Yazidis. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I met the war crimes unit of the Metropolitan Police. It was very interesting and it made me wonder. Will the Minister say what kind of training the Met Police unit is getting? Does it meet sufficiently the Foreign Office and the atrocity unit that certainly used to exist within the Foreign Office? I hope it continues to do so.
This country saw quite a number of young people going off to ISIL, the Islamist terrorist organisation. Some returned. We know that several hundred did. Most of them have been prosecuted and jailed, but they were prosecuted for membership of an international terrorist organisation. The horrors of ISIL were the slaughter of many hundreds of Yazidi men and boys and the enslavement of women and girls, the constant and repeated rapes that they experienced, their impregnation, the way in which they have suffered the consequences, the trauma of that and how ongoing it is. Yet we asked the war crimes unit whether it ever asked any of those who returned, “What were your domestic circumstances there? Did you have a wife? Did you have a second wife?”, but I am not sure it did. I want to know what kind of training is going on about genocidal behaviours. Did we ever find out how it was possible for Germany, along with Amal Clooney, to charge and convict people of genocidal crimes, and what makes the difference in its law?
I recommend the Bill to the House. It will make a change. It will be another brick in the wall that we are building for justice.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, last week marked the 31st anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, where 8,372 Bosniak men and boys were systematically murdered in what the United Nations had declared a safe haven. Their wives, daughters and sisters were subjected to rape and expulsion as part of a calculated campaign of ethnic cleansing. In March 1995, Radovan Karadžić, president of the self-declared Republika Srpska, issued directive 7, ordering the creation of, in his words,
“an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival … for the inhabitants of Srebrenica”.
Four months later, those words were translated to ethnically motivated mass slaughter. In 2007, the International Court of Justice confirmed that Srebrenica was genocide. Srebrenica did not occur because the world lacked information. Karadzic’s interventions were set out in plain terms. The warning signs were unmistakable. UN peacekeepers were in Srebrenica. Diplomatic cables were incoming. The failure was not of knowledge but of political will.
The lessons have still not been learned. Only two days ago, a serving Serbian Government Minister declared that if she had been Slobodan Milošević, she would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo in 1998. Three decades after Srebrenica, language that seeks to justify ethnic cleansing is still being voiced from public office. That should alarm us all. We have since witnessed Daesh’s attempt to destroy the Yazidis and the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, and today there are grave reports of mass killings in Gaza and Sudan.
Whatever conclusion courts ultimately reach, these crises expose the same fundamental weakness: that legal processes move more slowly than the atrocities they are intended to address. This is why the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, matters. It does not ask Ministers or politicians to determine whether genocide has occurred but gives practical effect to the Government’s long-standing position that genocide is a matter for competent courts by providing timely judicial mechanisms through which evidence can be assessed while there is still time to prevent further atrocities.
International courts can take years, sometimes decades, to reach their conclusions. By then, the victims are dead, communities are destroyed and the opportunity for prevention has long passed. This Bill may not prevent genocide, nor can it overcome the geopolitical divisions that so often paralyse the international community, but it would strengthen the United Kingdom’s authority and its ability to fulfil its obligation under Article I of the genocide convention, not merely to punish genocide after the event but to try to prevent it before it reaches its murderous conclusion.
I have three questions for the Minister. First, will the Government make unequivocally clear that the United Kingdom stands firmly behind the International Criminal Court, its independence and its officials in the face of the threats now being directed against it? Secondly, what urgent steps are being taken to prevent the atrocities feared in El Obeid becoming another El Fasher? Thirdly, what measures are being taken to ensure that the United Kingdom does not become complicit, directly or indirectly, in the atrocities that may ultimately be found to constitute genocide in Gaza and Sudan?
History’s greatest failures have seldom resulted from ignorance. More often, they have resulted from a failure to act on what was already known. Srebrenica stands as a permanent reminder of the cost of that failure. The Bill seeks, in a modest but important way, to ensure that we do not repeat it.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for keeping matters of this kind before us and demanding that we give them our attention. I am most grateful.
In a briefing paper that I was very impressed by, I saw a formula showing the atrocities that have existed in Iraq, Sudan, China, Ethiopia, Tigray and Myanmar. At the end of each section, it said:
“If, as stipulated in Clause 1 of the Genocide Determination Bill, a determination of genocide was made, Clause 3 actions could include”—
and then it laid out those possible actions.
I come at the Bill and this discussion from the perspective of the end of Claude 3—I am sorry, Clause 3. There must be somebody here named Claude who I keep on subconsciously thinking about. A month ago, in Stockholm, with the Syriac Eastern Orthodox congregation, I laid a wreath at the monument for the victims of the Armenian genocide early in the 20th century. My son-in-law is Cambodian. His parents were drafted forcibly into Pol Pot’s army and their lives completely wrecked, and he was raised in a Buddhist monastery. I have sensed in Cambodia, on my regular visits, the awful things that happened there. I was in Bosnia in 2010, and I was with the families of people who were still crying uncontrollably at the aftermath of what had happened—under Dutch protection, so they thought—with the killing of those boys and men. There was slaughter in East Timor, and I have met Timorese people too. I was at the plebiscite that brought Eritrea into existence in 1993 and had occasion to meet people who for 30 years had been subject to the depredations and warmongering of nearby Ethiopia. In Haiti—I need not rehearse this too much; people will have heard me speak on Haiti many times—after a military junta forced a democratically elected President and Government out, the United Nations proved totally incapable of handling the ensuing chaos. I have performed the marriage of a young woman who was the only survivor of her whole community who were eradicated in Kigali.
I have got too close personally to some of the victims in these manifold places where atrocities occur for me to feel that I can keep any distance from it at all. Consequently, I have to ask this critical question: why are those mechanisms that exist—in the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and so on—so ineffective at bringing charges in order to bring these things to light and pass judgment on them? Some of these cases have been waiting for ever while some, as in Myanmar, have been totally overlooked, marginalised and forgotten about—they hope. So my attention is focused on Clause 3 and the injustices that occur, not by missing a determination—let others talk about that—but by waiting for justice.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to salute and thank my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for allowing us to consider this Bill. The noble Lord has spent a decade fighting for the Bill and far longer refusing to let the House look away from the Yazidis of Sinjar, from Tigray or from Darfur. While sometimes I do not agree with some of his analysis, I have long admired his consistent courage and persistence. He has taught us that recognition without consequences and action is a dangerous inertia. That lesson challenges us to examine atrocities regardless of where they are happening when we find it too difficult to name the many counts of barbaric inhumanity that we are witnessing.
Genocide does not hide; it broadcasts itself in the desecration of Sudan, the mass graves of El Fasher, the Rohingyas of Myanmar, the famine and mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the murderous cleansing of the West Bank and Lebanon. The human cry for survival has so often been unheeded in this Chamber and the other place, so I am very grateful to the noble Lord.
We cannot say we did not know, for it lays dormant in our conscience and in the discretion of our will to protect some and not others. We have selectively chosen to voice atrocities but be silent on others as innocent families and communities remain buried under rubble and are dying today while we deliberate. Which human beings deserve our attention politically and financially, and for whom do we choose to prevent access to food, electricity and water? If the Bill were supported and passed, it could indisputably compel our Government to meet their obligations under the UN genocide convention. However, would what I have described meet the test of any Government for reference to the courts for a preliminary determination on genocide? Sadly, we have seen that that has not been the case.
I am therefore concerned about the context in which our Government would refer matters to a preliminary determination, given the political distinction that they have already applied to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, for example. For decades, our Government have hidden behind the sentiment of leaving it to the courts rather than it being a treaty obligation—a neglectful policy repeated so often that it has become a shield for looking the other way, not mandating any obligatory action and by default guaranteeing that no mechanism exists to fulfil their obligation. The Bill would end that evasion. It would avoid politicians and officials and empower the victims and survivors and the organisations representing them before an independent court, encouraging victim-centred justice.
The Bill does not stop at recognition. Clause 3 would compel the Secretary of State to refer any determination to the ICC, the ICJ and the Security Council, turning a finding into a legal duty, thus taking a step towards meeting our obligations under the genocide convention the moment a serious risk was known and identified, not years after the graves were counted.
On the eve of my 28th year in this House, I wish to stay hopeful that truths will weigh heavier in our deliberation, forcing us to act over the thunderous noise of those who have ignored public calls to stop genocide, confident that there will be no consequences for them. It is an honour to support this Bill in the hope that it will secure lasting and meaningful justice.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on introducing the Bill. I respect his tireless work on this topic.
States have a legal obligation to prevent atrocities, including genocide, and the Bill would ensure that the UK Government, as a signatory to the genocide convention, would be able to act quickly to fulfil their existing duties the moment a risk was recognised. I declare my interest as co-chair of the Women, Peace and Security APPG.
I first came across genocide when I visited Rwanda in 2007 and, although it was 13 years after the genocide, the horror was still present. In around 100 days in 1994, nearly 1 million Tutsi people were killed and thousands of Tutsi women taken away to become sex slaves. I met women across the country, many of whom had seen their husbands and children hacked to death in front of them. I sat and heard their stories. It was utterly shocking. A few years later I visited Bosnia, and walking in the graveyard with the widows and wives of the missing was harrowing; it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. There, any young man or male child over seven was taken away and shot. I remember meeting a young man whose twin brother had been killed, who said, “This should never happen again”—but it has. Years on from the horrors of the Holocaust, as we have heard, we have seen repeated incidents.
As has been laid out by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, genocide is an identity-based crime trying to bring about the destruction of a group, sometimes through preventing births, mass rape and the forcible transfer of children to another group. Despite the powerful wording of mechanisms such as the genocide convention, the fact remains that the mechanisms are globally weak and therefore commitments are not integrated into policy or programmes.
In the UK today, who decides when a genocide is occurring? As we have heard, in 2016 the House of Commons unanimously determined that atrocities against the Yazidis by Daesh amounted to genocide but the Government would not formally recognise that, wanting it determined by competent courts but deciding that no British courts could make a determination. Thus the UK had no legislative vehicles to identify genocide and the UK Government formally recognised the situation with Yazidis as a genocide only in 2023, years too late to do anything.
The Bill is designed to address this situation. Of course the ultimate aim is to prevent conflicts occurring, investing more into conflict prevention so that atrocities are never committed in the first instance, saving lives and averting the mass costs of war. However, a report by Mercy Corps and Saferworld last year revealed a sharp decline in the UK’s investment in peacebuilding, violence prevention and conflict resolution over recent years.
Given that the development budget has been slashed and the FCDO seems to be rolling back our soft power, can the Minister advise whether the FCDO considers its current work to prevent atrocities to have been affected? What conversations have been had with other countries which are reassessing their stance on genocide?
Last year, I was lucky enough to visit Lalish, which is the sacred temple of the Yazidis in northern Iraq. They have worshipped there for about 4,000 years. The ISIS attack on the Yazidis was the most horrendous crime, with so many innocent people killed and around 6,000 women taken away to be sex slaves. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, has already spoken about, some 12 years later there are still 2,000 women missing, and the children born of rape have not been accepted back into the community.
We should not forget these terrible crimes, so I support this Bill, as it will help fix a gap in our system and help us to fulfil our genocide convention commitments. Hopefully, it will aid the prevention of genocide in the future.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, this Bill is not the right mechanism that I would wish for the prevention and punishment of genocide.
First, it asks the courts of the UK to do something they are not equipped to do. The most fundamental problem is evidential. Genocide determinations have to be carried out in accordance with international law and in full possession of the facts. The time lag would be self-defeating. The closest thing we have had was the action by David Irving against Penguin Books based on his being called a Holocaust denier. In effect, the famous judgment was whether the Holocaust had taken place or not. From start to finish, the case took three years and seven months.
Secondly, the Bill risks drawing our courts into geopolitical controversies. We know very well that the applicants who will rush forward if this Bill is enacted are less likely to be the Yazidis, the Sudanese and Uyghurs, but more likely to be those who want to continue their campaign against Israel, regardless of the fact that what has happened in Gaza does not meet the definition of genocide. It would be a way of continuing a political and distorted campaign, no doubt funded by Iran.
Thirdly, the Bill cannot do what it means to do. Our courts might make a determination of genocide, but that would have no binding effect on the ICJ or the ICC. Only 75 countries accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ, the UK being the only Security Council member to do so. The Bill would expose the weakness of international law, whether it comes to keeping the peace or preventing genocide, while setting up a scenario involving different definitions of genocide, under which some states would be at risk because they accept international jurisdiction, and others would not be. It is also hard to see how actions by terrorist non-state groups, such as Hamas or Daesh, could be caught.
Successive UK Governments failed to prosecute Nazi war criminals who came to this country under the War Crimes Act 1991. The UK spends much time and money on Holocaust memorialisation and education but did nothing to punish those responsible for it. It let them slip through our fingers.
The Bill before us is retrospective, with no limitation. There could be complaints by New Zealanders, Australians and Americans about the real genocide carried out by white settlers against the indigenous populations of those countries.
What we need are genuine UN peacekeeping forces. They can be used only if the Security Council authorises their use under chapter 7 of the charter, which it never does. The Security Council itself could act, but it is stymied by the veto. It has a doctrine called the responsibility to protect, directed against genocide, but it has failed to achieve it. It did not act in Sudan. It was ineffective in Rwanda and Srebrenica because of the political realities. The action by former Prime Minister Tony Blair in Kosovo was much more effective, even though Kosovo might not technically have qualified as a genocide. NATO intervened. I suggest that action by determined leaders and NATO, which shares our values more than the UN bodies, would be more effective than the handing over of responsibilities to international bodies prescribed by this Bill, well intentioned though it is.
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on securing the Bill’s Second Reading and on his persistence, which spans a decade from its first introduction in 2016. Today, as an adviser to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and someone who has spent many years, like others in this House, working on conflict-related sexual violence, I welcome today’s opportunity to speak in support of the Genocide Determination Bill.
I would like to ground my support in an example. I have addressed the House before on Sudan’s wider humanitarian crisis. I return to it through the lens of accountability. In February this year, the United Nations independent fact-finding mission for Sudan concluded that the Rapid Support Forces’ siege and takeover of El Fasher bore the hallmarks of genocide against the Zaghawa and Fur communities. The mission documented mass executions, enforced disappearances and widespread sexual violence, deployed alongside starvation as a co-ordinated campaign to destroy these communities. Yet, as with Darfur two years earlier, there remains no mechanism in United Kingdom law through which survivors can ask the courts to make the kind of determination that successive Governments have said should properly be made by judges rather than Ministers.
This is the problem the Bill seeks to fix. It is victim centred. It allows survivors and organisations representing them to bring evidence before the courts. That principle should not be underestimated. The United Kingdom has formally recognised only five instances of genocide since the convention was adopted in 1948, despite being one of the 154 state parties, and having acceded to it in 1970. The gap between our obligations and our practice is precisely what this Bill seeks to close.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights identified shortcomings in our domestic legal framework relating to accountability for international crimes. This Bill would not resolve every aspect, but it would give our courts a defined role in identifying when the threshold of serious risk has been reached. The procedure in the Bill should be genuinely accessible to survivors of sexual violence: confidential, trauma-informed and mindful that the evidential realities of atrocity, particularly for women, rarely fit conventional courts.
This is a practical Bill. It does not ask the Government to abandon their long-standing position that determination is a judicial matter; it simply asks that our own courts be equipped to do what that position already assumes they should.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie. I would also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, not just for his perseverance on this Bill, but for his lifelong advocacy on behalf of so many.
I am not a regular contributor on foreign affairs, but I was moved to speak today because of a radio programme, specifically a dispatch from Afghanistan on Radio 4’s “From Our Own Correspondent”. It is about a little girl, five-year-old Shaiqa. I realise that her story is not unique and there are many such stories noble Lords can tell, and have told, from personal experience. Sometimes a story just grabs you, so I hope noble Lords will not mind if I share it as the focus of my contribution. This is as I heard it, in abridged form.
“Five year-old Shaiqa has a striking face, with brown hair and big black eyes. She stares at us suspiciously, clinging on to her father, 34 year-old Sayed Ema, her small arms wrapped around his neck. ‘She thinks all strangers might be doctors, that’s why she’s scared’, he tells us, as he holds her close, comforts her and kisses the top of her head. A month ago, Shaiqa spent two weeks in hospital after she had surgery for appendicitis. Sayed and Shaiqa live in Ghor province in the Hindu Kush, but amid a severe hunger and jobs crisis, Sayed barely makes enough money as a labourer to provide food for his family. Funding medical treatment is simply out of reach.”
“So, Sayed made an unbearable choice. ‘I sold her to a relative so I could pay for her operation’, he says, his eyes welling up with tears. ‘If I had money, I would never have taken the decision to sell my daughter. But then I thought, what if she dies without the surgery? This way at least she is alive. That is enough for me’.”
“Sayed negotiated with the buyer—a better-off distant cousin—to keep Shaiqa at home for as long as possible. ‘If I had taken the whole sum at once, he would have taken her away immediately’, he explains. ‘So, I told him, just give me enough for her medical treatment and over the next five years you can give me the rest. Afterwards, you can take her. My wife and I don’t talk about the situation in front of her, but I think Shaiqa has started to understand. I do not have the strength to think of the moment when she will have to leave’. As they sit hugging each other, the close bond that Sayed and Shaiqa share is evident, as is the grief of the father who believes he has failed his daughter.”
Sayed, of course, is not to blame for the poverty, the desperation or the Taliban’s recent decree that legalises child marriage while hardening the already severe divorce laws—the result being that, when she is older, there will be no chance of Shaiqa leaving this “relationship” of her own free will. But the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, could potentially change things for Shaiqa and the many other girls and women in Afghanistan being persecuted on the basis of their gender. It is known that this persecution may amount to genocide when targeted at particular groups, and in Afghanistan there is a deliberate targeting of Hazara women and girls.
As we have heard, the Genocide Determination Bill would enable vulnerable groups to apply directly to the UK court, thereby offering a legal pathway that would give victims a voice, and perhaps girls such as Shaiqa a chance. In our domestic politics, we now set great store by putting victims and survivors at the heart of our policy-making, so I have one question for the Minister: is it perhaps time to do the same in the international arena? I very much support this Bill, if only—as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, said—as another brick in the wall.
Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as other noble Lords have done, I congratulate my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on this extremely important Bill and on his commitment to this issue, which reaches back across decades. I am proud to speak along with others who support the Bill. I wish to associate with every word from my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.
We have witnessed acts of genocide around the globe and, despite the weasel words of denial, we are still witnessing nothing short of the attempt to extinguish national, ethnic, racial, religious and other groups. Srebrenica, Rwanda, Sudan, Cambodia, China, the Palestinians in Gaza—sadly, the list goes on. These are genocides that happened and are still happening before our eyes. The atrocious events that are often cited to excuse the inhumane onslaught against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group can never be justified. Innocent women, men and children are maimed, injured and killed, and protests are dismissed by the politicians enacting such inhumane behaviour. They pronounce the dead and maimed as collateral damage or cite that innocents are being used as shields by their enemies.
The House does not need me to explain that modern warfare provides means and methods that do not need to bring about such human carnage. How is it ever legitimate to kill innocent people who are used as shields? It can never be legitimised, and, in a civilised world, it can never be excused or accepted. Whenever genocide, or the attempt at genocide, occurs, we need to call it out, otherwise the legal order is lost and will sink into an unimaginable void where the lives of innocents, the weak and often the impoverished—women, children and men, the elderly and the infirm—are targeted by the strongest and sacrificed by cowards.
There are those who will question and argue with my opinions and my submission. That is the luxury we enjoy at the moment in our democracy. There will be those who point the finger at me and potentially make accusations, especially in relation to my statement on the treatment of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the genocide there, but I stand by my words with no excuse. The acts of genocidal politicians must be scrutinised by the courts, and each of them must be held accountable. Otherwise, the international legal order on which we have relied for so long will be lost for ever—particularly, and sadly, given that the United States under President Trump has joined those states blatantly disregarding the rule of the international legal order. Despite what the Minister may say at the Dispatch Box, and despite what other Governments have said, I believe it is time for the UK to simply give a lead. I say this to the Government and to others: silence or appeasement will only embolden the bully and encourage others, and lead to the sacrifice of the lives of millions more innocent people.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I join in the shower of congratulations on the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for sponsoring the Bill, which I support, and for his many years of work in this field. The Bill is not about labelling current or past actions as genocide; that often passionately contentious area diverts attention from what the Bill is about. It is simply about giving effect to the long-standing government policy of referring questions on genocide to the courts. The crucial word there is “referring”—not leaving a possible case to find its haphazard way to international courts, either directly or via domestic courts in other countries. That is why the Bill needs our support: to bridge a legal gap. This has already been fully and clearly detailed by excellent earlier speakers, and I will spare your Lordships from repetition of it.
Today we stand on one side of this gap. We look across at awful events occurring on the other side, and modern technology means that we see these events in full colour and in real time. Questions may get raised in Parliament. The Government perhaps wring their hands and even strongly condemn the actions we see, and they may send some material aid to those surviving or affected. But, despite our genocide convention obligations, Government after Government have stood and looked across the gap but never built that simple bridge towards what the Bill represents: perpetrators being held to account at some point, or the prevention of genocide happening—perhaps as part of a set of other actions outlined so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.
I will not go over the previous attempts to address this gap in our law and match our obligations with enforcement, or why these have failed. I simply note that we do business around the world. In some cases, the argument runs that we must, in that familiar phrase, do business with people whose systems of government or human rights records we do not like. But I ask the Minister: how bad do things have to get before gestures of general disapproval are not enough? How bad do things have to get before we can at least enable a UK court to give a preliminary determination, on a legal basis, as to whether a genocide is imminent or occurring, and enable the Secretary of State to refer that determination to an international court?
While I underline again that the Bill does not label specific events as genocides, I used to live and work in Sudan. I have been in villages in those parts of the country where people are now being tortured, raped and murdered in numbers and on a scale of cruelty that is scarcely imaginable. I have stood on a hilltop in central Africa and had pointed out to me where mechanical diggers had dug huge pits to be used as mass graves for people slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide. I have met Yazidis and others subject to deliberate attempts to wipe them off the world’s consciousness. When some likely genocidal acts are being perpetrated elsewhere, it is almost absurd, even complacent, to hear in Parliament expressions of outrage and demands that “something must be done” in the knowledge that this legal bridge—something practical, achievable and vital—remains unconstructed. That is why I wholeheartedly support the Bill, and I hope that the House will do the same.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lord, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, not only for introducing this Bill but for decades of tireless work exposing some of the gravest human rights abuses across the world. Whether campaigning for victims of religious persecution, standing up for prisoners of conscience or ensuring that those suffering unimaginable atrocities are not forgotten by Parliament, he has shown remarkable consistency and moral courage. He referred to himself as a young MP. When he was a young MP, my parents were his constituents, so I blame the noble Lord for my interest in politics thereafter. I say to any Members of this House who share that concern: refer it to the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I also thank the noble Lord for the time he gave me, together with Professor Ochab, whose work on genocide prevention and accountability has enriched this debate and from whom I learned a lot in our discussion.
Having listened to the debate, I suggest that there is remarkably little disagreement on the principles across your Lordships’ House. Genocide is rightly described as the “crime of crimes”. It is an assault not only on individual victims but on humanity itself. We, the United Kingdom, are a party to the genocide convention. We accept, therefore, both morally and legally, obligations to prevent genocide and punish those responsible.
I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the objective that underlies the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, seeks to ensure that, where there is credible evidence that genocide is taking place or there is a serious risk that it might occur, there is an effective legal mechanism capable of triggering action. That objective deserves the support of the whole House. The noble Lord is entitled to put a difficult question to Governments of every political persuasion because, for many years, different Governments of all colours have maintained that genocide is a matter for determination by competent courts and not by politicians. Yet, in some of the situations that have caused the greatest concern to this House, there has been no international court capable of making such a determination. So the noble Lord is entitled to ask whether there is a gap between the Government’s long-standing policy and the practical means by which that policy can be implemented. That is not a frivolous or political point; it is a serious constitutional question and it deserves a serious answer.
But identifying a problem does not necessarily mean that every proposed solution is the right one. The question before us is not whether genocide should be prevented: plainly, it should. It is also not whether those responsible should be brought to justice: plainly, they should. The real question is: does this Bill address that perceived gap in a way that is constitutionally coherent and practically effective? With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I am not yet persuaded that it does. There is, I suggest, an important constitutional principle at stake. Our constitution works best when each branch of the state performs the function for which it is institutionally equipped: Parliaments legislate, Ministers govern—at least they are meant to—and courts adjudicate. Each is independent of the others, but each has its own constitutional role, and we should hesitate before asking one branch of the state to assume responsibilities that properly belong to another.
This Bill would confer upon the High Court in England and Wales, the High Court in Northern Ireland, and the Court of Session in Scotland a wholly new jurisdiction to make preliminary determinations that genocide is occurring overseas, that it has occurred overseas or that there is a serious risk that it may occur overseas. Having listened to speeches from across the House, I understand why that proposal has an obvious attraction. It seeks to remove profoundly difficult questions from the political arena and place them before an independent judiciary. But our judges do not conduct the foreign policy of the United Kingdom. They do not determine diplomatic priorities. They do not assess intelligence. They do not balance national security considerations. They do not negotiate with foreign Governments—and nor should they. These are functions entrusted by our constitution to Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament for the decisions they take. It is one thing for the courts to determine legal rights; it is quite another to ask them to make findings that may have immediate and profound diplomatic consequences for the United Kingdom’s relations with other sovereign states.
That brings me to what, for me, is perhaps the greatest constitutional concern raised by this Bill. Von Clausewitz famously said that war was a continuation of politics by other means. Too often today it appears that law has become politics carried on by other means. We call it “lawfare”. We see it internationally. We sometimes see it domestically, and we should be careful before encouraging more of it before our own courts. We should be cautious before inviting our own courts to become yet another arena in which international political disputes are pursued through litigation.
That concern is reinforced by the remarkable breadth of the jurisdiction that this Bill proposes to create. Noble Lords should have a quick glance at Clause 1. An application can be brought by a person
“belonging to a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, or an organisation representing such a person”.
There is no requirement that the applicant be a British citizen or a British resident, or that the perpetrator be before our courts. Indeed, there is no requirement that the actions have any connection whatever with the United Kingdom. In substance, therefore, Parliament would be conferring on our domestic courts what would amount to a roving international jurisdiction to make judicial findings in relation to allegations of genocide occurring anywhere in the world. Contrary to the words used by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, who called this a “modest” Bill, I suggest that that represents a very serious and major constitutional step.
This is not a criticism of those who would use the Bill to bring such applications. If Parliament creates a jurisdiction, people will understandably want to fill it. My concern is directed not at the litigants but at the legislation, because proceedings of this nature will inevitably be used, at least in some—and, frankly, probably in many if not most—cases not simply to vindicate legal rights but to advance political objectives. That is the reality of modern international litigation. My concern is that we should not likely draw our own courts into that sphere. Our courts exist to determine legal controversies with legal consequences. They do not exist to issue advisory opinions on international disputes.
When I was at university, I had the idea that, in order to get a first, I would try to predict the questions and issue an application asking a High Court judge what the answer would be—until my supervisors pointed out that courts do not exist to answer hypothetical questions or give advisory opinions. They do not give advisory opinions. The ICJ might, but the High Court of Justice of England and Wales should not. Our judges command international respect precisely because they determine actual legal disputes independently and impartially, and we should hesitate before placing them at the centre of some of the most politically sensitive controversies in international affairs.
There is then the practical operation of the Bill itself. Like the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, I focused very much on Clause 3, which requires the Secretary of State to refer a preliminary determination from our courts to the International Court of Justice, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the Security Council or other competent United Nations bodies, but only where jurisdictional requirements are met. That immediately raises an important question: what happens when none of those bodies has jurisdiction? What practical consequences would follow from the preliminary determination of our domestic court? Have we simply therefore created a mechanism that results in a judicial declaration that no international body is capable of acting on?
All these points seem to me to be legitimate questions. I respectfully suggest that they require fuller answers before Parliament creates an entirely new jurisdiction for our highest domestic courts. I note that the Bill provides that the Minister can make regulations, but that is not a proper way to legislate in this field. Parliament is entitled to see exactly how it would work in practice before deciding whether to pass the Bill.
Of course, none of this should be taken as diminishing the horror of genocide. That ought not need to be said, but I say it anyway. Nor is this a criticism of the noble Lord’s motives. On the contrary, I say respectfully that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has provided us a great service by forcing us to confront this very uncomfortable question. How do a Government, whose long-standing policy is that genocide should be determined by courts, respond when no competent international court is realistically capable of acting? That is the question underlying the Bill. It is a serious challenge and deserves a serious response. My point is: the fact that there may be a gap does not mean that this Bill fills it.
For those reasons, while I look forward to engaging—always, I hope, constructively—with the noble Lord as the Bill proceeds, and while I hope we can continue to explore ways of strengthening the United Kingdom’s ability both to respond to and to prevent genocide, I cannot support the Bill in its present form. The noble Lord has identified a very important problem. At the moment, I simply remain unpersuaded that this Bill provides the correct constitutional answer.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for presenting this Bill. Like all noble Lords in today’s debate, I pay tribute to him for his tireless campaigning, both in this House and indeed in an earlier life in the other place, on these issues on behalf of so many who have no voice. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, it is taking place on the Day of International Criminal Justice, with today being the 28th anniversary of the founding of the International Criminal Court.
How we consider the crime of genocide is among the most serious foreign policy responsibilities of any Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General calls it the “apex crime”. That the genocide convention was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 underlines the international community’s shared commitment to ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust occur never again. It is critical that the UK Government’s position on genocide determination is robust and consistent with our obligations under the convention. The long-standing position of successive British Governments fulfils this. The position is that any formal judgment as to whether genocide has occurred is a matter for a competent national or international court after considering all necessary evidence and as part of a credible judicial process, including appropriate jurisdiction. This ensures that any determination is impartial, independent and evidence-based.
I must say at this point that I have sympathy with both the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, in their critique of some of the technical aspects of the Bill, especially the legal points around jurisdiction. Key partners, including France, Italy and Japan, also refrain from making determinations without a court judgment. In contrast, this Bill would introduce the novel concept of a preliminary determination by the UK courts. As we have heard, this has no settled or solid basis in international law. At present, I am afraid that the noble Lord’s Bill does not suitably consider this point.
As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said, there is also the issue of constitutional independence between different branches. It is Ministers who are rightly accountable to Parliament for decisions around diplomacy and foreign policy, and we should never want our courts to be engaged in that sort of decision-making. However, this Bill might well lead them to straying into such an area, placing what we might call political as well as legal obligations on the Foreign Secretary.
I stress, though, that the UK position does not and has not prevented the UK taking action. Indeed, atrocity and conflict prevention capability is central to the FCDO. By the end of the year, the department will have run 16 training courses and numerous capability-building events for staff. The newly established conflict resources hub integrates guidance, training and evidence-based practice, improving accessibility and utility. This ensures that when risks escalate or atrocities occur, we act decisively and quickly, working through diplomatic channels and international institutions to raise the alarm, build consensus and co-ordinate action. This includes at the UN Human Rights Council, where our human rights ambassador recently raised the UK’s deep concern around the situation in Xinjiang.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle asked some specific questions about measuring risk and prevention. The indicators of risk of genocide are obviously context-specific. The genocide convention does not provide detail, but we are committed to investing in our systems for early warnings of atrocities. We monitor risks around the world using datasets to assess factors that indicate where atrocities may occur in line with the UN framework of analysis for atrocity crimes.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, and others, I say that our atrocity prevention strategy saves lives, upholds international law and breaks cycles of violence. In the financial year 2025-26, we gave £150,000 to support the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect to help those at risk of atrocities. Dedicated atrocity prevention capability continues at the FCDO, as I have said. It has now been integrated into the humanitarian directorate, which means better-integrated analysis and delivery. I also say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, that we are engaging with regional partners and through international organisations to prevent atrocities, particularly in terms of conflict-related sexual violence, which she raised. This is of course a breach of international law, and we will work with the UK-founded International Alliance on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict. This is, to be clear, a real priority for the Foreign Secretary.
In response to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, I stress that the FCDO works with the Metropolitan Police through the War Crimes Network, which brings together relevant parties across government, both in terms of policy and operationally. The last War Crimes Network meeting was in April 2026, which ensured closer integration and joint working.
At this point, I want to respond to some of the issues raised with regard to specific conflicts. First, in the context of the suffering caused by Daesh, the UK was a fierce advocate for justice for the Yazidi people long before we determined that acts of genocide had taken place. At the UN Security Council, we played a leading role in establishing the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh. We provided £2 million to support the collection of evidence against Daesh’s crimes and we worked closely with our Iraqi partners to pass the Yazidi survivors law in 2021, enabling reparations and support for the survivors. While much progress has been made, Daesh of course remains a threat. We will continue to work tirelessly with our partners in pursuit of its enduring defeat. I recognise the heart-rending testimony provided to your Lordships’ House by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, of Sayed and his daughter Shaiqa; it is a heartbreaking story. What is happening is akin to gender persecution. It is abhorrent. Women and girls—I emphasise girls—have been specifically targeted and subjected to abductions, forced conversions, forced marriages, rape and sexual violence. This is horrific. We will continue to work closely with Iraqi partners to ensure that all those working with or for Daesh are held accountable, including through our work as members of the Global Coalition Against Daesh.
I turn to Sudan, mentioned by many noble Lords but particularly my noble friend Lady Goudie and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, who has direct personal experience of living in the area. The scale of suffering in Sudan is unimaginable. The findings of the UN’s fact-finding mission following the fall of El Fasher last year were alarming. This makes recent reports of the imminent Rapid Support Forces offensive at El Obeid extremely concerning. The world failed the people of El Fasher; we cannot let that happen again. In February we launched the coalition for atrocity prevention and justice in Sudan, uniting the international community around the goal of preventing another El Fasher. The coalition has already condemned the Sudanese Armed Forces strike on El-Daein Teaching Hospital and the growing uses of drones in this conflict.
The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and my noble friend Lord Wills raised the action with respect to El Obeid. I want to be clear that, earlier this month, the Prime Minister raised the situation and issued a statement at NATO, and there was a UK-penned Human Rights Council resolution condemning the atrocities and calling for an urgent inquiry by a UN fact-finding mission, which was adopted by consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said that we were simply making gestures. I do not think this is quite fair to our actions. We are doing more than making gestures. In the case of Sudan, we have sanctioned 24 individuals and entities since the outbreak of the conflict in 2023. I also point to the action of my noble friend Lady Chapman, the Minister, who wrote to the Commons International Development Committee earlier this month outlining UK action around El Fasher and saying how our relationship with the UAE had not impacted our actions and our determination to call out atrocities when we see them.
I turn to Gaza and remind your Lordships’ House, and in particular the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, who raised it, that one of the Government’s first acts was to review and suspend export licences for items that might be used by the Israel Defense Forces to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. In making export licensing decisions, we carefully assess all relevant evidence relating to our obligations under international law, including, where relevant, the genocide convention.
At this point, I gently point out to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who talked about an omertà in discussing Gaza, that, having spent a lot of time on the Front Bench having various debates over the past year-plus, Gaza has been discussed, I would say, more often than any other foreign policy issue. I am not saying that there is not a good case for that, but I do say that, sadly, it has been, not only in this House but in the other place, potentially at the expense of other places that require attention: for instance, Sudan. I am very pleased that, in today’s debate, we have not had that imbalance but have paid attention to a wide variety of places where, sadly, there are issues that we need to look at. I stress that we continue to raise our concerns with the Israeli Government and counterparts at all levels. In light of the ceasefire, there has been deep relief felt around the world, but we must now see full and unimpeded provision of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Burry Port raised the issue of Myanmar. In March 2025, the UK submitted written observations to the ICJ in case of The Gambia v Myanmar. This case is now entering its deliberative phase and we welcome the ICJ’s consideration. Since 2021, the UK has imposed 19 rounds of targeted sanctions, including 10 individual sanctions targeting the aviation fuel sector in Myanmar.
We continue to stand by the International Criminal Court and its mission to end impunity. To be clear, since the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, raised it, we very firmly support the ICC. We are proud to be one of the court’s biggest funders, providing £14.3 million of support this year alone. Our approach to universal jurisdiction is that, where there is no apparent link between the UK and the crime, we support the principle that international crimes are best investigated and prosecuted close to where they are perpetrated. This reflects the practical advantages of securing the evidence and witnesses necessary for a fair investigation and prosecution. Our approach, as I have said, is similar to that of key partners, including the US, Italy, Japan and France. The most serious international crimes not covered by our approach to universal jurisdiction are often already subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is generally better placed to prosecute such offences where they are not dealt with by the relevant domestic authorities.
We are all in agreement that a robust, credible process to determine whether a genocide has occurred is essential to ensuring that perpetrators are held to account. Like others, I thank and pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for giving us yet another opportunity to debate, discuss and try to understand the issues that are at play here as we seek to end the most awful crimes that can be committed around the world.
As both the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, rightly said, using the term “genocide” lazily, irresponsibly and inappropriately can be harmful in this country to individuals, to communities and to our society. I suggest that perhaps that has happened in recent weeks and months. This is a serious issue and so we must, as we have all said, treat this seriously.
As I have made clear, genocide determination is no place to introduce novel concepts, and the preliminary determination, which has no basis in international law, is one of those concepts. That is why we express reservations about the Bill, and, as a counterpoint, why the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others deem it necessary to bring the Bill before our House to allow us to discuss this. I assure him that my noble friend Lady Chapman, the Minister, would be very happy to continue discussions with the noble Lord about this important issue.
We stand firm in our belief that any formal judgment is a matter for competent courts that have come to a reasoned conclusion, after considering all the evidence available, as part of a credible judicial process, including appropriate jurisdiction.
In response to the very powerful words of my noble friend Lord Cashman, I say that, where we can prosecute the crime of genocide, we will. Where we cannot, we will do all we can to help others to do so. Through robust legal processes and close international partnership, we can ensure that there is no safe haven for perpetrators and that those responsible for these heinous crimes are brought to justice. I hope that I have addressed—
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
When I referred to an omertà, I was not suggesting that there had not been discussion in this House about Gaza or the West Bank. I was suggesting that many people around this House feel inhibited about raising this issue or speaking to it because they fear that they will be accused of antisemitism.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I apologise if I misunderstood my noble friend. To be absolutely clear, somebody can be very critical of the actions of the Israeli Government, as I am, but that should not be conflated with antisemitism. But I also do not think that necessarily inhibits any Member in your Lordships’ House from making a clear and dispassionate case about actions that are being undertaken by the Israeli Government, or, at the same time, from calling out antisemitism where it occurs in this or any country. On that matter, I hope that we are agreed.
I hope that I have addressed as many questions as I possibly can in, probably, far too much time. I will reflect on Hansard and I undertake to write to any noble Lords if I have missed their question.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to today’s important debate. I am grateful even to those who have disagreed with the principle, the practicalities or the specifics of the Bill, because I think I heard from the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Katz, from their respective Front Benches, their willingness to go on discussing this. That is why I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading today and that it will go on to Committee, so that we can have those discussions. I also had a note from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, who would very much like to have taken part in today’s debate, and I thank those noble Lords on his Benches who have indicated their support for the Bill.
To noble Lords who have spoken against or who have entered reservations, I say straightaway that I am very willing to go on discussing those. As a preliminary, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that I am very happy to take the blame for his becoming involved in politics during his schooldays in Liverpool and I thank him for the contribution that he made today, and for the discussions that we have had outside the House about the Bill. Yes, there is a gap; he is right about that. I am perfectly content to accept that there may be various ways of filling it and I accept the point that has been made across the House that this would be only one contribution to the filling of that gap, but we are right to be having that debate.
I agree with the noble Lord that we do not want lawfare or vexatious cases. Where I do not agree with him is on the question: would our courts be capable of examining this? I have a particular regard for the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, because he comes from the best traditions of our judiciary and our legal profession in this country. My noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead, for whom I have particular regard—he helped in the framing of this Bill and has given me encouragement in pursuing it—believes that the Court of Session in Scotland or the High Court of England and Wales would be perfectly competent to deal with this question.
As for the noble and learned Lord’s reference to Article I in the Bill, he was right to gently remind us there is an Article II, and therefore a gatekeeper. This would not lead to every vexatious claim appearing before our courts and we could be quite discriminating in those we accept and those we do not. There would be a political contribution to that, but for me this is not a political issue, which really goes to something that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said to the House in his speech earlier. He said that genocide is a political question and, in that, I for once disagree with him. It is a legal question, as this Government and previous Governments have said on many occasions.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, reminded us that the Government have always said that this is a matter for the courts to determine. Genocide is an international crime. It has a legal definition and therefore requires a legal assessment. The regimes in China, Myanmar and many more may disregard the determination by British courts but, as emphasised by my friend the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the international rules-based order requires us to take an approach that is principled and not overshadowed by political considerations, something which—too often, I fear—has been the case.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Katz, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, who cannot be here today, for the meeting they had with my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and me where we discussed a number of these issues. I will not go over all the arguments, but I will mention two points the noble Lord made. He rightly referred to the many contributions that mentioned Sudan. Twenty years ago, after I visited Sudan—where 200,000 to 300,000 people died and 2 million were displaced—the International Criminal Court, in a remarkable decision, arraigned the Head of State, Omar al-Bashir, and said he had committed the crime of genocide. The fact that he still walks the earth, never having been brought to justice for any of those crimes, is surely proof positive as to why we need to do something more than simply rely on the courts.
I agree with my noble friend Lady Deech about the International Criminal Court itself and the ICJ, and why we need to look again at how they operate. The French said some years ago that we need to look at the veto—a point I raised with the noble Lord, Lord Katz, yesterday. The veto can, has always been and always is used. Take China, for example: it is not going to allow an investigation into the genocide referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier—“genocide” is the word the House of Commons decided to use to describe what has happened to Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. In response to a veto always being used, the French suggested that maybe we should at least exclude from the right to veto the determination of acts of genocide or other crimes against humanity. I think there is scope there.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, raised the point yesterday that we need further discussion around the definition of “crimes against humanity”. That was an unsettled point when Lemkin gave us the genocide convention, and there is still a serious discussion taking place on what to do about that. I hope we will go on having those discussions.
The noble Lord said that it is better to do things in the locality, but look at what happened in northern Iraq and northern Syria. The British Government collected the evidence. The last Government did a terrific job of collecting evidence, which is stored in New York, and no one is doing anything about it. One reason for that is that the local courts in Iraq would use the death penalty, so we are understandably very hesitant in saying they should bring these cases to justice. We need to have a rather deeper think about some of those questions.
To the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, I want to say that someone I have enormous regard for is Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, who was the prosecutor of Milošević. We heard an amazing contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, today, reminding us of the horrors in Yugoslavia. Sir Geoffery Nice chaired an independent tribunal, the equivalent, in many ways, of a court in this country. It had jurors who listened to the evidence, and he found that in four instances there was no genocide, but in a fifth there was. He therefore declared there to be a genocide. It was based on that finding that the House of Commons took its decision. Therefore, the idea that we would not be competent, capable or right to do such a thing through our courts is not something on which I can agree with the noble and learned Lord.
I cannot, and should not, take all the time that might now be left, but Mr Justice Kirby, a brilliant Australian jurist, was asked by the United Nations to chair a commission of inquiry into human rights in North Korea. He found that there had been crimes against humanity. He said it was a “state without parallel” and should be taken to the International Criminal Court. Guess what—it never has been, and the United Kingdom, to its shame, has never asked the Security Council even to consider the request of a commission that was established by the United Nations and found conclusively that there are crimes against humanity. I disagree with the idea that no one takes any notice of these things, because we heard evidence recently from a man called Thae Yong-ho, the number two in the North Korean embassy in London. He defected and told me that the reason he left was that he had often come to Parliament and was so taken by our beliefs, our system of democracy and our rule of law. He said that when the commission of inquiry made the decision that they could be arraigned for crimes against humanity, a frisson of fear spread through the upper echelons of the regime in North Korea. The relief, he said, was palpable when it was decided that nothing was going to be done about it.
That is the challenge to us: to do something about it. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle said that this is an opportunity to strengthen law. My friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, a former Minister, said that we cannot go on repeating the same mantra about a competent court when there is not one to do it. My noble friend Lady D’Souza said that this is a focused Bill that is urgently needed. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, said that there should not be exceptions, whether they are our friends or foes, and I agree with her. She pointed to the German precedent of a court able to determine a genocide—not against a German citizen, but someone who committed genocide against Yazidis. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, pointed to Clause 3 and the failures of international institutions. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, asked what is the point of recognition without consequences, and I agree with her.
The Bill empowers victims and courts, and disempowers political activists who, in many cases, have no intention of doing anything, because so often they follow the money rather than the morality. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, who is a good friend on so many things, the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, and others referred to Afghanistan. They go and put their hands into the wounds, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. They are not unaffected or left unchallenged, and nor should any of us be. These are real stories about real people, about whom we have duty to do something. The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, emphasised this through her work with Georgetown. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, talked about human carnage and the danger of silence and appeasement.
I finish with words about silence and appeasement. A great hero of mine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spoke out against the horrors of Nazism. He was one of the few who did; too many collaborated or were indifferent. That great Protestant theologian said:
“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”.
This may not be a perfect Bill, but it gives us an opportunity to act. In that spirit, I commend it to the House and I beg to move.