Integrated Review

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his suggestion. I remind him of what I said about the commitment of this country to overseas aid, which is enormous by any objective view. On the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, this is the only vaccine in the world, under the terms of the deal struck between the UK Government, the Oxford scientists and AstraZeneca, that is sold at cost around the world. I thank him for raising that, because it is another reason for people in this country to be proud of the outward-looking, engaging, fundamentally compassionate attitude of the British Government and people.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Dealing with authoritarian regimes around the world, especially those that do not want to play by the rules, is always complicated and difficult. I understand that, but we have to be consistent, coherent, determined and brutally tough when we need to be. What I do not understand, in relation to Russia and to China, is why the Government still refuse to declare what is happening in the Xinjiang province as genocide, why they have used every power to try to prevent Parliament from coming to a determination on that, why we will still not use the Magnitsky sanctions—which I applaud the Foreign Secretary for having introduced in the first place—against Carrie Lam for what is happening in Hong Kong, and why we still refuse to do enough about the dirty Russian money that is imperilling our financial transparency in the City of London and in our overseas territories.

[The Prime Minister]

As the House has heard many times, it is up to a competent court to determine whether genocide has taken place. We have consistently called out what has happened in Xinjiang, and what continues to happen. As for the use of Magnitsky sanctions, actually they have been used by this Government against Russia for what it did, and by the way, at that time, Labour Front Benchers, including the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, were sitting like great squatting Buddhas, immobile, while the then Labour leader was effectively endorsing the line from the Kremlin.