Human Rights Update

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful statement and his welcome support. Obviously, we do not comment on individual names, not least because we do not want to give them foresight or advance warning if we were to take measures. We keep the evidence under review. If he has any particular evidence—I have talked to other Members of the House in relation to some of the third-party and open-source information that has been published—we will, of course, look at it very carefully.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab) [V]]

I warmly commend what the Foreign Secretary has announced today, not least because I have been calling for it, like many others across the House, for weeks and weeks. It is a delight to hear what he has had to say today, but I wish he would be a little bit less of a lawyer about all of this. Sometimes it ends up looking as if the Government are trying to have it both ways all the time. Yes, announce sanctions against those involved in what I would certainly call genocide in China, but, at the same time, they drag their feet about it, take too long to deal with the human rights abuses in Hong Kong being perpetuated by Carrie Lam, and quite often refuse to take action against the dirty money, for instance, from Russia that is coming into the UK. May I urge him to think seriously about how we make the Magnitsky sanctions regime, which he very wisely and courageously introduced, have more of a parliamentary angle to it, so that we can help review and bring these sanctions into place?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and pay tribute to him, because, back in 2012, he was one of the cross-party alliance in favour of these measures. I remember his moral courage and tenacity in calling for it in relation to the Uyghur Muslims. He has complained about lawyerliness. Let us remember that we are talking about a legal regime that imposes visa bans and asset freezes, which affects the rights of others. It is absolutely right that we take very seriously the legal criteria and the evidence base for doing so, and there is absolutely nothing stopping him, either in relation to the regime or by providing evidence to the Government, from playing a full role. However, let us also ensure that we have due process, otherwise the risk is that we trip up, we get legally challenged and we give the PR coup to precisely those whom we want to be calling to account.