Organ Trafficking: Sanctions

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the response by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 23 January (HL Deb, col 1148), whether the proposed United Kingdom autonomous global human rights Magnitsky-style sanctions regime will apply to persons engaged in (1) illegal organ trafficking, or (2) obtaining organs for transplant without consent.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, we will soon lay secondary legislation for the UK’s first autonomous sanctions regime under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. The work is complex, and it is important to take the time to get this right. This sanctions regime will allow us to impose sanctions in response to serious human rights violations or abuses around the world. As it is not yet in force, it would be inappropriate to comment on the specific aspects of the scope.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said and the action that is being taken to introduce the sanctions regime he has referred to, but he will know that I have recently been sent a report from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong which shows that over 7,000 doctors in China are involved in the systematic killing of prisoners through the horrific enforced body harvesting trade in that country. Could he assure me that, notwithstanding what he has just said, the Government will none the less look sympathetically at taking action under these new provisions in order that these doctors are brought to book?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I note and pay tribute to the noble Lord’s work on this. I assure all noble Lords that the whole purpose of the scope of the sanctions regime is to ensure that we hold individuals who abuse human rights to account for their actions, whatever the basis of those human rights—indeed, I remember many a debate in your Lordships’ House on this legislation—and whatever the abuse.