Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for its policies of the legal opinion by Alison Macdonald QC, Jackie McArthur, Naomi Hart and Lorraine Aboagye on International criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, published on 26 January 2021.

The Government has taken careful note of the recently published legal opinion by Alison Macdonald QC et al. Our deep concern about the serious and widespread human rights violations in Xinjiang is a matter of record. The UK has led international efforts to hold China to account, and on 12 January the Foreign Secretary announced a package of measures to help ensure that British organisations, whether public or private sector, are not complicit in, nor profiting from, the human rights violations in Xinjiang.