Member

Last month, the Minister kindly hosted a helpful meeting with Jürgen Maier CBE, the former chief executive of Siemens and now the chairman-designate of Great British Energy, the private/public hybrid company being created by the Government. I asked Mr Maier directly about supply chains and Xinjiang. He told me, “There is law and regulation to which we should comply. We should be held to a very high bar”. Notwithstanding good intentions—and I believe him to be sincere—inadequate legislation is not much of a bar. Mr Maier will know his own history: in an earlier generation—in 1944, at the height of World War II —Siemens had a workforce that included 50,000 slave labourers running factories in concentration camps, and it was not alone. Good intentions are not enough. Therefore, I hope that this all-party amendment will address that issue.