Sir Iain Duncan Smith

Sir Iain Duncan Smith

Conservative — Chingford and Woodford Green

Speaking in the House of Commons on 3 December 2024

Debate

UK Supply Chains: Uyghur Forced Labour

Contribution

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion)—she is my hon. Friend in this case—on raising a really important issue. I also welcome another person on the Government Front Bench, who will remain nameless—I am sure that Hansard will pick them out. The problem with all this is that it does not seem to matter who is in government; the Foreign Office and other Departments try to block everything to do with slavery. I was one of the people who drove through the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which we know is long past its sell-by date with regard to modern slavery. I tried to co-operate with the Government when they were in opposition, and we need to change the law, because we have real problems with net zero. Right now, we have polysilicon arrays coming in from Xinjiang in massive quantities, and nothing is being done about it. This is not just about Xinjiang; there are a quarter of a million people from Tibet in forced labour. The only way to address the issue is to do what we did with the Health and Care Act 2022, which we amended to ensure that the Department of Health and Social Care had a duty to eradicate slavery. In America, supply chains are checked using forensic science provided by Oritain, but we do not do any of that. Will we move towards checking all supply chains, and put legislation in place to make it a criminal offence to have anything to do with slave labour?

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