Ms Marie Rimmer

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) on securing the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor) on making her maiden speech. It is wonderful to have two MPs from Scotland bringing so much knowledge and understanding of international issues to the House. It really is enriching, and I have been in this place for 10 years. All the contributions today have been full of different aspects—economic, public health, dictatorship, the Communist party and filthy politics—but I will stick to some basics. I have been to Taiwan a number of times, and I think I am still getting over my last trip, which was to the conference that has been mentioned. I do not know how many hours of travelling we did, but it really knocked me out for six and we did not have many hours between the business over there. If anyone thinks that Members going on trips to Taiwan are on holiday, they are wrong. Taiwan is a wonderful place. I will not go on too much about it, but it must be way up there in the rankings for demonstrating actual democracy. Believe me, this Parliament has much to learn from Taiwan about how to conduct its business. On my first visit to Taiwan, I thought I was going to the third world, but I came back to somewhere that resembled the third world by comparison with Taiwan. Only last month, the People’s Republic of China conducted one of its largest ever military drills off the coast of Taiwan, in an attempt to intimidate it. The drill involved 34 naval vessels and at least 125 aircraft. The tactic of intimidation is part of today’s debate, and it shows what China is about. China is attempting to intimidate Taiwan and isolate it by insisting that the One China principle means that Taiwan can play no role in international bodies. Nothing in UN resolution 2758 states that Taiwan cannot be part of international organisations, and the exclusion of Taiwan comes with dangerous consequences for the world. A number of Members have explicitly stated that today, so I do not need to repeat what they have said. The opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) was magnificent; he covered every aspect of this matter, and I congratulate him on doing so. During the covid-19 pandemic, Taiwan deployed one of the world’s most effective strategies against the disease, despite its close proximity to China. However, Taiwan was excluded from the World Health Organisation, and it remains excluded today. It is worth mentioning the forced organ harvesting system. Who determined that China has an ethical organ transplant system? China itself did, yet the WHO still admitted it. According to the WHO, China operates an ethical organ harvesting system.