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LONDON — The U.K. government’s Trade Bill will return to the House of Lords after what MPs termed a “shameful, shabby, shifty” step to undermine efforts to block trade deals with genocidal regimes.
A cross-party group of campaigners, including rebels from the governing Conservative party, had been seeking to amend the legislation in a bid to thrust China’s treatment of Uighur people into the spotlight.
The rebel bid — pitched as a way of piling pressure on Beijing — would have forced the government to consider blocking trade deals where the other state is found to have committed genocide by British courts.
But the government “bundled” amendments ahead of the latest House of Commons clash, meaning lawmakers were unable to vote on the key clause. Instead, a government-backed compromise narrowly won the backing of MPs, 318 to 303.
Conservative rebels had felt unable to support the bundle of amendments put forward for a single vote, arguing that the government’s compromise, empowering parliamentary committees but not the courts, fell far short of their aim.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader who co-chairs the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, accused the government of using “arcane procedural games,” a move he described as “beneath them.”
The U.S. State Department has said China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region meets a credible definition of “genocide.” Allegations include detention, destruction of religious sites, forced labor, forced sterilization and torture.
What ought to have been a day of “pride for our democracy and day of promise for the Uighurs” was undermined by “shameful, shabby, shifty” behavior of government whips, Labour’s Shadow Trade Secretary Emily Thornberry said.
A spokesperson for the government said earlier in the day that their own amendment “empowers parliamentarians to take a stand on credible reports of genocide.” Minister Greg Hands told MPs the rebel amendment would “subcontract” the matter to the courts when it should be a parliamentary decision.
Campaigners said a fresh amendment along similar lines will now be reinserted into the Trade Bill by the Lords, with the legislation now due for further scrutiny in the House of Lords under a process known as “ping pong.”
“They thought they would lose, so cheated. But they won’t be able to cheat again when the Lords sends another amendment back with the courts back in,” said Luke de Pulford, coordinator of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has led cross-party campaigning efforts on the issue.
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