UK Parliament Committee Floats Xinjiang Policy Recommendations in New Report
Disappointed with the pace of the United Kingdom government's response on forced labor issues in China's Xinjiang region, parliamentarians on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee issued a report on the situation, including policy recommendations on how to further crack down on modern slavery in Xinjiang. The BEIS Committee, responsible for oversight of the BEIS Department, issued sweeping recommendations for the government agency for its role in upholding human rights commitments in relation to business ties with China. The March 17 report declared that the BEIS Department “has shown little sign that it is taking a proactive or meaningful lead on investigating UK business links to forced labour and other human rights abuses in China or elsewhere.”
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The committee recommended establishing an entirely new BEIS policy framework with a working group to “tackle the ongoing lack of transparency in supply chains specifically linked to the use of forced labour of, but not limited to, Uyghurs in Xinjiang.” The working group would coordinate a whole-of-government effort to ensure business compliance with all relevant legislation on human rights and forced labor. Other elements of the framework include a government report to the BEIS Committee on the feasibility of a whitelist of companies that have done their due diligence toward their supply chains and a blacklist of firms that have failed to do so.
Pointing to steps taken by the U.S. government, the report also decried the U.K. government's failure to implement Magnitsky Act sanctions on Chinese officials implicated in the atrocities in Xinjiang. Given U.S. action, the committee is unsatisfied with the U.K. government's excuse of “insufficient evidence” to commit to new sanctions. “We are also disappointed that the BEIS Department has failed to take a lead on determining the efficacy of sanctions against perpetrators of human rights abuses in Xinjiang,” it said.
The report also spent significant space devoted to discussing how the Modern Slavery Act's implementation and text could be strengthened. Among the multitude of issues the committee had with the MSA, the parliamentarians expressed their disappointment over the lack of a timetable for updating the MSA, lack of extension of the reporting requirements and lack of development of civil penalties for non-compliance. The report also floated the idea of reviewing the Company Directors Disqualification Act to include the possibility of using breaches of the MSA as a basis for disqualifying company directors from their duties or disqualifying company registrations.