Harborough MP backs moves to crack down on on products made in China using slave labour

Harborough MP Neil O’Brien is saluting the Government for cracking down on products made in China using slave labour.

Neil backed Dominic Raab as the Foreign Secretary warned that British firms will face heavy fines if they are linked to Chinese human rights abuse.

Mr Raab issued the tough warning as he slammed Beijing's “harrowing” treatment of its Uighur minority in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon this week.

Neil told the Harborough Mail: "Earlier this year I founded the China Research Group which is highlighting the human rights abuses carried out by the increasingly dictatorial regime in Beijing.

“We have been strongly making the case for measures to clamp down on products produced in China using slave labour.

“So it was great to see the Government set out plans to stop slave labour products coming here.”

UK firms will now have to meet requirements showing their supply chains are free from forced labour in Xinjiang province, Mr Raab told MPs in a hard-hitting attack.

The Chinese regime has been accused of seriously abusing their Uighur Muslim minority – including forced sterilisation, slave labour and mass internment.

Mr Raab told the Commons: “Internment camps, arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labour, torture and forced sterilisation - all on an industrial scale.

“It is truly horrific.

“Barbarism we had hoped lost to another era, being practised today as we speak in one of the leading members of the international community.”

Neil O’Brien also stressed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is right to support other countries in condemning China’s clampdown on human rights in former British colony Hong Kong.

“It was good to see the UK teaming up with Australia, the US and Canada to put diplomatic pressure on Beijing over the brutal crackdown on human rights in Hong Kong.

“Peaceful pro-democracy protesters are being jailed for political reasons as freedoms are crushed there,” said Conservative MP Neil.

“Over the last year the Chinese government has started to act in a much more aggressive way, bullying friendly nations like Australia just for asking for an inquiry into the origins of the Covid pandemic.

“It's good to see the international community of democratic countries working together more to stand up to their billing and I hope we will be able to more under new US President Joe Biden."