Sir Iain Duncan Smith
MP for Chingford and Woodford Green · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I raise the cases of Ryan Cornelius and Jimmy Lai—both United Kingdom citizens—to the attention of the Foreign Secretary, who I welcome to his position. Ryan Cornelius has been incarcerated for 19 years—trumped-up charges by a corrupt regime that is supporting a war in Sudan at the moment.”
“Has the Secretary of State been made aware of the case of Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong resident who is being prosecuted by the Administration in Hong Kong using the national security law?”
“A particular memory is that during the Maastricht debates, when, I have to confess, I and one or two others here were deeply rebellious, Ann lectured me from the Dispatch Box—she was in government—about how I should support the Maastricht treaty and the European Union, which rather worried me.”
“It was phenomenal, because she was so certain about the way that she was. Ann embodied something else: the passion that is necessary for us in this Chamber to make our arguments without the fear of any other person doing something to us.”
“We need to reiterate, and the Government and the Home Secretary need to specify, to all the social media companies that they must do something to close down the visceral, violent language that some people use in attacking others personally, as they did over Ann’s murder, which shocked me.”
“Friday was a funny day. I heard the news very early in the morning that Ann had died, and I was utterly surprised about that because she had seemed perfectly fit the last time I saw her, so I gave my condolences and spoke about it on the radio.”
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“We have to say that one thing is more important than the other, and that is the human rights of those people being abused in places such as China. At the end of the day, we cannot go to bed at night with any grace if we say that we put up more solar arrays and wind farms but those were supplied by factories where people may have died, been abused, or had their lives and families destroyed. We know that China, in the case of Xinjiang, is committing a well-established genocide on such a scale that children are now in forced education camps. Millions of adult males are in forced labour, many producing the polysilicon that goes into arrays made in and around Xinjiang. The women, unbelievably, are being forcibly sterilised. The birth rate in Xinjiang has gone off the edge of a cliff.”
“Countries such as China use slave labour as a way to undercut markets, compete unfairly and drive businesses out of business—particularly here in the UK, as we have experienced. One of the big issues is the net zero determination and what we wish to do to clean up the environment because the biggest providers of solar arrays, wind farms and the technology are, in fact, based in China. The big problem is that the Government have two conflicting requirements. Quite rightly, they want to get on with cleaning up the environment; but they also know that if they cannot buy from China without a clear set of supply chains that are without slave labour, that will cost more money. That impacts the pace and the way in which they can provide a cleaner atmosphere.”
“They are supposed to make a declaration, but we know that many of those declarations are in fact deliberately false—they know they will not be checked, and therefore they do not have to worry about it—so while the Act is great, it is rather toothless. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) on securing this debate and making such a good opening speech. I will not repeat all he said, although I agree with so much of it. In the limited time I have, I want to focus on certain issues. First, the reality is that slave labour is not only a massive punishment and a human rights abuse on a scale, like genocide, wider than anything else; it is also commercial.”
“It is always a blessing to have you chairing a meeting, Mr Dowd. It is particularly a blessing today, as we would not have this debate were you not here, so thank you. I have been active on this subject for some time. I have been sanctioned by China because of the issues that we raised over modern-day slavery. I remind Members that it was the Centre for Social Justice, which I set up, that first published the paper “It Happens Here”. We were then able to get the Government to initiate the Modern Slavery Act—the first legislation of its kind in the world. We were all very proud of that Act, but sadly it really has no enforcement. Government and suppliers have no obligation to check.”
“Could we get a commitment today that the Government will look carefully at what countries that are well in advance of us, such as the United States and some European countries, are doing, to make sure that we urgently get on to resolving this issue, rather than delaying with another review and more debates? We know what needs to be done, and surely we can get on with it pretty quickly.”
“The hon. Lady was very prescient then, and it has got worse since. There was lots of talk under the previous Administration about Downing Street cars being searched for IOTs. We know about the huge imports from bad actors, such as China and other countries—that is really what we should be worried about. Many of them contain kill switches, which would devastate some of our industry, such as energy. That would be a disaster. She is right to have raised the issue and to continue to raise it.”
“Although he and his associates had reportedly complied with restructuring agreements with Dubai Islamic Bank, he was arrested without warning, transferred by plain-clothed officers to a police facility, where he was held incommunicado, denied access to a lawyer and subjected to aggressive interrogation. During this time, he was coerced into signing documents in Arabic—a language he does not understand—under the false premise that this would give him his release.”
“This information is frequently used to identify and harass family members remaining in their home country, to conduct targeted phishing and surveillance against the individual’s private devices, and to coerce the individual into becoming an informant under the threat of criminal charges based on the shared technical data. Let me deal with another case: that of Ryan Cornelius in the United Arab Emirates. Ryan Cornelius is a British citizen who has been arbitrarily detained in Dubai for 18 years, despite well-documented evidence of an unfair trial and inhuman treatment. Ryan’s detention has been found to be arbitrary by the UN working group on arbitrary detention. His case arose from a high-profile financial dispute involving loans connected to a major Dubai development project.”
“In 2025, proposed changes to the Extradition Act 2003 would allow co-operation between UK and Hong Kong authorities on a “case-by-case ad hoc basis”. The trouble with that is that it begins to open the door. The risk of sharing NIS data is not confined to the physical removal of individuals; it also poses a profound threat to national security and the safety of the diaspora within the UK—how often have we heard about that? These totalitarian states not only seek to extradite dissidents, they seek to silence them through transnational repression and to compromise the UK’s own digital resilience. Sharing NIS data with an adversarial jurisdiction is akin to providing a road map for a state-sponsored cyber-attack. For dissidents and human rights defenders living in the UK, NIS data can be used to demonise and de-anonymise their activity.”
“She also expressed concerns in late 2024 regarding the case of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, noting that evidence allegedly secured through torture in mainland China was and is being used in the trial. On 15 November 2024, the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention published its opinion that Jimmy Lai is “unlawfully and arbitrarily detained” and called for his immediate release. The proposed new regulation will not go far enough and therefore does not deal with this, and that is what my amendment 3 is all about. On the risk of extradition to China from safe third countries, currently the UK does not have a bilateral extradition treaty with the People’s Republic of China, and it has suspended its bilateral extradition treaty with Hong Kong—something that many of us were calling out for at the time in 2020.”
“Let me look at the single biggest case that confronts us in China at the moment: that of Jimmy Lai. He is a British citizen. I cannot tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, how endlessly in debates, even under the previous Administration, we had to fight to get the Government to state that he is a British citizen, not a dual nationality citizen. He is a British citizen, is proud to be British, has been British all his life and has only ever owned a British passport—he has never been a Chinese citizen with a Chinese passport. The special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, in her 2024 and 2025 reports, specifically flagged concerns that evidence obtained through torture is still widely admitted in Chinese courts.”
“That is what is at risk here, and we should be the greatest defenders of that right to a fair trial anywhere in the world. Let us take a few of these countries as examples for why amendment 3 is needed. Let us look at China. Requests were made by authoritarian states—totalitarian states in this case—regarding Interpol notices, as has been the recent pattern, and this happens a lot. The People’s Republic of China and other countries have a troubling recent history of very significant transnational repression, hounding dissidents in the UK and cloaking their political persecution in superficially legitimate criminal charges. The PRC is not alone in requesting information on political opponents in the UK, and it does it a lot. We can confidently speculate that China will make requests of the UK almost immediately should the Bill be passed.”
“The argument of my amendment 3 is that—quite apart from the transnational repression risks—justice as we understand it cannot be served in a country where essentially there is no rule of law, no right to a fair trial, and a judicial system that serves the party. As I often say, it is a matter of pride that perhaps the greatest gift this country has given to the world is the concept of freedom in the face of the law. That is the point I made earlier: habeas corpus came from English common law and dominates so much of the free world’s thinking. It was not until the 1970s that some countries in Europe actually practised habeas corpus, so it was not just the case that it was produced by Britain; it was also owned by many other countries.”
“The amendment is necessary to close that loophole in the Bill, which currently fails to anticipate politically motivated requests from such totalitarian states. I often say that we should stop speaking about countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as authoritarian states. They are not authoritarian states; they are totalitarian states. Why do I say that? Because everything in those countries is owned and run by the state. Authoritarian states are often dictatorships, but they are not the same thing as totalitarian states. They are brutal and nasty, but totalitarianism is a complete system. This is about totalitarian states. Proposed new regulation 6 is predicated upon helping other Governments obtain justice.”
“The amendment therefore seeks to prohibit information sharing with places where the Secretary of State believes that a fair trial simply cannot be obtained. It would require the Secretary of State to consult civil society and human rights experts to identify jurisdictions—this would apply universally and not just to China, although China is a big player in this—where the right to a fair trial cannot be guaranteed, with all decisions subject to mandatory annual reports to Parliament. That is important: Parliament should be part of this and make decisions about whether it agrees with the Government. Beijing is a good example. It has frequently used seemingly legitimate criminal complaints to target dissidents. Proposed new regulation 6, if unamended, therefore raises transnational repression risks rather than solving them.”
“The issue is British citizens abroad ending up under the rule of Governments that do not believe in the concept of freedom before the law, in a fair trial as part of that process, or in habeas corpus, which is an English common law right that has gone around the world. The amendment seeks to prohibit data sharing with jurisdictions that cannot guarantee a fair trial. It maintains the current legal approach, which generally restricts the sharing of sensitive information outside the EU. Currently, information sharing of a type enabled by proposed new regulation 6, which is in clause 18, is prohibited outside the EU. The proposed new regulation is therefore weaker than what is going on in the European Union. Sadly, it paves the way for such sharing, rather than restricting it.”
“Lady says—but we think that we can treat the bad actors as though they were normal actors in a commercial sense. However, China is using slave labour to undercut markets and regularly puts IOTs into cars. It gets away with it because we think that we need China more than it needs us. That is the big problem. The hon. Lady is right to raise it, and I congratulate her for again making an excellent speech. I will in due course beg to move my amendment on anti-refoulement, because although this is a good Bill, some bits are missing and others have been skated over. This is one area about which we will come, again and again, to regret that we had not done more.”
“It is always a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), who talks common sense most of the time she gets up, which may be one of the reasons why she is still on the Back Benches. If we listened more to those who know something about things, rather than talking as though we know things, and saying things that are invariably wrong, we in Parliament would obviously be better off. The greatest threat we face is that bad actors out there are using this level of technology to get across to countries such as the UK. This is not a party political point, because both Governments have failed to face up to it to the degree that they should have—that is why this Bill is welcome, but it is not everything, as the hon.”
“I am not quite certain that I understand the Minister’s reasons for why he cannot accept my amendment, tweak it or work with it in the other place. The reality is that with this Bill, we are opening the door in a way that we would not have otherwise done to the use of information that may predicate a failure for some British citizen sitting in a country where the rule of law does not protect them in the courts. The Government are taking a risk of making it worse, not better. While the Minister agrees to some degree with the principle of what I am saying, surely this is the time to put it right in the Bill.”
“I want to make a small point following the strong and powerful point made by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) about the gang-related stuff. The petition that the public signed does not selectively go for gangs only. It refers to all offenders, including gangs. Surely the key is to get the knowledge. That sunlight will help us to solve those other crimes.”
“I just want to point out a clear example of why this is necessary. In 2022, the Home Office asked police forces to collect ethnicity and other data to have a display of evidence. Out of 43 forces, only one complied. That is why it must be statutory and enforced; does my right hon. Friend not agree?”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Having served in Northern Ireland, I have spoken to many veterans I was there with and others who were there before, and there is a scintilla of a real question mark about how they will be treated. The vexatious nature of these complaints will, of course, eventually drag them back into the courts. That is the fear. They are sure that they are innocent, but by the time the courts have finished with them, innocence would not matter at all, because their life would have been destroyed. Does my hon. Friend not agree?”
“We can only lead, however, if we have the equipment to show our allies that we have the endeavour. When we took the Falkland Islands, we had 53 frigates and destroyers available to us. We could not do that today. That is the measure of how far we have gone under both Labour and Conservative Governments. The Ministry of Defence must tell the Government, “Enough is enough. We are going to publish this Bill and the defence investment plan—and, by the way, where is the China audit? Let’s publish that too”.”
“We will need the same again, because I believe we are about to face an even greater threat. Ministers will know that the Conservatives will give them our full support if they are prepared to fight for that. Let us get the defence investment plan published right away—that is really important. Those totalitarian states do not face the restrictions that we do. We have those restrictions for a good reason: we believe in democracy. But freedom is the most expensive thing that we will ever try to own, and it can be taken away with just a wish. The Government’s job is to stand firm and say that the No. 1 priority is to defend the realm from threats, internal and external. If we do not do that, we will have failed in our obligations, failed the British people, and failed our allies and friends, who look to us for leadership.”
“The Treasury continues as if all was sweetness and light because it does not want to make any changes. It is for Defence Ministers to make the point about the threat. Why in heaven’s name have we not published the defence readiness Bill? It is the Ministry of Defence’s greatest weapon in the fight with the Treasury. Every other Department—Health or whatever—know what I am talking about. It is always a fight, but it has to be, because we are facing what is likely to be our greatest threat since the 1930s. To face that threat, Ministers need to make it clear to the Treasury that we cannot skirt around this any longer; we have to spend that money and commit. The Government have talked about being committed to 3% in due course, but that will not be enough. When I was serving, we were committed to 5% of GDP to face down the Soviet Union.”
“We should deal with that and say it is a criminal act for the IRGC to be here. To that extent, how the Government respond to this challenge in defence terms is critical. I am one of those people who has argued since the end of the cold war that we made a mistake in reducing defence. Nobody listened to me then, and there is no reason why they should listen to me today, but I tell the Minister that I am going to keep on saying it. I hope Members on the Government Benches and others will ask that question. I know what the restrictions are, and that the Treasury dictates to Departments and says, “We can’t afford this. We won’t do it.” People at the Treasury are the last people in the world to ever recognise a threat to anybody, at any time, from anything.”
“This is about totalitarian states. The Government should not use the phrase authoritarian states. They are totalitarian states, and there is a difference. Authoritarian states are about dictators and others who have risen to power and at some stage have to be brought down. Totalitarian states are ones where every element of how people live their lives is controlled, run and spied on—with people arrested as a result—by the state organs, regardless of who is in charge. Communism is the key here; those states are communist. There are other extremist versions of such states. Iran is part of that alliance. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is an extremist organisation, and I do not understand why the Government have failed to proscribe it. It really is high time, as it is present in our country stirring up violence and hatred.”
“China has over 130 times the capacity to build naval ships than Europe and America have at the moment. I say to people who do not think that this is a threat: do not necessarily listen to what those totalitarian states say; go and have a look at what they are doing. They are producing and preparing for war. I am not, I hope, scaremongering, as I believe this to be a reality. China is reinforcing and supporting Russia in its brutal invasion of Ukraine. Without China, Russia could not have continued this war. Russia was running out of ammunition, but China brokered an arrangement with North Korea, which now produces millions of rounds of ammunition for Russia, and even provides soldiers who, once used, abused and wounded on the battlefield, are then assassinated so that they are not a source of shame when they go back.”
“If we go on strengthening such places by buying their slave-made goods, then we do our own defence no good at all. What is needed is a wide-ranging commitment through the Modern Slavery Act to ban all products made by slave labour. This debate is on defence, and we are now facing the greatest threat to our freedom across the western world since the 1930s. I do not believe that the threat is less than it was during the cold war; in a way, it is a greater threat, because at least during the cold war we already knew and recognised what war was about, why we had to be prepared for it, and what we were defending. We have lost lots of that. Many people out there do not fully understand how the threat has changed and grown. The reality today is that one shipyard in China makes more naval ships than the whole of the United States in one year.”
“I know that this is not the speciality of the Ministers present, but I ask them to raise it, because I also saw that the Gracious Speech contained very peculiar commitments to using immigration as a way of tackling forced labour. That is not good enough. We need to reinforce the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and make it an offence for any company to import or use any items or goods that were made using forced or slave labour. That should be a unifying factor across this House, and I do not know why the Government have now watered down their intention. Madam Deputy Speaker will know this full well as she has been party to it: this cause goes to the root of one of the issues I will come on to, which is the threat that we face from places such as China.”
“In answer to a question from Politico about whether they were implementing what, thanks to many Labour Back Benchers and many Opposition Members, is the law—my amendment passed and became law—and applying it to the producers as well, a spokesman for the Government said: “We have strict procurement controls in place to ensure that any solar panels”— it is not just solar panels, but all elements to do with net zero— “are free from forced labour, as far as possible”. That is not the law. There is no caveat to the law. Everybody rebelled on the Labour Benches, and Opposition Members also voted for it, and we implemented an absolute, which is that it is not for Great British Energy to use any products that have been produced using any kind of forced labour.”
“It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). He will recall that I voted for him to hold his position, and I will come for payback later on. It is also very good to see my area neighbour, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), in the Chamber. I will listen with great interest to what he has to say, and I hope that the Labour party finds another use for him through its talent spotting, if I can put it like that. Before coming to the topic of defence in this debate on the Address, I want to touch on another issue that has arisen. My brilliant assistant, Alice Stuttaford, spotted yesterday something that tells me that we have a slight problem with the Government’s commitment to the legal position on the use of slave-made products by Great British Energy.”
“This business with what is going on over Northern Ireland is not alone, because it builds on a perception and on the gratuitous pursuit of soldiers involved in Afghanistan and Iraq—partly by the Prime Minister in a previous life, but certainly by lawyers knowing full well that what they were pursuing were in fact complete untruths. That has made those former soldiers wonder what is the point. If politicians will not stand up for them, who will?”
“Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), has said this, and Members on both sides of the House want the Secretary of State to have it. Please take this message back to the Chancellor: “Enough is enough. We have to do this for our security.” Will he now do that?”
“The right hon. Gentleman knows that I have huge regard for him. We go back quite a long way, and I hope that what I am going to say now will be helpful to him and his Defence team. Poland is planning eventually to spend 9% of its GDP on defence. It is approaching 5% today from a standing start. Everybody in this House with an ounce of common sense wants the right hon. Gentleman and his team to succeed and to get the money they require to increase our defences, but we are behind the curve. I am not blaming him; I am blaming other elements in Government. Will he use this opportunity to send the message to the Government that the House requires that we get the money, publish the plan and get on with making defence successful? The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon.”
“Having denied all the way through the Bill’s passage that veterans would be pursued vexatiously through the courts and having said that there were controls in place, the Government have apparently finally realised that that was not the case. All of a sudden, the position has changed.”
“The problem that the Government have had from the beginning is that they have been tied up with trying to satisfy Sinn Féin and the hand of Ireland. I worry desperately about the arrangements. As the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said, where are the promises on delivery from Ireland? For all these years, there has been all the stuff that they know about who did what, when they did it and how it was done. All that has been kept behind closed doors for so long, and the Irish Government could have dealt with it earlier. Instead, there are people who do not want this to be open and we are now singing to their tune. That is what really bothers me. We are now being asked to take a pitch in the dark.”
“In the limited time I have, I say to the Secretary of State that this Bill was bad, and it is now a mess. He comes in front of the House to ask for a carry-over when he knows that carry-over motions are only ever to be used for Bills that are pretty well set, but have run out of time to progress. Such motions are not for highly contentious legislation that is about to be changed, possibly beyond recognition from what has gone before. He is now apparently addressing many of the issues, but we are not allowed to know, because they are a secret until next time, when we will come back to carry on with a massively changed Bill. It is bad procedure, and it is bad government. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a lot of time—he knows that—that this is just a bad route to take.”
“It is astonishing. My right hon. Friend is exactly right. I served early on in Northern Ireland, and I lost a very good friend—I apologise for repeating his name—in Robert Nairac. We have never got to the bottom of what happened to him. I thought that the speech from the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) was incredibly interesting. It is very difficult to pursue truth, which is why I supported the previous legislation. That was not because I thought it was a great Bill, but because I wanted some truth to come out. I do not think the vexatious pursuit of veterans will ever produce the truth that he rightly seeks. There is a better way, and it is not this Bill.”
“The Armed Forces Minister is not here for a reason—because he knows very well that he does not want to be sitting on the Front Bench when the Bill gets voted through to the future. [ Interruption. ] I say to all colleagues, it is time to call time on this piece of bad legislation and kick it into the gutter.”
“Member for Belfast East has raised throughout the whole of this debate. The legislation was rather arrogantly pushed through, and the Government said, “No, you don’t know what you’re talking about. The legislation is perfectly okay.” At the last moment, when they have failed to get the Bill through, they have produced this idea that somehow there are amazing new amendments that will protect veterans going forward. Why should veterans, who have been vexatiously pursued endlessly for no particular reason, other than because they were veterans who served in Northern Ireland, now say, “Oh, that’s okay; it’d be a good idea to see what comes next time around, because they were so honest this time around.”? The Government have failed to be honest about this from start to finish.”
“We will not altogether agree about this issue. We can debate what actually happened, but we will never know, because the Government refused to pursue this matter through the courts. South Africa was a good example of how it could be done. I went out to advise in South Africa at the time, and I genuinely believe that the truth and reconciliation committee got to the bottom of quite a lot of what happened in South Africa and allowed some mending of fences. We will no doubt debate that issue further. I have high respect for the hon. Gentleman, and I understand his position. In conclusion, we are being asked to vote blind on a Bill that we knew was damaged before. All our protestations about the vexatious pursuit of veterans were denied, as were all the issues that the right hon.”
“Lindsay and Craig Foreman are incarcerated in Iran in brutal circumstances, and are being tortured in many ways. They are not my constituents, but their family approached me. May I be clear to the Government, and have them be clear to us in their response? Are the Government saying publicly that they are not spies, but innocent tourists? Will they formally declare the detention to be arbitrary? What else can they do to try to draw attention to the plight of these two innocent tourists?”
“Did my right hon. Friend not find it astonishing that in the testimony today the ex-leader of the Foreign Office said that he was made to understand that before they had completed their clearances, Mandelson already had STRAP clearance, which gave him access to the most secure and most dangerous information held by Government?”
“The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will be in the firing line, because he has been put here literally to try to tell some story about how none of this is the Prime Minister’s fault. The Prime Minister has been economical with the actualité and terminologically inexact. All I can say is, no more terminological inexactitudes, please, when the right hon. Gentleman gets to the Dispatch Box.”
“The other bit from today that I find astonishing is the admission by the ex-permanent secretary Olly Robbins that, despite the fact that Peter Mandelson had not been cleared, he was given STRAP clearance to see documents of such importance that they could have brought the Government and the country down. I will end on this, Madam Deputy Speaker—you have been most tolerant. I simply say this: the Prime Minister is in the firing line on this one, and for very good reasons. He is in charge, and he knew what was going on. The people he sacked are still in the firing line. They cannot weasel out of this. They committed an offence in the books of anybody in the Chamber.”
“That is the other question: why, despite that sensible, reasonable advice did the Government go ahead and press on—and at such speed? They put His Majesty the King in the firing line. When they approved the appointment, it went to the King—because they had declared it—even though they had not had clearance, and the agrément was given by our US partners. What in heaven’s name could have happened later on? None of the stuff to do with Epstein had yet come into the middle of the argument. The Government wanted this man, who is utterly corrupt, as our ambassador.”
“There is no excuse for the Government to say, “We waited for the Foreign Office to deliver this great thing, and it did not tell us.” They knew. Secondly, the way the Government manipulated this is absolutely shocking. The outgoing Cabinet Secretary saw what was in the Cabinet Office’s review of the due diligence—by the way, that was to have a look and give recommendations to Government, which was not the same as what the Foreign Office was doing—and it showed just how tainted this corrupt and corrupting man was and what he had been up to. Having seen that, the outgoing Cabinet Secretary advised the Government—that was his job—that they should not go ahead to appoint Peter Mandelson but wait for the full review to take place, and, one way or the other, for him to be cleared or not cleared. But the Government did not do that.”
“That is the nature of a man still repaying his links to China. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) about his links with Sistema in Russia. Even on that alone, there was copious evidence in the public domain about why Peter Mandelson should never have been allowed in any Government post whatsoever—that is before there was any attempt at inspection. There is no way on earth that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) can get up and talk about faults in the system and about not getting clarity—nonsense! Everybody who wanted to know, knew. In the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, we knew about it. We had all the details and they were published.”
“What we learned was that the Government wanted so much for Peter Mandelson to take over the role of ambassador that they drove everything aside in pursuit of it—bullying civil servants, essentially sacking one of them because he did not give the answers it appears that they wanted, and excusing themselves on the basis that everybody else was wrong and they were right. Well they were not, and that has now come home to roost. The essential fact is that many of us knew about Mandelson’s activities. I have a whole dossier with me here about his links to China, with hundreds of names of people he had met and given details of all sorts of things to. We know now that he lobbied the Government, including over electric vehicles and the tariff. It is outrageous, really; he continued to put pressure on them, even when he was given the job.”