Motion A
Moved by
That this House do not insist on its Amendment 102B in lieu of
Commons Amendment 102, to which the Commons have disagreed for
their Reason 102C.
102C: Because it is unnecessary to have a specific discretionary
exclusion ground for involvement in forced organ harvesting in
light of the ground for professional misconduct and the lack of
evidence that any supplier to the UK public sector has been
involved in forced organ harvesting.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe)
(Con)
My Lords, the other place has now been clear, for the second
time, that it is firm in its position on this amendment. Noble
Lords asked the Commons to reconsider, and it has reached the
same decision.
The Bill creates new rules for suppliers and contracting
authorities that will stay on the statute book for the
foreseeable future. We therefore need to be measured and prudent
in our approach and avoid imposing further unnecessary
bureaucracy on UK businesses that duplicates both the existing
provisions in the Bill and the steps being taken outside the
legislation.
I commend the noble Lord, , for the debates
he has led on organ harvesting. We share a unanimous view that
organ harvesting is an abhorrent practice that has no place in
our supply chains. Accordingly, if a supplier or one of its
connected persons fails to comply with the established ethical or
professional standards within its respective industry, including
relating to the removal, storage and use of human tissue, the
supplier could face exclusion on the grounds of professional
misconduct. However, as far as I am aware, no supplier to the UK
public sector has been involved in forced organ harvesting. Given
that the exclusion grounds in the Bill have been selected based
on the areas of greatest risk to public procurement, it is not
necessary to single out organ harvesting in this Bill.
The Government are already actively addressing this awful
practice. For example, it is an offence to travel outside the UK
to purchase an organ, by virtue of new offences introduced by the
Health and Care Act 2022. In addition, the Government continue to
monitor and review evidence relating to reports of forced organ
harvesting and maintain a dialogue with leading non-governmental
organisations and international partners on this very important
issue.
I make one further remark concerning an issue which, while out of
scope of today’s debate, is of significant importance to this
Bill and the country’s security. It relates to concerns raised by
the noble Lord, Lord Alton, following recent press coverage
regarding surveillance equipment, which I look forward to
discussing with him in person tomorrow. On 24 November 2022, the
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster made a Statement in the
other place instructing government departments to cease
deployment on their sensitive sites of surveillance equipment
produced by companies subject to the National Intelligence Law of
the People’s Republic of China.
During our last debate in this House, I set out the definition of
“sensitive sites” to which our commitment would apply and which I
am happy to reiterate today. As I said on 11 September, our
commitment will apply to government departments and cover their
sensitive sites, which are any building or complex that routinely
holds secret material or above, any location that hosts a
significant proportion of officials holding developed vetting
clearance, any location routinely used by Ministers, and any
government location covered under the Serious Organised Crime and
Police Act 2005. I went on to reiterate that our commitment does
not extend to the wider public sector. However, in no way is this
an endorsement of the use of such surveillance equipment by these
organisations or by organisations in the private sector. Indeed,
these organisations may instead choose to mirror our action. I
believe that some of them already have, including the police.
I beg to move.
(Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the explanation
behind the Motion. She kindly referred to the amendments I tabled
on Report following our debate in Committee, which focused on the
appalling practice of forced organ harvesting, principally in
China, which involves the removal of organs from living prisoners
of conscience for the purpose of transplantation, killing the
victim in the process. It is state sanctioned, widespread
throughout China and has become a multi-billion-pound commercial
operation.
We know that the victims are mainly Falun Gong practitioners, but
more recently, evidence has indicated that Uighur Muslims are
also being targeted on a massive scale. Further to that, there
are several pieces of evidence suggesting that Tibetans and house
Christians are as likely to be the victims of forced organ
harvesting. As the noble Baroness said, my amendment was passed
by your Lordships’ House on Report and went to the Commons, where
it was rejected. We had another go in September and again, I am
afraid, the Commons has reinserted the original provisions in the
Bill.
I regret that this has happened for three reasons, the first
being the scale of the atrocities being carried out in China and
specifically in Xinjiang province. Secondly, Ministers are wrong
to dismiss the need for the amendment. Above all else, its
passage would have been a powerful signal in the UK and globally
of our abhorrence of these awful practices. Thirdly, you cannot
consider my amendment on forced organ harvesting without setting
it in the context of the Government’s approach to China more
generally. The Prime Minister has talked quite tough in recent
weeks on the Government’s approach to China. However, the overall
approach, to put it at its kindest, is clouded in inconsistency,
ambiguity and sometimes downright confusion. That has been
reflected in any number of Select Committee reports over the last
year or two.
However, I recognise that this has gone as far as I could expect
it to go. I am grateful to all those who supported me,
particularly my Front Bench, the Lib Dems and many noble Lords
around the House. I particularly pay tribute to Lord Bernie
Ribeiro, who retired from the House on Monday. He has been a
tower of support to me on this very worrying issue over many
years. I wish him all the best in his retirement.
(LD)
My Lords, we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt,
for bringing this issue back on a number of occasions. We share
the great disappointment that the Government have not seen fit to
use their majority to include this in the Bill. As the Minister
herself said: at this point there is no such practice going on,
so there is no jeopardy, but it puts down a marker and it makes a
very important point about ethical procurement and this
particularly horrifying issue. I hope the comments that Ministers
have made in this place, and in the other place, are used to
emphasise the need for ethical process during procurement; this
is perhaps the starkest example, but there are many others. It is
with regret that it leaves your Lordships’ House without the
noble Lord’s amendment, which we supported.
I thank the Minister for her comment on sensitive sites and
Hikvision. It is somewhat intriguing because I suspect that the
reason this has come up is because Hikvision is circulating
material to its potential clients—and I imagine these are the
non-sensitive clients—which seeks to use the Government’s
language as an implicit endorsement of its continued operation in
this country. I suspect that is why the Minister has stood up and
made that comment. I hope that the Government can explain to
Hikvision that this is an inappropriate use of their language, to
try to sell its product in the face of a very particular problem,
which has been highlighted, and one that is also a problem in
non-sensitive sites across the country. I am interested to
understand—either offline or online from the Minister—how they
are taking this up with Hikvision.
This Bill has been on a journey since it started in your
Lordships’ House. The next Bill is the exception, but rarely has
a Bill received so many amendments. In the main, we have
substantially improved the quality of this Bill through
co-operation; through the hard work of the Minister, the
Minister’s team and, of course, your Lordships. The normal
character of these things is that we leave matters in a jovial
and hearty way, but I am afraid I am not going to because I will
return to an issue.
This is not in reference to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, but the
fact is this Procurement Bill was constructed to guide
procurement across the whole country. It is supposed to be the
way in which all procurement proceeds, with one exception: the
largest single area of procurement in the country, the National
Health Service. That would be allowable if there was a gold
standard procurement process in place in the NHS. Quite clearly
there is not. The Health and Care Act 2022 has not set out a gold
standard procurement process, and there have been no processes
that we can see which deliver that.
Since the last time we discussed this Bill—since the last time
the Minister was standing at the Dispatch Box telling us that we
do not need proper procurement processes for the National Health
Service—there has been further evidence of huge abuses of
procurement in the NHS. We do need this, and in the absence of an
actual system that sits in the NHS, this system should apply. By
not applying it the Government will preside over the waste of
hundreds of millions of pounds that could have been spent on
necessary services, due to very poor procurement practice. In
that vein we are extremely disappointed that the Government have
not seen fit to take the advice of your Lordships and include the
NHS in this Bill.
We look forward to seeing how this Bill is applied across the
country and, I hope, to seeing some benefit from its
practices.5.00pm
of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend for continuing to
press the issue of the terrible practice of organ harvesting and
to raise awareness of it. I do not think that there was
sufficient awareness of what was happening in China until my
noble friend tabled his amendments, and I hope that he continues
to work on this in the future. So we are also very disappointed
that the Government chose not to accept his amendment, but we are
where we are.
As the noble Lord, , said, ethical procurement has to
be right at the centre of how we continue to do business.
Hikvision was debated during the progress of the Bill and there
is more work to do on some of these issues.
Having said that, I thank very much the Minister and her team for
her comments today and for her constructive approach to improving
the Bill, following a fairly sticky start in Committee. It has
been a pleasure to work with a Minister, department and noble
Lords across the House who genuinely wanted to make a better
Bill. I know that there were an enormous number of government
amendments—perhaps the Bill should have been better drafted in
the first place—but they were very important. We are in a much
better place than where we started, so I thank the Minister and
all noble Lords who helped to bring us here.
(Con)
My Lords, I express my gratitude to the noble Lords, Lord Hunt
and , and the noble Baroness, Lady
Hayman, for their insightful contributions in this brief
debate—not least on the threat from China and on ethical
procurement. It has been a pleasure to work with them all and to
set the slightly troublesome record of tabling a very large
amendments in this House.
I of course acknowledge the importance of tackling the abhorrent
practice of organ harvesting, but this amendment is duplicative,
unduly burdensome and not appropriately suited to its intended
purpose, which is why the Bill has been returned to our House in
this form. For these reasons, I do not think that the amendment
is necessary and I reiterate the many commitments we have made in
this House and in the other place.
The noble Lord, , mentioned the NHS. The Bill
applies to NHS bodies and their procurement of goods and
services, which are not classed as healthcare services under the
provider selection regime. I am pleased to tell the noble Lord,
as I hope he knows, that the underpinning regulations were laid
by the Department of Health and Social Care on 19 October, which
puts a line under that and ensures a consistent approach.
The noble Lord, , remarked on the definition of
sensitive sites. Both our Written Ministerial Statement from
November last year, which was trailblazing to some extent, and
the definition of sensitive sites that I set out only last month
make our position on the issue clear to all concerned. We will be
sharing annual reports on the removal of surveillance equipment,
as I promised the House when we last debated this on 11
September.
(LD)
I thank the Minister for that comment, but that was not my point.
It was actually that the language that the Government have used
about non-sensitive sites is being used by Hikvision as a
marketing tool to placate potential customers and say that it is
okay. If the Minister has not seen that wording, I expect that
the noble Lord, Lord Alton, will provide it; otherwise, I would
be happy to. The Government need to reflect to Hikvision that
they are not endorsing its technology for non-sensitive sites,
which is what the company seeks to communicate.
(Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his clarification. That is why I chose
to reiterate what I have said. I will talk to the noble Lord,
Lord Alton, tomorrow, but I reiterate that we are keeping an eye
on this. The reports on the withdrawal of the surveillance
equipment will be important. Public bodies outside government and
some private bodies have already decided to withdraw these
cameras, so I think the message is clear.
I thanked noble Lords across the House for their valuable
contributions to the scrutiny of the Bill when it left for the
other place on 13 December. I reiterate everything I said then. I
add my thanks to our Whip, my noble friend , and my noble friends Lady
Noakes, , and , who I did not mention last
time. I much look forward to Royal Assent and the legacy that I
believe will stem from the collective efforts of both Houses,
which are all represented here this evening.
Motion A agreed.
