North Wiltshire MP, James Gray, rebelled against the Government last night in an important Trade Bill vote.

Mr Gray stated:

“Yesterday evening, I was one of the 33 Tory MPs who rebelled against the three-line party whip and supported the ‘genocide amendment’. This amendment in the Trade Bill, proposed by Lord Alton of Liverpool, would have given the United Kingdom courts the power to decide if a country was committing genocide rather than waiting for international judicial bodies to make that decision. Leaving international judicial bodies to make the decision simply does not work. The most recent example, and the one on which this amendment was drawn up, is the appalling human rights abuses in the Uyghur Region of China. With China’s Security Council veto, there is little hope of a referral to the International Criminal Court, and little prospect of accountability.

It is quite right that the UK should be able to rescind favourable trade tariffs to a genocidal state and I am still hopeful that a slightly altered amendment, perhaps transferring that responsibility from the Courts to Parliament itself will now pass. We must show countries like China that the UK will not sit back whilst they commit such atrocities, and demonstrate our support for those regions such as the Uyghur.”