30 Aug Companies not declaring use of China slave labour products, says Sir Iain Duncan Smith
COMPANIES are failing to declare that they are using products that have been produced in China using slave labour, former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has said.
His comments came as he criticised Foreign Secretary James Cleverly’s visit to the country today for being superficial.
Sir Iain told GB News: “The problem is we are actually too much in hock to China anyway on almost everything that is produced and a lot of it is produced by slave labour.
“That’s a fact of life. And many companies don’t properly declare that as they’re meant to by law.”
In a discussion with Andrew Pierce and Bev Turner, he continued: “First and foremost, China trashes the World Trade Organisation, all the rules that are about non-subsidising by governments are completely abandoned by China.
“Companies like Huawei were subsidised I was told to a total of 100% of any bid they make. The result was all the companies in the free world that were in telecoms, they all abandoned it, there was no money left for them.
“We were only left with two or three companies in the West, whereas China now dominates that area and they do it in every single area they come to.
“My concern really here and I think this is mostly because others have visited, the Government feels they don’t want to be left behind, because when the German foreign minister visited she came back and made it very clear that she thought there was no point in talking to the Chinese at all about human rights.”
He added: “My concern here with this visit is it looks to me very much like a visit for a visit’s sake, because we were not going to really lay the law down about them.
“If we really meant business, we would have started sanctioning many of these officials responsible for these abuses.
“America’s done it, Australia’s done it, we simply don’t seem capable of stepping up to that and we haven’t even declared [genocide in] Xinjiang as murderous behaviour.”
