By GB News (World News) | Created at 2025-03-25 15:56:22 | Updated at 2025-03-26 03:49:37
12 hours ago
Labour has been branded "shameful" after it emerged the party will be whipping its MPs to block a move to ban slave-made solar panels.
A Lords amendment to the upcoming Great British Energy Bill is looking to stop Energy Secretary Ed Miliband from including a Chinese firm's solar panels in a £180million-valued schools and hospitals project - key parts of which are made via Uighur forced labour.
The Xinjiang region, home to the Uighur people, produces up to 40 per cent of China's polysilicon - a key component in the solar panels - and human rights groups have warned that more than a million of the group have been "detained" with many subjected to slave-like conditions.
Peers last month backed the cross-party amendment by 177 votes to 127, despite the Government arguing that there were already enough safeguards - and today, Ministers will seek to overturn it in the Commons.
PICTURED: Ed Miliband meets China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang
GETTY
Tory China hawk Sir Iain Duncan Smith has warned Labour is "turning a blind eye to slavery"
GETTY
Meanwhile, Conservative hawk Sir Iain Duncan Smith warned Labour is "turning a blind eye to slavery" as it gears up to block the move.
"It's the first test for the Labour Government: which side of this do you stand?" he asked.
"You used to stand on the side of anti-slavery, but by turning a blind eye, the Government will have put themselves in line with other countries who believe it is okay to turn a blind eye to slavery.
"The choice will be pretty binary: We either think it doesn't matter if there is slave labour in the supply chain in this particular instance on net zero, or we do.
"And if we do believe there shouldn't be slave labour in any product, and particularly not the net zero stuff, then the answer is we have to act and say that we're not going to do it."
"What a dirty business net zero is," Suella Braverman fumed
PA
Ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman also said: "Militant Miliband is so desperate to save his job-destroying climate agenda that today Labour MPs will vote to allow solar panels built from Chinese slave labour camps to be used on British homes.
"That's despite the CCP committing genocide in Xinjiang. No principles, no shame. What a dirty business net zero is."
However, No10 said: "We're absolutely focused on tackling human rights abuses and modern slavery in supply chains. We need to take a whole of government and society approach, and place victims and survivors at the centre of this work.
"We want to combat human rights abuses like modern slavery across the whole energy industry. We think that will be more effective than applying measures on a company-by-company basis."
