Call to vet ‘dirty solar’ supply chains amid slave labour concerns

Nationally significant infrastructure projects should be vetted for links to forced labour, a leading backbench Conservative MP has urged.

Alicia Kearns, chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, raised concerns about “widespread exposure” of solar industry supply chains to forced labour and “genocide” of the Muslim Uyghur in China’s Xinjiang province.

Speaking during a Parliamentary debate she challenged the government to review its procurement of solar components.

“Dirty solar continues to flood the market and concrete over our fields and rooftops, unchecked and unaccountable,” she said, adding that the UK risks “becoming a global outlier” due to its inaction on the issue as other countries crack down on use of slave labour by Chinese companies.

Addressing junior energy minister Andrew Bowie, she said: “Will we now change the rules for nationally significant infrastructure projects so that links to forced labour are finally considered?

“I do not believe there is any other form of procurement in this country, particularly public sector procurement or procurement for the national good, where we do not take forced labour into consideration.

“Insanity would be allowing a company so linked to the oppression and genocide of the Uyghur people to build key energy infrastructure in our country.”

Urging the government to adopt her three-point plan for cleaning up risks of human rights abuses by Chinese solar panel manufacturers, she said: “It is not unreasonable or too onerous to expect solar developers and manufacturers to demonstrate that their supply chains are clean of slave labour before not only operating but profiting in the UK.”

She said that Canadian Solar, which is behind plans for the 2,000-acre Mallard Pass solar plant in her Rutland and Leicestershire, sources the vast majority of its equipment from China, including suppliers with subsidiaries which have links to the use of Muslim Uyghur slave labour in Xinjiang province.

The Mallard Pass development is currently on the desk of energy security secretary of state Claire Coutinho for a planning decision.

Responding on behalf of the government, Bowie said the soon to be published solar road map, will contain more detail on the industry’s efforts to ensure that it is “not reliant on forced labour anywhere in the world, but particularly in China”.

He also said that while planned solar developments would take up a relatively small proportion of Great Britain’s landmass, the concentration of “so many of those projects in specific areas is concerning”.