Genocide Determination Bill [HL]
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 17 Jul 2026 · 26 speeches · Official Report
Second Reading
Moved by
That the Bill be now read a second time.
My Lords, before we begin this debate, I remind the House that the advisory speaking time is strictly four minutes for Back-Bench contributions.
My Lords, on this politically auspicious day, as we mark the appointment of Andy Burnham Member of Parliament as the new leader of the Labour Party, we know that we have a parliamentarian who is passionately committed to the principle of public accountability and justice. It is serendipitous, perhaps providential, that a Bill which seeks to entrench both accountability and justice for genocide-the crime above all crimes-should receive its Second Reading in this House today, and I thank all noble Lords from all Benches who are participating. Today is also International Criminal Justice Day, which marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome statute on 17 July 1998-the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, which seeks to protect people from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. What better day, then, to have the Second Reading of the Genocide Determination Bill, which manifests all these values and commitments to victims and survivors, to justice and peace? Noble Lords should be clear that the Bill is not actor or territory specific; it is about the crime above all crimes and our willingness to make a reality of the intentions of the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide. Only a few weeks ago, with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, we had a constructive and helpful meeting with the Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, and he told us that genocide is the “apex crime”. There is no...
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow and support my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Although he sits in a different part of the House, I regard him as a friend, and I am very glad to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the tireless way that he has campaigned year after year on this critical issue. He has already outlined how his Bill will work, its purpose and its merits far better than I can, so I will try not to rehearse the points that he has made. However, I do want to say why this Bill is so important. At first glance, it may seem like a limited measure tackling anomaly in process, but it speaks fundamentally to what sort of country we are and how far we are prepared to prioritise abiding moral imperatives over perceived geopolitical interests. These need not always be in conflict, of course, and even when they might be, it is worth remembering the immortal words of a past Member of your Lordships’ House, Lord Palmerston: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies”. Geopolitical interests can be transitory and subjectively defined, but our eternal and perpetual interests, to use Lord Palmerston’s words, must include those moral imperatives that this Bill pursues. As we have heard already from the noble Lord, it is not focused on a specific case or situation but seeks to ensure access to justice for victims and survivors of genocide who otherwise would not have such access. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has argued that there are...
My Lords, as a general rule, I support most of the ideas the noble Lord, Lord Alton, brings to your Lordships’ House, as he is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the state of the world and those who live in it. I join the noble Lord, Lord Wills, in the tributes he paid to the noble Lord, not least because I share with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, a desire to see China-a country which can claim a long and civilised history, and which has brought great intellectual, artistic, scientific and many other benefits to us all-behave in the 21st century in a way that matches the best traditions of that great nation. However, there are far too many contemporary examples of Chinese government conduct towards their own citizens that rightly attract international criticism and condemnation-for example, what they are doing to the Uyghur people, Christians, free thinkers and supporters of freedom of assembly and expression, and to the man whose name should never be forgotten in this Parliament or any other democratic assembly: Jimmy Lai. However, I query what practical effect this Bill would have on, say, China. My hunch-and it is only a hunch-is that the court would be reluctant to engage in an essentially political question, or at least, one with huge non-legal implications over which it has no control. Unlike Members of Parliament, judges do not table Early Day Motions. They do not initiate 10-minute rule Bills or Adjournment debates in the other place or in Westminster Hall....
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for introducing this Bill, which I support, and for his unwavering commitment over many years to the prevention of genocide, the protection of persecuted communities and the advancement of human rights. At the heart of the Bill lies a simple yet profound principle that every human life possesses equal and inherent worth. There is a clear inconsistency in our present arrangements. Successive Governments have rightly maintained that genocide is a matter for a competent court. However, in practice, the international courts capable of making such determinations are not always able to do so because of jurisdictional limitations or political deadlock. The result is that credible allegations of the gravest crime recognised in international law may never receive judicial determination. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, made this point compellingly in his speech. There are legitimate questions about how the mechanism at the heart of this Bill will operate and about its relationship with foreign policy, as my friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, pointed out in his speech. Those are proper matters for Committee, but they do not undermine the principle behind the Bill. Rather, they challenge us to ensure that any mechanism is proportionate, carefully designed and properly resourced. I have seen the importance of these principles close to home. My great-uncle, Mandy Morris, was a Holocaust survivor who, as a young boy, came...
My Lords, in previous debates on atrocity crimes, I have said that we cannot continue to look away when there is credible evidence of genocide. The Bill before us today is an opportunity to address this challenge, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his continued efforts to find a way to formally determine genocide. His introduction clearly set out why that is needed. The House of Lords Library briefing sets out the central problem with clarity. For decades, successive Governments have relied on the position that determinations of genocide should be made by competent courts, rather than by Governments or non-judicial bodies. Yet despite this position’s longevity, no Government have ever introduced legislation to give effect to it. As a result, when credible evidence of genocide emerges, British courts have no mechanism to assess it. We have a policy that says, “Leave it to the courts”, but no legal pathway for our courts to act. As a Minister at the FCDO, I found this position inconsistent and difficult to defend, and I have supported the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his earlier efforts aimed at creating a mechanism for genocide determination linked to trade agreements. The Bill provides us with an opportunity to ensure that the UK does not turn away when credible evidence of atrocity crimes is presented. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said, the Bill will ensure that the UK Government act quickly on their existing obligations under the genocide convention,...
My Lords, if, as the Government constantly assert, only a court ruling can determine acts of genocide, the courts must have the powers to carry out this function. At present, they do not. This renders the 1948 genocide convention no longer fit for purpose, and the commitment, following the Holocaust, to “Never again” becomes almost meaningless, as we have heard. This modest Bill seeks to enable any person or representative organisation affected by genocidal actions to apply to the UK courts to decide on whether genocide has taken, is taking, or is likely to take place. In so doing, a response from the Government is required and the relevant Minister would be obliged, within time limits, to refer the case to the appropriate international bodies-the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court or other international bodies. The arguments for such powers have been well rehearsed over many years, and equally so too have the arguments against. Both sides were expressed in some detail in the course of the atrocity crimes debate in June in this Chamber. The arguments that this focused Bill is urgently needed can be in no doubt. The evidence lies in the numerous credible reports on past acts of genocide and on current threats of genocidal action. A recent book, Genocide in Gaza , by the world-renowned Israeli scholar, Avi Shlaim, sets out in forensic legal details the actions-which he states are the absolute antithesis of Jewish values-perpetrated by the...
My Lords, it always gives me pleasure to be able to support my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He and I have worked extensively over many years, and I pay tribute to him, as others have. He comes to us again with this Bill, which aims to establish a formal legal mechanism to allow British courts to make preliminary determinations on whether genocide is occurring or is at risk of occurring. When we signed the Genocide Act we not only agreed to condemn genocide and bring perpetrators to justice but committed to preventing genocide. That is one of the major things about this. Prevention means monitoring for indicators, such as dehumanising language used by politicians with an undercurrent threat of annihilation, human rights abuses of minorities or of neighbouring peoples, dispossessing people of their homes and lands, the displacement of people, making conditions of life so intolerable that people are forced into exile, sexual violence against despised groups and all those signs of ethnic cleansing. We are seeing these things happening in many conflicts around the world. There were more than 60 conflicts ongoing at the last count. I want to ask a number of questions of the Government about why there might be opposition to the Bill. I smile at my learned friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Saying no and being a naysayer are the steps that lead to accountability. These are the things we need to do if we want to have a just world. We must not nod our head and...
My Lords, last week marked the 31st anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, where 8,372 Bosniak men and boys were systematically murdered in what the United Nations had declared a safe haven. Their wives, daughters and sisters were subjected to rape and expulsion as part of a calculated campaign of ethnic cleansing. In March 1995, Radovan Karadžić, president of the self-declared Republika Srpska, issued directive 7, ordering the creation of, in his words, “an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival … for the inhabitants of Srebrenica”. Four months later, those words were translated to ethnically motivated mass slaughter. In 2007, the International Court of Justice confirmed that Srebrenica was genocide. Srebrenica did not occur because the world lacked information. Karadzic’s interventions were set out in plain terms. The warning signs were unmistakable. UN peacekeepers were in Srebrenica. Diplomatic cables were incoming. The failure was not of knowledge but of political will. The lessons have still not been learned. Only two days ago, a serving Serbian Government Minister declared that if she had been Slobodan Milošević, she would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo in 1998. Three decades after Srebrenica, language that seeks to justify ethnic cleansing is still being voiced from public office. That should alarm us all. We have since witnessed Daesh’s attempt to destroy the Yazidis and the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, and today there...
My Lords, I add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for keeping matters of this kind before us and demanding that we give them our attention. I am most grateful. In a briefing paper that I was very impressed by, I saw a formula showing the atrocities that have existed in Iraq, Sudan, China, Ethiopia, Tigray and Myanmar. At the end of each section, it said: “If, as stipulated in Clause 1 of the Genocide Determination Bill, a determination of genocide was made, Clause 3 actions could include”- and then it laid out those possible actions. I come at the Bill and this discussion from the perspective of the end of Claude 3-I am sorry, Clause 3. There must be somebody here named Claude who I keep on subconsciously thinking about. A month ago, in Stockholm, with the Syriac Eastern Orthodox congregation, I laid a wreath at the monument for the victims of the Armenian genocide early in the 20th century. My son-in-law is Cambodian. His parents were drafted forcibly into Pol Pot’s army and their lives completely wrecked, and he was raised in a Buddhist monastery. I have sensed in Cambodia, on my regular visits, the awful things that happened there. I was in Bosnia in 2010, and I was with the families of people who were still crying uncontrollably at the aftermath of what had happened-under Dutch protection, so they thought-with the killing of those boys and men. There was slaughter in East Timor, and I have met Timorese people too. I was at the plebiscite that brought Eritrea into...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to salute and thank my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for allowing us to consider this Bill. The noble Lord has spent a decade fighting for the Bill and far longer refusing to let the House look away from the Yazidis of Sinjar, from Tigray or from Darfur. While sometimes I do not agree with some of his analysis, I have long admired his consistent courage and persistence. He has taught us that recognition without consequences and action is a dangerous inertia. That lesson challenges us to examine atrocities regardless of where they are happening when we find it too difficult to name the many counts of barbaric inhumanity that we are witnessing. Genocide does not hide; it broadcasts itself in the desecration of Sudan, the mass graves of El Fasher, the Rohingyas of Myanmar, the famine and mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the murderous cleansing of the West Bank and Lebanon. The human cry for survival has so often been unheeded in this Chamber and the other place, so I am very grateful to the noble Lord. We cannot say we did not know, for it lays dormant in our conscience and in the discretion of our will to protect some and not others. We have selectively chosen to voice atrocities but be silent on others as innocent families and communities remain buried under rubble and are dying today while we deliberate. Which human beings deserve our attention politically and financially, and for whom do we choose to prevent access to...
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on introducing the Bill. I respect his tireless work on this topic. States have a legal obligation to prevent atrocities, including genocide, and the Bill would ensure that the UK Government, as a signatory to the genocide convention, would be able to act quickly to fulfil their existing duties the moment a risk was recognised. I declare my interest as co-chair of the Women, Peace and Security APPG. I first came across genocide when I visited Rwanda in 2007 and, although it was 13 years after the genocide, the horror was still present. In around 100 days in 1994, nearly 1 million Tutsi people were killed and thousands of Tutsi women taken away to become sex slaves. I met women across the country, many of whom had seen their husbands and children hacked to death in front of them. I sat and heard their stories. It was utterly shocking. A few years later I visited Bosnia, and walking in the graveyard with the widows and wives of the missing was harrowing; it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. There, any young man or male child over seven was taken away and shot. I remember meeting a young man whose twin brother had been killed, who said, “This should never happen again”-but it has. Years on from the horrors of the Holocaust, as we have heard, we have seen repeated incidents. As has been laid out by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, genocide is an identity-based crime trying to bring about the destruction of...
My Lords, this Bill is not the right mechanism that I would wish for the prevention and punishment of genocide. First, it asks the courts of the UK to do something they are not equipped to do. The most fundamental problem is evidential. Genocide determinations have to be carried out in accordance with international law and in full possession of the facts. The time lag would be self-defeating. The closest thing we have had was the action by David Irving against Penguin Books based on his being called a Holocaust denier. In effect, the famous judgment was whether the Holocaust had taken place or not. From start to finish, the case took three years and seven months. Secondly, the Bill risks drawing our courts into geopolitical controversies. We know very well that the applicants who will rush forward if this Bill is enacted are less likely to be the Yazidis, the Sudanese and Uyghurs, but more likely to be those who want to continue their campaign against Israel, regardless of the fact that what has happened in Gaza does not meet the definition of genocide. It would be a way of continuing a political and distorted campaign, no doubt funded by Iran. Thirdly, the Bill cannot do what it means to do. Our courts might make a determination of genocide, but that would have no binding effect on the ICJ or the ICC. Only 75 countries accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ, the UK being the only Security Council member to do so. The Bill would expose the weakness of international...
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on securing the Bill’s Second Reading and on his persistence, which spans a decade from its first introduction in 2016. Today, as an adviser to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and someone who has spent many years, like others in this House, working on conflict-related sexual violence, I welcome today’s opportunity to speak in support of the Genocide Determination Bill. I would like to ground my support in an example. I have addressed the House before on Sudan’s wider humanitarian crisis. I return to it through the lens of accountability. In February this year, the United Nations independent fact-finding mission for Sudan concluded that the Rapid Support Forces’ siege and takeover of El Fasher bore the hallmarks of genocide against the Zaghawa and Fur communities. The mission documented mass executions, enforced disappearances and widespread sexual violence, deployed alongside starvation as a co-ordinated campaign to destroy these communities. Yet, as with Darfur two years earlier, there remains no mechanism in United Kingdom law through which survivors can ask the courts to make the kind of determination that successive Governments have said should properly be made by judges rather than Ministers. This is the problem the Bill seeks to fix. It is victim centred. It allows survivors and organisations representing them to bring evidence before the courts. That principle should not be...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie. I would also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, not just for his perseverance on this Bill, but for his lifelong advocacy on behalf of so many. I am not a regular contributor on foreign affairs, but I was moved to speak today because of a radio programme, specifically a dispatch from Afghanistan on Radio 4’s “From Our Own Correspondent”. It is about a little girl, five-year-old Shaiqa. I realise that her story is not unique and there are many such stories noble Lords can tell, and have told, from personal experience. Sometimes a story just grabs you, so I hope noble Lords will not mind if I share it as the focus of my contribution. This is as I heard it, in abridged form. “Five year-old Shaiqa has a striking face, with brown hair and big black eyes. She stares at us suspiciously, clinging on to her father, 34 year-old Sayed Ema, her small arms wrapped around his neck. ‘She thinks all strangers might be doctors, that’s why she’s scared’, he tells us, as he holds her close, comforts her and kisses the top of her head. A month ago, Shaiqa spent two weeks in hospital after she had surgery for appendicitis. Sayed and Shaiqa live in Ghor province in the Hindu Kush, but amid a severe hunger and jobs crisis, Sayed barely makes enough money as a labourer to provide food for his family. Funding medical treatment is simply out of reach.” “So, Sayed made an unbearable choice. ‘I sold her to a relative so I...
My Lords, as other noble Lords have done, I congratulate my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on this extremely important Bill and on his commitment to this issue, which reaches back across decades. I am proud to speak along with others who support the Bill. I wish to associate with every word from my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. We have witnessed acts of genocide around the globe and, despite the weasel words of denial, we are still witnessing nothing short of the attempt to extinguish national, ethnic, racial, religious and other groups. Srebrenica, Rwanda, Sudan, Cambodia, China, the Palestinians in Gaza-sadly, the list goes on. These are genocides that happened and are still happening before our eyes. The atrocious events that are often cited to excuse the inhumane onslaught against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group can never be justified. Innocent women, men and children are maimed, injured and killed, and protests are dismissed by the politicians enacting such inhumane behaviour. They pronounce the dead and maimed as collateral damage or cite that innocents are being used as shields by their enemies. The House does not need me to explain that modern warfare provides means and methods that do not need to bring about such human carnage. How is it ever legitimate to kill innocent people who are used as shields? It can never be legitimised, and, in a civilised world, it can never be excused or accepted. Whenever genocide, or the...
My Lords, I join in the shower of congratulations on the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for sponsoring the Bill, which I support, and for his many years of work in this field. The Bill is not about labelling current or past actions as genocide; that often passionately contentious area diverts attention from what the Bill is about. It is simply about giving effect to the long-standing government policy of referring questions on genocide to the courts. The crucial word there is “referring”-not leaving a possible case to find its haphazard way to international courts, either directly or via domestic courts in other countries. That is why the Bill needs our support: to bridge a legal gap. This has already been fully and clearly detailed by excellent earlier speakers, and I will spare your Lordships from repetition of it. Today we stand on one side of this gap. We look across at awful events occurring on the other side, and modern technology means that we see these events in full colour and in real time. Questions may get raised in Parliament. The Government perhaps wring their hands and even strongly condemn the actions we see, and they may send some material aid to those surviving or affected. But, despite our genocide convention obligations, Government after Government have stood and looked across the gap but never built that simple bridge towards what the Bill represents: perpetrators being held to account at some point, or the prevention of genocide happening-perhaps as part of a...
My Lord, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, not only for introducing this Bill but for decades of tireless work exposing some of the gravest human rights abuses across the world. Whether campaigning for victims of religious persecution, standing up for prisoners of conscience or ensuring that those suffering unimaginable atrocities are not forgotten by Parliament, he has shown remarkable consistency and moral courage. He referred to himself as a young MP. When he was a young MP, my parents were his constituents, so I blame the noble Lord for my interest in politics thereafter. I say to any Members of this House who share that concern: refer it to the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I also thank the noble Lord for the time he gave me, together with Professor Ochab, whose work on genocide prevention and accountability has enriched this debate and from whom I learned a lot in our discussion. Having listened to the debate, I suggest that there is remarkably little disagreement on the principles across your Lordships’ House. Genocide is rightly described as the “crime of crimes”. It is an assault not only on individual victims but on humanity itself. We, the United Kingdom, are a party to the genocide convention. We accept, therefore, both morally and legally, obligations to prevent genocide and punish those responsible. I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the objective that underlies the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, seeks to ensure that, where there...
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for presenting this Bill. Like all noble Lords in today’s debate, I pay tribute to him for his tireless campaigning, both in this House and indeed in an earlier life in the other place, on these issues on behalf of so many who have no voice. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, it is taking place on the Day of International Criminal Justice, with today being the 28th anniversary of the founding of the International Criminal Court. How we consider the crime of genocide is among the most serious foreign policy responsibilities of any Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General calls it the “apex crime”. That the genocide convention was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 underlines the international community’s shared commitment to ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust occur never again. It is critical that the UK Government’s position on genocide determination is robust and consistent with our obligations under the convention. The long-standing position of successive British Governments fulfils this. The position is that any formal judgment as to whether genocide has occurred is a matter for a competent national or international court after considering all necessary evidence and as part of a credible judicial process, including appropriate jurisdiction....
When I referred to an omertà, I was not suggesting that there had not been discussion in this House about Gaza or the West Bank. I was suggesting that many people around this House feel inhibited about raising this issue or speaking to it because they fear that they will be accused of antisemitism.
I apologise if I misunderstood my noble friend. To be absolutely clear, somebody can be very critical of the actions of the Israeli Government, as I am, but that should not be conflated with antisemitism. But I also do not think that necessarily inhibits any Member in your Lordships’ House from making a clear and dispassionate case about actions that are being undertaken by the Israeli Government, or, at the same time, from calling out antisemitism where it occurs in this or any country. On that matter, I hope that we are agreed. I hope that I have addressed as many questions as I possibly can in, probably, far too much time. I will reflect on Hansard and I undertake to write to any noble Lords if I have missed their question.
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to today’s important debate. I am grateful even to those who have disagreed with the principle, the practicalities or the specifics of the Bill, because I think I heard from the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson and Lord Katz, from their respective Front Benches, their willingness to go on discussing this. That is why I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading today and that it will go on to Committee, so that we can have those discussions. I also had a note from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, who would very much like to have taken part in today’s debate, and I thank those noble Lords on his Benches who have indicated their support for the Bill. To noble Lords who have spoken against or who have entered reservations, I say straightaway that I am very willing to go on discussing those. As a preliminary, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that I am very happy to take the blame for his becoming involved in politics during his schooldays in Liverpool and I thank him for the contribution that he made today, and for the discussions that we have had outside the House about the Bill. Yes, there is a gap; he is right about that. I am perfectly content to accept that there may be various ways of filling it and I accept the point that has been made across the House that this would be only one contribution to the filling of that gap, but we are right to be having that debate. I agree with the noble Lord that we do not...
Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.