Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie today said that the SNP risks dragging Scotland’s reputation through the mud following reports that a Chinese firm at the heart of a controversial £10bn deal with the Scottish Government is tied to human rights abuses.
It was reported in today’s Herald that Amnesty International named China Railway Group Ltd (CRG) and subsidiaries it controls in a report exposing human rights abuses related to the mining industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It had previously emerged that CRG had been blacklisted for investment by Norway’s oil fund over fears that the construction giant was involved in gross corruption.
Willie said:
The last thing that the First Minister did before the election started was sign a £10bn deal with a business directly tied to allegations of corruption.
The SNP have talked tough on tax avoidance and fair employment but they have rejected my calls to end government grants to companies who avoid tax or fail to pay the national living wage. Worse, they seem happy to get into bed with companies who have been blacklisted by the Norwegian oil fund and criticised by Amnesty International over their human rights record.
This is not simply about Nicola Sturgeon’s gross error of judgement. This SNP deal is dragging Scotland’s reputation through the mud. The First Minister must shred this deal.
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In the period after de-colonisation, the Soviets and the Chinese sought to fill the niches in African society formerly occupied by Western capitalists. This is especially in the fields of infrastructure and mineral exploitation. Where they are exploiting the workers, the local environment and the country as a whole there are no more entitled to a free ride than their predecessors who formed ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ (to quote Edward Heath).
It is still going on. A trail which leads to closure of Port Talbot starts from the iron ore from the mines of Phalobora, where the Chinese own 35% at least and buy most of the product.
Mind you Cameron has signed up Britain’s nuclear future to China. The problem is really free market economics and the insistence that foreign investment is the way ahead.
Please can we stop this constant whinging about ghastly foreigners who violate human rights. In the week that the outrage of Hillsborough was proven, we should demonstrate some humility and think about how we could deliver human rights to our own citizens.