Government defeated over Trade Bill amid human rights concerns - BBC News
Peers back an amendment giving the High Court the right to rule on whether genocide has taken place.
Protests against China's alleged abuse of the Muslim Uighur community

The government has been defeated in the House of Lords on its post-Brexit Trade Bill, with peers backing a move to stop the UK doing deals with countries that abuse human rights.

They supported an amendment giving the High Court the right to determine if genocide has been committed.

If it decided it had, the government would then have to hold a debate to set out what it proposed to do.

Ministers say they are are committed to working with Parliament on a solution.

The House of Lords has been considering the Trade Bill for a second time after MPs overturned a series of changes peers made in January.

The legislation enables the UK to strike new trade deals with countries after leaving the EU.

But there is concern over the human rights records of current and potential trading partners, including China and its treatment of the Uighur people.

The government says it has spoken out strongly against human rights abuses in China and around the world.

Crossbench peer Lord Alton, who brought forward the amendment, said it was time "to speak and to act".

Under his plans, the High Court would be given the right to make a preliminary judgement on genocide and ministers would then be obliged to have a debate in Parliament if such human rights abuses were found to have occurred.

Ministers would have to set out what they planned to do "within a reasonable time".

Speaking in the debate, Lord Alton said it was an attempt to "impose a limitation" on ministers where genocide was shown to have taken place.

Peers backed his amendment by 359 votes to 188.

The government also lost votes on two other amendments.

One by Conservative Lord Lansley would give Parliament the opportunity to set negotiating terms for trade deals.

The other, by Labour's Lord Collins, would compel ministers to report on human rights before trade deals are considered.

Investment minister Lord Grimstone insisted that "trade does not have to come at the expense of human rights".

He said genocide was "notoriously hard to prove", but the government had "some sympathy" with calls to give Parliament a greater role to scrutinise where there were "credible concerns".

Lord Grimstone indicated that, if a parliamentary select committee published a report on genocide and sought a debate, the government would facilitate one, adding that human rights abuses could not be "swept under the carpet".

But many Conservative backbench MPs are uneasy at the government's approach.

In January, the government narrowly avoided defeat in the Commons when 33 of them voted to outlaw trade deals with countries judged to have committed genocide.

The Trade Bill will now return to the Commons for MPs to vote on the amendments, in the latest series of parliamentary back-and-forth between the two Houses, known as ping-pong.