You can read my 2020/2021 Parliamentary Annual Report here.

Read the 10 Point Plan To Get There.

The UK is a hugely important venue for EU artists. With world -famous music festivals, orchestras, and concert halls, to list just a few, the UK is a central destination not just for performers but also audiences. 12.6 million tourists are drawn to the UK every year for festivals and gigs during the course of which they spend £4.7bn, and sustain over 45,000 jobs in music tourism.

The restrictions in place upon EU musicians travelling and working effectively in the UK puts at risk the vibrancy of the UK music scene, as well as affecting all those who rely on the live music industry for their livelihoods. The visa requirements are bureaucratic and compared to those that EU musicians face elsewhere in Europe make travelling and performing here a much less appealing prospect.

By restricting those who can perform in the UK, inevitably what is on offer to audiences will be impoverished. Our arts and culture benefits from the cross fertilisation of the interaction between UK and EU artists, and EU artists enrich our own cultural environment. This is now at risk.

Read my eleventh Coronavirus Crisis Report here.

Read my tenth Coronavirus Crisis Report here.

Read my ninth Coronavirus Crisis Report here.

Read my eighth Coronavirus Crisis Report here. 

Read my seventh Coronavirus Crisis Report here.

His Excellency
Ambassador Liu Xiaoming
Embassy of China
49 Portland Place
London
W1B 1JL

04 September 2020

Your Excellency,

RE: Oppression of the Uyghur people

We are writing to express our extreme concern at the treatment of the Uyghur people in
Xinjiang.

We understand that approximately one million people have been detained and held in detention camps. Those who have escaped give horrifying testimony of religious persecution, physical abuse and torture. Sickening footage was shown to you on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show in July of a large number of people blindfolded, kneeling and shaven, waiting to be loaded on to trains. The similarities between this video and historical footage of Nazi concentration camps are truly chilling.

Your interview followed further shocking accusations that the Chinese Government is actively pursuing a policy to reduce the Uyghur population with Uyghur women facing forced sterilisation, forced abortion and the forced removal of their wombs. It has even been reported that birth rates have fallen by 60% in some Uyghur areas.

The Chinese Government’s actions must be stated for what they are: a systematic and calculated programme of ethnic cleansing against the Uyghur people.

When the world is presented with such overwhelming evidence of gross human rights abuses, nobody can turn a blind eye. We as Parliamentarians in the United Kingdom write to express our absolute condemnation of this oppression and call for it to end immediately.

Yours sincerely,

Siobhan McDonagh MP

Harriet Harman MP 

+ 133 other cross-party MPs and Peers

Read my fifth Coronavirus Crisis Report here.