Why won’t Labour oppose solar panel slavery?

The evils of slavery weigh so heavily on Britain’s conscience that we must decolonise our museums and our university courses, tear down statues of all those involved in the trade and quite possibly pay billions of pounds in reparations to the descendants of slaves who live 200 years ago. Yet the obsession with putting right historic wrongs does not, it seem, extend to rooting out slavery which is taking place beneath our noses in current times.

When the bill to set up Ed Miliband’s Great British Energy reached the House of Lords, Lord Alton of Liverpool, a former Liberal MP who now sits as a crossbencher, tabled an amendment which would stop the government-owned company buying solar panels where there is ‘credible evidence’ that slavery has been used in their manufacturing process. Now, the government is set to whip its MPs to remove the clause. The ‘race to net zero’, as ministers like to call it, appears to trump the human rights of forced labourers.