Pressure on Health Secretary to ban Chinese genomics firm BGI

SAJID JAVID is under pressure to ban work with a blacklisted Chinese genomics firm over concerns it has been used to suppress the country’s Uyghur population.

A group of MPS, Lords and campaigners have written to the Health Secretary calling for a moratorium on work with BGI Group, which has been awarded Government Covid testing contracts.

It comes after The Daily Telegraph revealed that Mr Javid had banned new installations involving Hikvision, the Chinese CCTV camera company, over human rights concerns.

BGI was added to the US entity list, which prevents American companies and government entities from doing business with it, in 2020. The Department of Commerce said BGI had been “allegedly conducting genetic analyses used to further repress Muslim groups” in Xinjiang in western China.

The letter to Mr Javid, authored by the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, is signed by MPS Nusrat Ghani, Geraint Davies and Layla Moran, peers Lord Alton of Liverpool and the Bishop of St Albans, and Uyghur organisations.

BGI won an £11m Covid testing contract last year that expired in November and does not have any ongoing work with the Government. However, it is part of the National Microbiology Framework, set up to improve diagnostic testing, and has worked with UK universities and the Wellcome Trust charitable foundation.

“All of this adds up to a shocking partnership between the UK and a notorious supporter of genocide,” the letter says.

A Department for Health and Social Care spokesman said: “The Health and Social Care Secretary stands united with the rest of Government in condemning the scale and severity of the human rights violations being perpetrated against Uyghurs.”

BGI Group, which did not respond to a request for comment, has previously announced plans to build a “gene bank” in Xinjiang. The company has said it does “not engage in unethical practices and does not provide gene technology for the surveillance of Uyghurs”.