Speeches by Maynard.

“What is Tesco’s approach to sourcing product from Xinjiang in China now?”

“Okay. Obviously, you all know very well about the “Panorama” programme, Antonio Petti, shell companies and all this. What surprises me is this. Take the product coming out of Xinjiang, things like cotton, tomatoes, the well-known products. The “Panorama” programme used an origin verification firm to look at the tomatoe…”

“I completely agree again but what I am trying to understand is, say for cotton or tomatoes, whether you are running a systematic process for all of your cotton products or all of your tomato products, by default, not to get a perfect answer, because I understand you will not get a perfect answer, but to raise your leve…”

“I apologise for interrupting but time and everything else—I am not trying to be rude. Given that we know that a lot of cotton comes out of Xinjiang and that a lot of tomatoes comes out of Xinjiang, would it not be safer to be saying that we do not want that in our supply chain if we are Tesco and therefore, we are goin…”

“By default, are you asking all your suppliers whether their cotton and tomatoes come from China?”

“Okay, but sorry that was not the question. The question was are you asking by default all your cotton and tomato products whether the product has Chinese—Chinese not Xinjiang—cotton in it? Are you asking that question by default, given that you are worried about Xinjiang?”

“Cotton?”

“Will you always know whether your cotton comes from China?”

“Restricted visas: you were quick out of the gate to flag about the Seasonal Worker Scheme and, whether it is people working in the fields or people working in people’s houses, this is a high-risk area. How would you most like to see that scheme reformed?”

“Yes. Frankly, I do not think you are respecting the Committee at all. On your website I can see about 20 products that are all cotton, which I just searched under “cotton”, and yet you say to our Chair that you cannot state whether SHEIN is selling any products that are made in China that are made of cotton. I find tha…”

“I am asking you whether you think you are being disrespectful by being so blanketly void of answers.”

“With respect, I totally agree with everything you say; no question about that, but it is not conclusive. Are you de facto running tests on the obvious products all the time, because, if not, why wouldn’t you be?”

“Ms Zhu, that is not true. That is simply not true. We have asked you some very, very, very simple questions and you are not giving us straight answers. That, I find, dismisses the point of why we are here today. Do you understand how simple are the questions we are asking you? Do any of your products have cotton from C…”

“I will park it. I will say that you have not answered to the best of your ability and that you have obfuscated wilfully.”

“You have a rating from A to E for audit findings. Some of the things at the bottom end of that are dormitories inside factories, child labour and so on. Will you say a little bit about what you would like to see stamped out? What other practices are you looking to get rid of over the next one, two, three years that you…”

“But there are no particular red lines as to things that, “Within X years we need to get rid of this, this, this and this” that you are focused on?”

“Sorry.”

“Guizhou is in West China? Isn’t it in South West China?”

“What about West China? You have mentioned every other point.”

“Many of us recognise that our drainage network is in disrepair in many places. Much of that stems from the Environment Agency’s main river designation; an enormous amount of bureaucracy is required in order to get permission to unblock what is nominally called a main river but to almost all of us is a ditch. These ditc…”