This letter was sent to Rachel Reeves on 10 November 2025.
Dear Rachel Reeves,
‘Chancellor unlocks £6.4 billion of trade and investment deals on growth boosting Gulf visit’
I write in response to the above press release, which was published on the Gov UK website on 28 October. While it celebrates this expansion in trade relations with Saudi Arabia, I find it astounding that there is no mention of any human rights safeguards that have been built into the various deals.
You cannot possibly be unaware of the vast scale of human rights abuses occurring in Saudi Arabia, which have been well-documented. You must already know that they include the widespread use of the death penalty often for minor offences, often against foreign nationals and also in cases of offences committed by juveniles (typically carried out once the come of age, in prison). You will no doubt also be aware of severe penalties without due legal process against individuals speaking out on various issues for so-called ‘terrorist’ offences (defined very widely indeed) for expressing dissent, and tried in Special Criminal Courts of highly dubious legal standing in international law in terms of ‘judges’ and unfair procedures/processes, the continuing repression of women’s rights as well as of various minority groups, and the total lack of freedom for civic organisations or indeed a free press.
Perhaps it is however necessary to draw your attention to the dangers for Saudi citizens and British companies active in Saudi Arabia that are likely to result from specific aspects of the trade package.
I note that the comment by UKEF CEO Tim Reid: “Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030 programme presents significant economic opportunities for British businesses …” makes no mention of the widespread abuses of migrant workers subjected to the former kafala sponsorship system, some of which are tantamount to forced labour and human trafficking. Many of those affected were manual workers employed on the construction of football stadia and other projects related to the NEOM development.
Issues those workers have frequently faced are:
- Deception and illegal payment demands by recruitment agents
- Subjection to excessive working hours and wage theft by local franchises and third-party labour suppliers
- Seriously inadequate living conditions including infestations, poor food and unclean water
- Restrictions on job mobility and leaving Saudi Arabia and refusal of repatriation expenses.
- Verbal and physical abuse by contractors
- Long hours, inadequate breaks and health and safety provision, and poor or complete lack of redress mechanisms.
A report by Human Rights Watch recently pointed out that scores of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia die in gruesome yet avoidable workplace-related accidents, including falling from buildings, electrocution, and even decapitation, and that Saudi authorities have failed to adequately protect workers from preventable deaths, to investigate workplace safety incidents and ensure timely and adequate compensation for families. A separate investigation by Fairsquare further highlights a serious lack of effective Saudi government policies and processes to determine the cause of migrant worker deaths and the likelihood of further deaths on World Cup construction sites.
UK companies need to be cautious when dealing with Saudi business partners. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights make it clear that businesses have a responsibility to undertake human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address their adverse human rights impacts.
This should cover adverse human rights impacts that the business may cause or contribute to through its own activities, or which may be directly linked to its operations, products or services by its business relationships. In the event of a failure to take these steps, companies would be failing in their responsibility to respect human rights and expose themselves to claims for remedy, typically financial compensation, as well as suffering reputational damage.
Major international companies Amazon and Carrefour have already fallen foul of these provisions due to a failure to monitor the activities of Saudi subcontractors.
Regarding the Saudi Aramco Jafurah Gas Infrastructure project, the related Fadhili Housing Complex and the deal with fossil fuels and petrochemicals company Kahoo Energy, it has frequently been observed that Saudi Arabia has blocked any discussion of introducing targets to reduce the reduction of fossil fuels the Paris Agreement and also rejected limits on the production of plastics. As early as 2023 the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights clearly highlighted the fact that several United Nations special rapporteurs have affirmed the responsibility of the Aramco for human rights violations in the context of climate change.
Regarding the deals with Cipher and Quantexa AI, the current Saudi push towards cybersecurity goes hand in hand with an extensive use of surveillance software to identify dissidents including infiltration of the Twitter Corporation. BBC Click recently reported that foreign representatives at a cybersecurity conference in Riyadh declined to take their own devices into the country for security reasons while Jeff Bezos claimed his mobile phone was hacked on a visit. The expansion of data centres in Saudi Arabia more generally raises significant human rights concerns, primarily due to the potential for unchecked state surveillance and the violation of the rights to privacy, freedom of expression and association.
In connection with the above, I would like to ask you the following questions:
1. What if any human rights issues were discussed with Saudi representatives during the original Trades Mission and the subsequent negotiations?
2. In the event of the abuses established under the kafala system and Vision 2030 continuing and potential resulting liabilities, what advice is the Government offering to UK companies looking to conduct trade with and in Saudi Arabia?
3. In the light of the work of the Joint International Institute for Clean Hydrogen, and your own enthusiasm for a clean energy future, what efforts are being made to persuade Saudi Arabia to decrease its oil and plastics production – both of which they declined to do at recent international summits?
4. What assurances can you offer that the growing contact with Saudi AI and Cybersecurity companies will not lead to further widescale surveillance and invasions of privacy?
I look forward to receiving your reply shortly, which I will arrange to publish along with this letter.
Yours sincerely,
Colin Taylor,
Secretary Elect,
Newcastle upon Tyne Amnesty International Local Group,
pp. Saudi Arabia Sub-Group
Comments and evaluation
As no reply had been received by 10 December, an extended deadline of 10 January was offered in consideration of the time of the year but no reply or acknowledgement has been received, in spite of a direct request to HM Treasury for a response from Liz Twist, my MP, to whom thanks are due.
The lack of response does nothing to suggest that the Chancellor and HM Treasury have taken any action to allay the numerous human rights pitfalls outlined or offered any advice to UK businesses on the subject. If this is the case, it would effectively be an abrogation of responsibility, as UK companies trading with Saudi Arabia are then potentially themselves liable for any claims resulting from human rights abuses committed by their business partners and supply chains that have not been satisfactorily addressed.
Possibly the way the UK Government is structured exemplifies the problem by dealing with international business and human rights separately. The human rights angle is dealt with by the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office who can and do raise human rights issues with the Saudi regime (although with limited transparency) while trade is the responsibility of the Department of Business and Trade. This seems to negate any possibility of linking trade deals to human rights and, interestingly, DoBT’s guide to exporting to Saudi Arabia does not mention the term at all.
Possibly also we can deduce the relative importance afforded to each from the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer visited Saudi Arabia to promote the recent package whereas negotiations over human rights appear to have been conducted at a lower level by FCDO officials. The magazine ‘Private Eye’ incidentally noted that the Chancellor also provided guarantees of £5 billion worth of taxpayers’ money to businesses owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
A slight footnote on the original letter is its mention of the ‘former’ kafala system. This was made in the light of press stories on the Indian subcontent and in ‘Middle East Eye’ that Saudi Arabia was abolishing the kafala system. A representative of the Amnesty International Secretariat has however confirmed that such stories, which were not picked up more widely, were in fact spurious and there is little likelihood that the documented abuses of foreign workers are likely to decline in the near future.
This is likely to be a matter of considerable debate in the run up to World Cup 2034 in Saudi Arabia.
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