thesun | CHINA owes Britain £351billion in coronavirus compensation
and the government should pursue it through the international courts, a
study has concluded.
An investigation into the crisis has claimed the horrific impacts of
coronavirus could have been mitigated if China had just been more honest
about the outbreak.
The report, to be published tomorrow by the Henry Jackson Society
(HJS), a British foreign policy think-tank, claims China directly
breached international healthcare treaty responsibilities.
It also argues there are ten legal avenues major nations - such as Britain - could take to pursue damages from Beijing.
Experts calculated the G7, the world’s leading economies, face a bill of £3.2trillion.
And they said this could have been avoided if the Communist Party was more open about coronavirus, reports The Mail on Sunday.
Britain’s slice of the compensation would be used to cover the full
costs of the treasury’s economic bailout plan and the hike in NHS
spending to manage the crisis.
World governments have been forced to inject huge sums of cash into
their economies to keep them going, helping to prop up businesses and
support laid off or furloughed workers.
HJS experts concluded the Communist Party “sought to conceal bad news
at the top” and to “conceal bad news from the outside world”.
It comes as British ministers are now reportedly not discounting the theory that coronavirus actually came from a leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan.
And meanwhile, the report has spurred a group of 15 top Tories to
call on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “rethink and reset” the United
Kingdom’s relationship with China.
In a joint letter, the four former Cabinet ministers and 11 MPs said
they are worried about the “damage to the rules-based system caused by
China’s non-compliance with international treaties”.
