Countering Russian Aggression and Tackling Illicit Finance — House of Commons, 2022-02-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Martin John Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I think I have been here before. We have discussed the role of unincorporated associations in providing a loophole for political campaign finance in the UK, particularly for the Conservative party, and notably, the role of the Constitutional Research Council, which seeks to promote the Union in all its parts. We are all mindful of the £435,000 that it donated to the DUP during the Brexit campaign Although I knew we were sure to hear a fairly good overview of the myriad examples of Tories having their mouths full of Russian gold this afternoon, along with the excellent article by John Kampfner in this morning’s edition of The Times, I realised that it might be worth considering a longer view of the modern history of illicit finance in this political state. I support the official Opposition’s motion but I will give a broader historical narrative as to why we are where we are The excellent work done by Peter Geoghegan at openDemocracy on campaign finance and by David Leask in The Herald, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), on the abuse of Scottish limited partnerships deserves greater scrutiny. I also refer hon. Members to my Westminster Hall debate in February 2019 on the saga of unincorporated associations. The whole morass of state capture by financial interests, often from overseas, was not inevitable and could have been avoided Oliver Bullough, who has done so much to document the nexus of Russian illicit finance and political influence, has written quite a few times about the advent of the Eurodollar age, as the Soviet Union found a rather deflated 1960s City of London a willing recipient of its foreign exchange reserves and the modern practice of offshore financing was born. That was just the start, however, of the competitive advantage that the City enjoyed when the sluice gates were opened It was to the great detriment of the good people of Russia that at the very moment they were experiencing economic shock therapy and the systemic looting of their country’s great wealth, those looking for convenient places to stash the loot were welcomed—I have to say; it is a historical reality—by a new Labour Government desperate to show that they could be trusted to do right by the City. That is well documented. I will just dip into the economist Brett Christophers’ superb book "Rentier Capitalism": "It was New Labour that in the late 1990s shrunk the City’s regulatory system into the minimalist form of the Financial Services Authority...the FSA’s architects and administrators were themselves entirely up-front about just how hands-off and permissive this pared-down new regulator would be." The alarm bells were already ringing for those who could see what was happening in Russia after 1999. I have spoken about John Kampfner’s article in The Times today, and I think we should be really mindful of some of the other things he has said in the past It is not as though the signs were not there for the wider public. In 2006, not only did Putin’s increasingly murderous domestic agenda become clearer with the assassination of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, but he began to demonstrate the contempt with which he saw the UK with the cruel and calculated murder of Alexander Litvinenko here in London. I am afraid that that began under the premiership of Tony Blair, and the phrase "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" seems to ring a wee bit hollow We all know very well what happened next, and we have had a pretty good run through the ways that the looted wealth of the Russian people—ordinary Russians who, as I mentioned earlier, should maybe have been given the golden visas to come here and enjoy the benefits of freedom and democracy—has entered the body politic not only in buying football clubs, art galleries and prestige property, but in keeping private schools and charitable foundations, as well as Members on both sides of the other Chamber, financially solvent The UK often likes to see itself as some sort of soft underbelly of superpower, but that soft power has never been as soft an underbelly as it is now, in that too many of our ruling class have been happy to have been rubbed. We are beginning to see the results of this almost three decades-long infatuation with illicit Russian finance, and I have to say that I cannot help but wonder if we are not correct in concluding that this very fabric of the British political state really could not help itself.