Sanctions — House of Commons, 2022-03-01
Topic: International Affairs
Layla Michelle Moran (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am so grateful for that intervention, and I absolutely do not understand. I intervened about that at the beginning of the debate. I have listened to the whole debate and am none the wiser, having listened to many sage Members also try to work it out. I think we are owed an explanation from the Minister. He went away for a bit but he has come back, I hope with an explanation. What is going on? We have the benefit of parliamentary privilege in this place. I will not pre-empt what Mr Speaker may or may not allow in future business of the House, but if we need to sit here and read out all the names, we have to do it. But it should not be up to us, and a lot of the names are ones that the Government already have. The information is there, and there is no reason we should be waiting Some of the new names on the EU sanction list include Mikhail Fridman, Alisher Usmanov, Petr Aven, Igor Sechin, and Nikolay Tokarev—they are there. There is now a joint taskforce for sharing information, which is good. Apparently it always existed, so I did not quite understand the announcement—perhaps it is being shared more. However, if we look at the number of people we have sanctioned recently, it is nine, one of whom is Putin, which we all know is just symbolic. We can go further I disagree with the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who said that these measures will not do very much. They will do quite a lot, because we know that is how Putin manages his money. If we go after these people, we are going after him. That is how he operates. The broader point, which it is important to make, is that it feels as if, because of the tragedy unfolding before our eyes, the wool is being pulled from many people’s eyes. I fully congratulate Members across the House who have been raising these points over many years and indeed across many countries Our own reports have also warned about this, not least the Russia report, which states: "This level of integration—in "Londongrad" in particular—means that any measures now being taken by the Government are not preventative but rather constitute damage limitation… The links of the Russian elite to the UK…provides access to UK companies and political figures and thereby a means for broad Russian influence in the UK. To a certain extent, this cannot be untangled." How did we get here? That was the question that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) posed in his excellent speech. I will posit an answer. I think it was greed, and not just from one political party; it was a collective greed, and a wilful naivety to what has been in front of us. All the signs were there, and there was a collective wilful naivety for the sake of rapid economic growth and actually some very laudable aims—trade, for example, being a tool of diplomacy. We want to support business and the City. All those things can be true at the same time, but there came a moment when some people sniffed a rat and they did not call the exterminator. That was many years ago I think it was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) who described this as a cancer. As we know, removing a cancer is painful to the person who has it—it can even be dangerous—but the reason we do so is for the person’s medium and long-term health. We have to do this, so I end simply by urging the Minister not to shy away from the difficult questions, or from things that are not coming in the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill and the overseas entities register, and to deal with some of the issues of lawfare, or at least put a framework in place in order to deal with them How can it be right, if transparency is the best disinfectant, that we do not allow our free press and media to investigate individuals and companies, because they are being consistently harassed? That is bad for democracy, so I hope to add my voice to all of those on the Back Benches in the debate. I urge the Minister, and the Government, to grasp this nettle, as painful as it may be. If he wants to go further and faster, the Liberal Democrats will support him.