Sanctions — House of Commons, 2022-02-22
Topic: International Affairs
Robert William Henry Seely (Conservative, Centre-right): We are 15 years late. It should not take the gravest crisis since world war two for us to get our house in order; this is just good housekeeping that we should have done 20 years ago. I thank the hon. Member for making that point Where is the adoption of the recommendations of the Foreign Affairs Committee and ISC reports? One of the most chilling elements of the ISC report was our own National Crime Agency saying that it lacks the resources necessary to take on the oligarchs. We—our own people, the public good—are being silenced in our own country by UK lawyers in the pay of some of the richest and most malign human beings on earth. Where is the tightening of the rules at Companies House? I know we have all said this, but I want to say it again. Banks in Germany, Denmark and Sweden all laundered billions of pounds from Russia but they used UK shell companies to do so. Is it really in our national interest to have a system so open to corruption? If the Government understand hybrid conflict, what are they doing to deal with this threat This SI is strong and I support it, but how many foreign lobbying scandals will the UK have to endure before we realise that we need a foreign lobbying Bill, or as some have called it, a foreign agents registration Bill? The US has had one since 1938, the Australians since 2018. The only way we found out about Lord Barker’s work for Deripaska was through The New York Times. Lord Goldsmith, a former Labour Attorney General—I make no political point here—said recently: "I am sorry to have to take leave of absence, but felt it was the only option open to me given the choice between that or revealing privileged and confidential information." I understand he is off to work for the Russians. He keeps his title, but by not sitting in the House of Lords he does not have to declare. In the US or Australia he would be filling out form after form, saying what he was doing; in this country, hasta la vista, he is off to work for the Russians—be it the Russian Government or major Russian institutions—and what do we know? As the Russians would say, "nichevo"— we know nothing. We need a foreign lobbying Bill, and if we were serious about dealing with the Russian problem we would have one Where, too, are the measures to stop libel and data protection laws being abused by unscrupulous lawyers? Barely two weeks ago we had a very good debate on lawfare in this country, and we talked about the need for action against SLAPPs—strategic lawsuits against public participation. As the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) said, that is when legal action is used to frighten, harass or intimidate the media or civil society groups. The Government understand hybrid conflict; what are they doing about this threat It takes brave authors to deal with the threats from Putin’s oligarchs, people like Catherine Belton and Tom Burgis, and brave publishers like Arabella Pike at HarperCollins, but others, including Cambridge University Press, have been scared away from publishing books about Putin and Russia because of the power of Putin’s cliques in this country. Is it really in our national interest to have a system in which some of the world’s most sophisticated law firms have reduced themselves to offering a one-stop shop of intimidation and dirt-digging to some of the most corrupt people on earth? I do not think any of these things are in our national interest. I think they need to be challenged. We have all heard about the threat of Putin, and I agree. I feel very strongly that this threat has been obvious for at least a decade and certainly since Crimea. I wish we had taken action then. Yet again, we are doing too little too late. Rather than veering from complacency to panic and back again, being unable to decide if we want to damn authoritarian regimes or suck up to their money, we need a consistent policy that sets out in a robust and intelligent way what our values are and the need to protect our institutions and our values against this growing threat.