Britain's Place in the World

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), I welcome one aspect of the Queen’s Speech: the commitment that we will continue to play a leading role in global affairs, defending our interests and promoting our values, and that we will position ourselves at the forefront of the most complex international security issues.

That is why the sins and omissions of this Queen’s Speech are quite intriguing. There is one point on Earth where we have a particular legacy, where promises were made and broken by the world community and where the world community has now left the most terrible state of injustice: Kashmir. So I was surprised that there has been no mention in today’s debate of our historical obligations to make good on the promises made in the 1940s. Much of this debate has rightly centred on Brexit issues, but our obligations, duties, moral responsibilities, history and commitments stretch much, much wider. We should therefore step up and do far more to raise our voice to try to bring a resolution to what is going on right now in Kashmir.

Some people say that this is a conflict between two nuclear powers—if only it was as simple as that. This is a conflict between not two nuclear powers, but three. China is the world’s biggest consumer of Gulf oil and it is building a pipeline from China through Pakistan so that it can soon access oil through that overland route. The idea that China is going to permit someone to put its thumb on what is a new jugular vein is fanciful analysis.

So I would like to know from the Minister why the British Government are insisting that this remains a bilateral conflict. That is a fantasy, one enshrined in the treaty of Simla. In recent days, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, has said that that treaty is dead. This is no longer a bilateral issue, and by his unilateral action to suspend article 370 of the constitution—unilateral action prohibited by the treaty of Simla—President Modi has said in clear terms that this now requires a multilateral solution.

President Modi’s decision to suspend article 370 has set the stage for an incredibly dangerous slide into violence, whereby risk is now multiplied by the decision to deploy thousands more troops into what is already one of the most militarised areas on earth. That danger, in turn, has been multiplied yet again by the decision to suspend all communications and put the people under curfew in what surely must be one of the largest open prisons on the planet.

The UK signed a treaty, the instrument of accession, on 26 October 1947, so we are a party to this, in a way. That treaty has now been breached, but we have heard nothing from the British Government about how they plan to remedy that. Crucially, Ministers have accepted that human rights are always a multilateral issue, so we must hear something from a Government who have set out before this Parliament a clear determination to put themselves “at the forefront” of solving

“the most complex international security issues”—[Official Report, 14 October 2019; Vol. 666, c. 5.]

We must hear a plan from them to stand up for the interests of British citizens. I am not the only one on the Opposition Benches, or in this House, who is getting cases from people who have friends and family in the area and yet have no idea what is going on with them, because there has been a communications blackout. Crucially, we now need clear and urgent action from this Government in the United Nations to ensure that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is given free and unfettered access to the area, on both Pakistan’s side and the Indian side. I want to know from the Minister what he has done to pursue this agenda in the UN.

Surely, if we are to put ourselves at the forefront of solving international difficulties, the time has come for us to push for a multilateral solution to this decades-long injustice. There have been 295 international disputes between the second world war and the 1990s that involved a use of force by one state against another, with 171 of them entailing some kind of negotiation. Where the difficulties were the most intractable and where the breakthroughs most significant were when we accepted that there was only a multilateral path to peace. That is why we turned to Senator Mitchell to help broker the Good Friday agreement. It is why the world turned to President Carter to help broker the Camp David agreement. It is why we turned to Richard Holbrooke to help bring about the Ohio accords. The injustice in Kashmir has gone on for too long and if the Government are serious about what they say—we never know, perhaps they are—they will step up to their responsibility to bring this injustice to an end.

Gaza Border Violence

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

As I indicated earlier, we take such concerns extremely seriously, and they are one of the issues we raise. If we want a normalisation of relations, and if we want to decrease the sense of bitterness and upset, ordinary humanitarian considerations have to be a prime concern. We will continue to raise these issues and work very closely with UNRWA and the WHO. We recognise that there are particular pressures at the moment, but joint and combined work between Israel and those in Gaza might help to break down some barriers. We will do all that we can to support it.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Minister says that recognising the state of Palestine will not change the facts on the ground, but he must accept that the facts on the ground are changing now because hope is bleeding to death. He says he is waiting for the right moment. If he goes ahead with the appalling President Trump’s ill-advised visit to this country, that is the moment at which we should say to the President and to the world: we recognise the state of Palestine.

[Alistair Burt]

I will hear many suggestions for when the right time to recognise the state of Palestine might be, and there are many reasons why that might be connected with other things. All I can do is assure the right hon. Gentleman that the decision to make a declaration will remain ours, independent and based on the best consideration we can give it. Tempting though particular offers may be, we have to make our own decision on that at the right time.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords]

Liam Byrne Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman makes the same point about the Crown dependencies as other Members have made about the British overseas territories. The current situation is as he describes it—if the law enforcement agencies want information and ask for it, the authorities in the relevant jurisdictions give it to them—but the problem is that, to crack down on serious and organised crime, it is really useful to see the whole picture, and we can see the whole picture only if we have all the information. That is the point of transparency and that is the lesson from the Panama and Paradise papers.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. Have we not learned that dark money will move to wherever the law is darkest? If we bring transparency to the overseas territories, most of the money is simply going to be relocated to the Crown dependencies, unless we change the law to cover them, too.

[Helen Goodman]

That point was made to me by the Minister and his officials when we discussed the Bill, and my right hon. Friend is absolutely right that, because we are making changes in respect of the overseas territories, we need to make changes in respect of the Crown dependencies.

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[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words, but it really has been a team effort, with people from throughout the House and across all the political tribes.

New clause 6 would simply put into legislation proposals that David Cameron first articulated in 2013, when he spoke about ripping aside the “cloak of secrecy” and repeated the well-known mantra, “sunlight is the best disinfectant”. It would do no more and no less than fulfil the commitment made by the then Prime Minister five years ago.

Britain sits at the hub of the world’s largest network of secretive jurisdictions, and British tax havens are central to the movement of illicit moneys around the world. The secrecy under which they currently operate facilitates wrongdoing on an industrial scale. We have a weak regulatory regime, some of which was enacted by the previous Labour Government and needs reform, and sadly we have lax policing of our system. Couple that with the secrecy that prevails, and Britain and our overseas territories have increasingly become the most attractive destination for crooks, kleptocrats and corrupt individuals who engage in financial skulduggery. If we do not accept new clause 6, we will be in danger of sacrificing our traditional reputation as a reliable jurisdiction by our failure to challenge the secrecy.

[Liam Byrne]

I very much echo the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins). Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is impossible for us to get unexplained wealth orders to work unless we put in place registers not only for our countries and the overseas dependencies, but for the Crown dependencies, too?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I entirely concur with my right hon. Friend’s important point.

Let me take Members through the argument, because it is important that we understand what we are dealing with. First, on the scale of the problem we are tackling, the National Crime Agency reckons that around £90 billion a year is laundered through the UK. We know that developing countries lose three times as much in tax avoidance as they get in all the international aid that is available to them. Half the entities cited in the Panama papers were corporations registered in just one of our overseas territories: the British Virgin Islands. We know that, in the past 10 years, £68 billion has flowed out of Russia into our overseas territories. That is seven times more going to the overseas territories than has come to Britain. We know that there are 85,000 properties here in the UK that are owned by companies registered in our tax havens, half of which are in just two constituencies in London, and a sample survey done by Transparency International suggests that two out of five of those properties have Russian owners.

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[Richard Benyon]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. I am not completely wedded to that idea. I simply say that this is in our grasp—this is now Parliament’s duty. Following the very good discussions that I have had with my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, as well as with other wise heads and people with much more experience than I have, I know that we need to design something that really works. The crucial thing that works in Congress and in other Parliaments is what is known in the United States as the “congressional trigger”, under which it is possible to really ask questions of the Executive. Through the measure that we are discussing today, the Executive are giving Parliament the power to get this right, and we must take that duty very seriously.

[Liam Byrne]

I want to make two points in support of new clause 6 and to encourage the Government to take on board the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). I also want to put on the record my tributes to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) —my constituency neighbour—and the others associated with this step forward.

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[Mr Cox]

It is perfectly within our power—the Government have committed to do this—to institute a public register that requires the beneficial owners of any overseas entity wishing to own property in this country to be declared in public. We can do that as it is part of our jurisdiction. However, does the right hon. Gentleman not see that the step that is now being taken goes much further than that and requires the overseas territories to make things public even in relation to property that is not owned in the UK?

[Liam Byrne]

That is absolutely what I am proposing, and my reason is this country’s national security. Let me give the hon. and learned Gentleman a simple example. Back in November 2017, my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) raised the issue of some significant agents of influence in this country: the Chandler brothers, who happen to run an important think-tank that has enjoyed unrivalled access to Ministers during one of this country’s most important national debates. The risk—I put it no stronger than that—that we are running is that that support is financed from sources that derive from the Russian Federation, and it may therefore be part of the panoply of active measures that have been drawn together since the re-election of President Putin in 2012. He has made no secret of that. He set it out in a state of the union address to the Russian people in 2013. Some call it the Gerasimov doctrine, but, whatever it is called, we saw the sharp edge of that sword on the streets of Salisbury just a few weeks ago.

I want to give the House an example of how this influence can unfold in an innocent country like ours that has perhaps been a little inattentive to some of the risks that have been growing over the past few years. As the hon. Member for Isle of Man has mentioned—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely) has mentioned—he would have a different kind of specialism if he were the hon. Member for Isle of Man—the individuals to whom he referred are men of influence who help to finance an important think-tank.

I note with interest that the think-tank is financed by the Legatum Institute, which is registered in the Cayman Islands—registration number FC028686, for those who take an interest in these things—but why should these brothers be of such interest to us? Well, we know that Christopher Chandler and his chief executive, Mark Stoleson, have both taken Maltese passports through the passport-selling operation Henley & Partners. They both publicly accept that they hold accounts at the Iranian-Maltese bank Pilatus, the assets of which were frozen and its chairman arrested at the behest of the FBI in March. Both Pilatus and Henley & Partners were the subject of investigations by the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was assassinated late last year.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight has referred to more. Richard Chandler’s file contains the additional statement:

“Richard Chandler and his brother Christopher play an important role in the capital of the companies Lukoil and Gazprom (linked to longstanding…Russian figures who could be linked to organised crime).”

Furthermore, they maintain relations with an individual, a Chechen mafia figure, who was “expelled from Monaco”. They are connected with money laundering. These allegations are made in the file.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Is my right hon. Friend also aware of the relationship between Henley & Partners and the social media data companies that have been allegedly involved in helping with political campaigns, including that of the recently elected Government in Malta?

[Liam Byrne]

These are very real and very serious allegations, yet when I tabled questions to the Treasury about whether it was exploring the Maltese golden visa route, and the access to the European banking system and the Schengen area that it provides, it said no such conversations were under way.

The point is that I would like to know more about these brothers and whether they are beneficiaries of the money knocking around the overseas territories that derives from bad sources. I want to know whether that money is derived from Russian sources, and I want to know who the business partners were.

Global Witness has done this House an incredible service by highlighting how £68 billion of Russian money is now sloshing around the overseas territories. Given the national security situation that now confronts us, and given the update to the national security strategy that has just gone through, how can we be relaxed about our ignorance of where that £68 billion of Russian money, now buried safely and securely in the overseas territories and Crown dependencies, came from?

If there is innocence, it should be proved. It should be clear. That is why the disinfectant of sunlight is so important. What we cannot have is agents of influence peddling policies and proposals backed by dirty money from one of our country’s enemies. We cannot have that, and we in this House have a responsibility to ensure that we do not run that risk.

For far too long, good and bad money has been allowed to mix together in our overseas territories and Crown dependencies. There is good money there, but we need to be honest with ourselves that some of that money comes into too close contact with cash generated by economies of evil. It is our responsibility to take steps to shut down that regime, which is why new clause 6 and the arguments of my hon. Friend the shadow Minister are so important. I hope the Minister will listen.

[Mr Djanogly]

First, let me join many hon. Members in congratulating the Government and, in particular, the Minister on building a consensus within the parties and among hon. Members on the Magnitsky provisions, which I wish to speak to today.

Time is short, so I will make only a few brief points. On whether these powers are actually going to be used and on the methods of use, I do not yet see any significant change of Government policy. However, if this debate is going to be the herald of a new-found dynamism to clear the UK of the £90 billion of black money flowing through our banks, real estate market, private schools, Bond Street and the rest, I would certainly very much welcome that. My question is: will action now follow the law? I will be interested to hear whether the Foreign Office has had words with the Attorney General, the Home Office or other Departments in that regard—is there a strategy?

On the Government amendments, I see that new clause 3 provides for a reporting system for human rights violation-related sanctions. That is welcome, but my reading of this provision is that it is a retrospective check on what the Government have done and not so much on what they intend to do—if I am wrong on that, I would be grateful if the Minister would clarify the position. The measure in itself is commendable, and I agree that if the report is a sparse one, it would imply and provide evidence to support claims that the Government should be doing more. However, I was very pleased to hear the Minister suggesting today that we are also to have a list system that will be updated on an ongoing basis for those subject to sanctions, as this approach has clearly been so effective elsewhere. Having said that, will the Minister confirm whether people to whom the relevant sanctions have been applied would also need to be listed in the Government new clause 3 report? I believe the answer is yes, but I would be grateful if he would clarify that. Even if there is to be a running administrative list, it would be helpful to have the names set out in the report, with reasons given and an assessment.

There is another related issue here. Could the Minister confirm whether the visa bans attributed to section 1 -type sanctions would also be listed in the new proposed report? Again, maintaining the current system of secret visa bans is simply not as effective as people knowing that their lack of welcome here will be made public in a Magnitsky-list fashion. What these people fear, every bit as much as receiving a visa ban, is other people knowing about it.

My final point is that although this Bill creates a new post-Brexit framework for sanctions, it does not actually set out our policy for how sanctions will be considered or implemented on a multinational basis, which everyone agrees is the most effective approach, as has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon). So will the Minister explain how these sanctions provisions would be considered within the European Union after we have left it? For instance, is consideration being given to setting up a new co-ordinating committee within the EU? In various speeches I have read, it seems clear that the EU will continue to wish to work closely with the UK on external security matters, so there seems to be goodwill to that end. I would be interested to hear more on how we propose that decision making on sanctions will be put into an institutional context.

We have mainly discussed Russia today. It is worth mentioning that the US aluminium sanctions on Russia were put in place only a few weeks ago, and I have since heard of a degree of kickback from other countries such as Germany and other negatively affected parties. Clearly, if we are going to get tough on sanctions, it will be important to continue to present a united front. So we are seeing progress, but ultimately this will need to be proved by a better UK record of sanctions, visa bans, asset seizures and active prosecutions. Will the law be backed by action? The days of the UK being a dumping ground for illegal black money need to come to an end, and I hope that this Bill will act as a spark to get the process moving.

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In the end, I see this all in the context of our relationship with the Russian Federation. I have been concerned for some time that we tend to take two steps forward and one step back, or sometimes one step forward and two steps back. After the Salisbury incident, it was great that the Prime Minister managed to secure such a strong backing from so many countries around the world for the expulsion of so-called diplomats, but if we do not match that action with action on financial liberality and people’s ability to slosh their dirty money around other parts of the world, the Russians simply will not take it seriously. It is interesting that the American sanctions on Oleg Deripaska have for the first time made him start to retreat from various different markets, including with En+, a business that frankly should never have been registered in this country in the first place.

[Liam Byrne]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the next big international opportunity to make progress on this issue is the G20 in November? If we are to help to lead the argument, we must have the moral credibility of having taken action ourselves.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree, and that is also why I agree with the kind of approach that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight tried to enjoin on the whole House—not only on those from different political backgrounds, but also on all the different silos, including defence, foreign policy, work and pensions and the Treasury—to try to make sure that we have a united, coherent, consistent and, to use a valleys word, “tidy” approach towards the Russians. That was not “a valet’s word”, but a valleys word—[Laughter.]

Counter-Daesh Update

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If we look back at 2003, we see that, in the words of the Chilcot report, no one could say that our strategic objectives were entirely attained—I think that is putting it mildly. But there are signs of hope, and there are people across the region who are willing to take up the baton of leadership. There are national institutions being born. We must support them, we must encourage them and we must not disengage. It would be absolutely fatal for this country to turn its back on the region and to think that we can thereby somehow insulate ourselves from the problems that are germinating there. We must engage, we must support the political process and we must be prepared to defend freedom and democracy where we can.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Given the mistakes of the past, the world owes it to the Government of Iraq to help them now win the peace, and that requires justice and prosecutions for genocide. Because Iraq is not a signatory to the treaty of Rome, those prosecutions will be difficult in Iraq, but we can prosecute the 400-plus foreign fighters who have returned to Britain. Yet, we have not sent a single one of them to The Hague. In fact, in answers to me in this House, the Attorney General said the Government are not even keeping figures on which foreign fighters have been prosecuted for what. That is, at best, slipshod. Can the Foreign Secretary give us an assurance this afternoon that he will give us a timetable for when we, like Germany, will send people to the International Criminal Court and throw against them the full weight of international law?

[Boris Johnson]

Again, that is an excellent point. It is a subject of recurrent anxiety to me that people are coming back and that, although we want to bring the full force of the law upon them, it is proving difficult to do so. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly says, we have not yet been able to do that in a sufficient number of cases. What we are trying to do, therefore, and this is why we passed resolution 2379, is to ensure that we have the evidence and that, where we can get a locus and find a court—he mentioned the international court in The Hague—we will have the facts and the testimony needed to send these people down.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out Russian sacrifice in the war. He is quite right to allude to it, although I might also point out that probably 30 million people died in Stalin’s purges and famines and various other things associated with communism which, as I say, were indulged by the Labour party. [Interruption.] It is true. My hon. Friend’s point about engagement is valid, and that is what we are doing.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

One of the things we need from cross-Government co-ordination is for British citizens who fought for Daesh to be prosecuted for genocide and war crimes. More than 400 people from this country have fought in that conflict and come back here, but not a single one has been prosecuted for either genocide or war crimes. Surely that must change.

[Boris Johnson]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. As he knows, they are guilty of a crime—what they have done in going to fight overseas is a crime—and they should be brought to justice. What we have done overall is to call for the evidence that we need to prosecute them to be gathered by the special investigative team that has just been set up by the UN, thanks to the UK’s agency.

The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Let me add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) on securing this debate. On behalf of many of us, may I say to her and to the hon. Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) and for St Albans (Mrs Main) that the debt that we owe to them for the courage with which they have borne witness and given testimony this afternoon is really very significant? The level of violence that they have described has sent a very clear signal to all Members that what we are watching in Myanmar today is the creation of a new dark heart in Asia.

The incalculable violence is simply the prelude to what is a strategy of scorched earth, with the destruction of hundreds of villages, the landmines across the border, and the destruction of cultural and religious institutions. What Members have described this afternoon is certainly ethnic cleansing and certainly war crimes. It is a level of barbarism that we have seen in places such as Rwanda and Bosnia, and we have to say very clearly this afternoon that that will not go unpunished.

The message that we send from the House this afternoon is that we will not look away. We will ensure that justice is delivered and that, whenever we can, we will see the leaders of these atrocities in The Hague on trial for war crimes.

All totalitarian regimes down the ages have traded on delusion, fear and silence. We are not under any illusions in this House. We are not afraid and we will not look away until justice is finally done. We will not tolerate this and we will certainly not appease it. We are not an empire, thank God, but we have a moral responsibility. We are, thank God, still members of the EU. We still have membership of the UN Security Council. We are still a leader of the Commonwealth.

This House expects the Government to use every instrument at their disposal to mobilise the international community around the aims set out in this debate. We must be unflinching in our determination to see justice. I hope that the Minister will be able to set out clearly why we should not see an EU ban on arms sales and new investment. Why would we not expand the visa ban on military personnel and others of interest? Why would we not see an end to all EU co-operation around training for senior personnel in Myanmar, and why would we not reinstate the annual General Assembly resolution on human rights in Myanmar? The arc of history is long and it does bend towards justice, but we do not have forever. We need to end this injustice now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I hope my hon. Friend will be assured that the UK has been very active in emphasising the significance of the Sino-British joint declaration—a legally binding treaty registered with the UN that continues to be in force today. During my meeting with the Chinese ambassador on 5 July, I stressed the UK’s strong commitment to that joint declaration. We urge the Chinese and the Hong Kong special administration Governments and all elected politicians in Hong Kong to refrain from any actions that fuel concerns or undermine confidence in the one country, two systems principle.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary has rightly underlined the importance of US-UK relations in this new world, but that relationship is kept alive by cultural and exchange programmes such as the Fulbright programme, which is now imperilled by President Trump’s proposal to cut 47% from its budget. Will the Foreign Secretary make representations to underline the fact that we think programmes such as Fulbright should be expanded and not pushed to the point of extinction?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I stand here as a Kennedy scholar, which is a very similar structure, and we have a fantastic programme of Chevening scholars sponsored by the Foreign Office. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has confirmed that he will raise the Fulbright scholarships with Secretary Tillerson when he next sees him.