Ukraine

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate and giving us another chance to look at these issues, which are obviously very serious. Prior to the recent vote of the UN General Assembly condemning Russia’s invasion of Crimea, it transpired that several countries were threatened with retaliation if they voted against Russia. The resolution was passed by 100 votes to 11, with some abstentions, in spite of the threats of retaliatory measures, such as expelling migrant workers, aborting gas supplies or imposing trade bans. Afterwards, a spokesman at Russia’s UN mission denied any threats had been made, saying:

“We never threaten anyone. We just explain the situation”.

To me, that sounds like a Mafioso making you an offer that you cannot refuse.

At more or less the same time, Vladimir Putin’s previous chief economic adviser, Andrey Illarionov, tells us that Putin’s real aim is to create “historical justice” with a return to the days of Tsarist Russia, reconquering Belarus, the Baltic states and, of course, Finland. He warned that Putin protects what belongs to him and his predecessors—Tsar Nicholas II and Stalin.

So what are we going to do? I would like to make just two points in the three minutes that I have. First, I have to say that I agree entirely with our Prime Minister when in the Hague last week he said that it was our,

“duty to embrace the new technique”,

of shale gas to reduce dependence in Europe on Russian energy, calling it a “wake-up call”.

In our earlier debate in this House on Ukraine, I called for the UK to believe the science and not to be persuaded or dissuaded by the politics. Natural gas was the origin of the crisis in Ukraine. Russia keeps Ukraine and much of Europe dependent on gas at prices just low enough to disincentivise fracking of shale gas. State-run media and propaganda continually spread disinformation critical of fracking and supportive of opponents to the process. As the president of the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists, I can say that its position paper on shale gas is absolutely on the button. There is no doubt that for the foreseeable future gas has to be the fossil fuel of choice, producing less carbon dioxide per unit of energy than the others. We agree totally with the conclusion of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society that,

“the health, safety and environmental risks associated with …fracking … as a means to extract shale gas can be managed effectively in the UK as long as operational best practices are implemented and enforced through regulation”.

So I ask the Minister if she could confirm in her reply that the Government are poised to remove potential legal barriers to the exploration and development of shale gas deposits in the UK and that the proposed growth Bill, which I believe will be in the Queen’s Speech, will include measures to change trespass laws to prevent landowners denying access needed to assess prospective shale gas fields.

My second point is that the UK must act in the financial sector, not just in response to President Putin’s actions but to restore a somewhat tarnished international finance sector. There has been a stream of allegations from sources in Ukraine that corrupt officials and business people have been laundering their funds through the UK, yet asset recovery has been insignificant compared with the problem. As a director of the advisory board of Transparency International, I am aware that the UK’s banking sector froze less than 1% of some £30 billion that the Russian Central Bank estimates left Russia as the proceeds of crime between 2010 and 2014.

Our financial authority believes that between £23 billion and £27 billion has been laundered through the City of London each year. The Anti-Corruption Foundation in Moscow has revealed corrupt activities regarding the Sochi Olympics and the Transnet Pipelines company, alone worth more than £12 billion.

My final point is that major changes are required if the UK is to detect, freeze and seize the corruptly obtained assets that are flowing undetected through the financial system. Clean up corruption in the City and hit Putin and his cronies where it hurts.