Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 15) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Empey and Lord Collins of Highbury

Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, referred to £18 billion-worth of assets that have been seized. The noble Lord will be well aware of the billions that have been frozen under a United Nations resolution with regard to Libya, which have been untouched and from which victims in this country have not received any support. Is it the case that we could be seeing a repeat of that performance and that those assets will have to be managed? Perhaps investment should be improved by people in our system and then given back again whenever the conflict ends.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I am just waiting to see whether anyone else wishes to comment—every time someone says something, it provokes a point. I hope I am not going to be too provocative. I want to start by being very clear that the Opposition are at one with the Government on these sanctions. We will do whatever we can to support their speedy reduction. If there is one message from this House, it is that this country is absolutely united against Putin’s illegal war and, in particular, as we have seen, the recent indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure, designed to do one thing, which is to damage the homes and the heating of families and children. So I start by saying that we are absolutely at one with the Government.

The No. 15 regulations rightly extend the prohibitions on goods critical to Russian industries. I am particularly pleased about that instrument ending the importation of liquefied natural gas—LNG—originating from Russia. Western allies, including the EU, have made real progress this year, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, in obtaining liquefied natural gas from appropriate sources, such as the United States. Prohibiting this Russian source is a good step towards energy security.

There is one thing about the speed of the introduction. The Minister highlighted an error that occurred, but another thing that struck me was that the import ban will not come in until January 2023. He explained that the error would mean that certain prohibitions will not come in until January, but why will that ban not come into force until January 2023?

I want to pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, because he is absolutely right. It is not just about working with allies to impose sanctions. What are we doing to support countries which need these energy supplies? What are we doing to advise them on and provide help with alternative sources? It is not easy for countries to suddenly switch if they have become reliant over the years, so it is not just a question of offering sticks. It is also about encouragement and support, so I hope the Minister can tell us a bit about that.

The ban on liquefied natural gas also prohibits loans to firms that support Russian interests, even if they are based outside Russia. To what extent are the Government already monitoring which companies are providing finance for these purposes? The Minister has said on many occasions that whatever sanctions we may introduce, there will be someone trying to circumvent them. That means enforcement is critical—the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, made this point. The United States appears to have quite strong enforcement measures. Are we examining not just how we act in concert when introducing legislation, but exactly how we can more effectively act in concert on enforcement, which will ensure that people do not easily circumvent it?

My noble friend’s question on circumvention was a good one. If this is being done so explicitly, I hope we can take more direct action on it. However, the regulations also have exceptions—I want the Minister to highlight some of these—which will allow oil products to be provided to third countries. Can he explain a little more about the circumstances where this would be permissible? In particular, we have heard about other countries’ roles in importing and then exporting. We need to be reassured that we are taking that into account.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, made the broader point about international co-operation and co-ordination on sanctions. In our consideration of each statutory instrument as it has come in, we have certainly raised with the Minister the fact that the United States and Canada seem able to introduce sanctions faster, or well before our own. There may be good reasons for that—it is an incremental build.

As we move into a longer period of these sanctions, I wonder whether the FCDO has done a general assessment of where and why there may be gaps, and how we can hit Russia with one big hit, rather than taking an incremental approach. It would be really good if Parliament could be given such an assessment. How are we building up allies and persuading others to join, even if they are unable to match our speed of implementation? Are they at least coming on board in some of the other areas?

In conclusion, I reiterate the Opposition’s full support for the Government’s actions here, and we look forward to further clarification.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Empey and Lord Collins of Highbury

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, I hope to be brief, not least because I hope to pop along to say farewell to Peggy Byatt, who has been one of the longest serving members of staff of this House.

Last May, when this Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, Mark Harper, the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, stated that the aim of the Bill was to,

“tackle electoral fraud, increase the number of people registered to vote and improve the integrity of the electoral register”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/5/12; col. 1172.]

No one would disagree with that. As my noble friend Lord Wills has stated, it was for these precise reasons that the previous Labour Government, with cross-party support, put through the Political Parties and Elections Act. Those reasons also paved the way for individual registration.

However, in committing to this, we also provided for a phased timetable and independent testing of any new system, backed up with strong and effective monitoring by the Electoral Commission. Why did we do it in that way? We wanted to make sure that the systems to stop fraud, which we are all committed to stopping, did not also exacerbate an already growing problem of underregistration. As we have heard today, there are millions of unregistered—mainly young and low-income—voters missing from the electoral roll. The Electoral Commission’s briefing, which has also been quoted today, states that the December 2010 register was between 85% and 87% complete, with at least 6 million eligible people missing from it. It is the biggest scandal for our democracy that so many people are denied the opportunity to vote. The other issue that is combined with underregistration is the prospect that the growing number of people who do not vote in elections will not see the point of registering to vote. That concern is also shared by the Electoral Commission.

Without a concerted and prolonged campaign, it is possible that the register may go from the near 90% completeness that we hope we currently have to something like 65%. As my noble friend Lady Gould said, 65% will result in as many as 10 million voters losing the opportunity to vote. What sort of democracy is that? I shall repeat the question of my noble friend Lady Gould. Will the Minister give us the details of the implementation plan now? Will they set out the timetable in more detail and will they give us better figures on a budget to ensure that we have an effective campaign? This is not scaremongering when you consider the experience of Northern Ireland, on which we have had some very interesting perspectives. When the system was changed there in 2002 it resulted in a huge drop in the size of the register. It was such a drop that we had to address it in subsequent legislation, so we know that there is a problem that we need to address.

Although I believe very strongly that the timetable proposed in the Bill is too rushed, I welcome the concession that there will be a carryover for those who are currently on but fail to register individually. However, this will not happen in my household or in the many, many other households where everyone is registered to vote by post. As many noble Lords have pointed out, for many elderly people and people with disabilities, voting by post is their only real opportunity to vote. I do not accept the assertion of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that the fundamental problem with our electoral system is the extension of postal voting. With the right measures—we have talked about how those measures can be improved—postal voting undoubtedly increases turnover. What we want is more people participating in our democracy. The fundamental problems are more to do with false entries on the register. All parties and all individuals can take responsibility to highlight where they think there are problems and address them. When I had that responsibility in the Labour Party we were very rigorous in pursuing any example where we found multiple registrations.

Why, therefore, will postal voters and proxy voters be excluded from this carryover which, as we have heard, is going to affect a lot of elderly people and people with disabilities? For the record, in my own household, neither my husband nor I will be eligible to vote when it comes to the general election; me because of my membership of this House and he because he is a Spanish national. We have talked about the errors that can occur and about checking each signature. Unfortunately, on one occasion—I am not going to say which election because I have proudly voted in every one—when we were completing our postal votes on the dinner table, I mistakenly signed his declaration and he mistakenly signed mine. Despite efforts to contact the appropriate authorities, I fear that my vote was not counted on that occasion.

As many of my noble friends have pointed out, the Bill rushes through a process that actually needs a lot of careful consideration and planning. Why the rush for the next general election? My sentiments about the Bill are accurately reflected in the following quote:

“I also agree with the Minister that it would be difficult to introduce a new system shortly before a general election. There should be other ways of testing the system along the way to ensure that the accuracy, integrity and comprehensiveness of the register and the system are always utterly watertight. I hope that that reassures the Minister on that point”.—[Official Report, Commons,13/7/09; col. 109.]

That was Eleanor Laing MP, Shadow Conservative Minister, speaking in 2009.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, in his excellent contribution, mentioned those dreaded words “ID cards”. This is why I have always supported the principle of national ID cards—a national ID system. I have always been committed to it because it carries with it clear rights and responsibilities. I am sorry that many of my noble friends—I mean to say many of the noble Lords opposite—are not committed to that principle despite the fact that they want to ensure that the electoral register has as many constraints on it as possible. Yet they are not in favour of the one thing that would deliver a system of integrity in our democracy.

[Lord Empey]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for giving way. I referred to our system of electoral identity cards which are very specific and can be used only for voting purposes. They are slightly different from the national identity cards which were proposed here some time ago. Nevertheless, I am sure the noble Lord accepts that I agree with the point, which I suspect he is trying to make, that it gives an opportunity to know that the person standing in front of the polling station clerk is the person who is entitled to vote.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

I thank the noble Lord for that contribution. I agree with him completely but I have to confess that I was using the opportunity of his reference to ID cards to have a little go. When we are talking about secure systems, we have to understand that that issue cuts across all civic society.

We need to ensure that any scheme of individual registration passes the test of accuracy and completeness. Here I agree 100% with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. He and I have a lot in common in terms of our previous experiences of elections. He may have won a lot more elections, but the fact is that we spent our livelihoods and lifetimes trying to tell politicians to follow the rules and regulations. I agree with him 100% when he asks whether by focusing on accuracy we are missing the fundamental importance of completeness. That is what this debate is about, and it is what the Bill needs to focus on. I am sure that that is what the discussions in Committee will be about.

Despite some welcome concessions from the Government that we heard articulated today, I am afraid that they do not represent sufficient safeguards to ensure that the Bill will not result in millions of people being unregistered and therefore unable to vote. What we have is a speeded-up timetable for the introduction of individual registration purely—I put this at its best—to save money. Combine that with another important issue, the downgrading of the role of the Electoral Commission, and we are left with the potential for long-term deterioration in the accuracy of the electoral register.