Ukraine: International Claims Commission Convention
Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Anderson of Swansea
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, that was a powerful and valuable speech from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, relying on her experience and her contacts. I was particularly impressed by the personal examples. We probably all know individual Ukrainians in this country who have suffered. As the last Back-Bencher in the debate—story of my life—I fear that everything that can be said has been said, but not everyone has said it, so here goes my contribution. I begin by adapting Yaroslavsky: we are witnessing the grand patriotic war of the Ukrainian people. Patriotic? Yes. Putin claimed that the Ukrainians were just cousins, or indeed part of the Russian people, but they have shown that he has provoked a very profound patriotism among the people, who have shown enormous courage and resilience.
I was at NATO headquarters on the eve of the aggression in 2022. I must admit to the Committee that the consensus appeared to be that, if there were an invasion, Russian troops—better resourced, and with a degree of morale—would be taking Kyiv within two or three days. That, happily, was not to be. This debate now is about making Russia recognise and possibly pay for its aggression.
Two main areas of concern were mentioned by the committee. First, there is the geographic limit and whether we should extend it to 2014, to Crimea and the Donbass. On the grounds of justice, of course, that should happen and there is the possibility of an amendment to the convention. However, the demands of justice, in my judgment, conflict with practicalities. The areas concerned are currently occupied by Russia, and they are likely to remain so in any ultimate settlement. Therefore, there are formidable problems; they have to be visited to assess and evaluate claims. The evidential problems are enormous.
The second area of concern relates to the prospect of achieving what we all would like: the extent of the compensation. There is a proposed three-stage process. The register is extremely valuable, but hopefully it will not just be a historic document. The commission will have to recognise categories, and presumably lawyers will have to work out standardised categories. There is then the assessment of the claims. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, has given some indication of the vast accumulation of claims, which will make even the most assiduous lawyers work for very many years to come.
The final and most difficult part is the problem of payment. An enormous problem is posed. It is most unlikely that Russia will put up its hands and accept responsibility or pay anything voluntarily. Even the second stage raises formidable tasks in terms of assessment.
Turning to the point the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made about the precedent of Iraq, with all respect to the noble Lord, for whom I have great admiration, there is no great difficulty in distinguishing the Iraq problem. In Iraq, we were dealing with a defeated country. It was not difficult, therefore, to assess the portion of the oil receipts of Iraq that could be used for compensating far fewer people. It was not the extent or the complexity that we have now. So the precedent, in my judgment, is not as helpful as we would like.
In the case of Ukraine, it is not likely that either side will triumph—there will not be a victory for either side—so where is the money to come from? Vast sums are involved. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, has given an indication of the likely sums. The only potential source is likely to be the frozen assets held by western banks, which are, I agree, very substantial, including $9 billion in UK banks. But there are problems legally about this. It could set a very poor precedent for other states or individuals who deposit money in our banks. Here, we also have sovereign immunity.
It may be extremely difficult to obtain a consensus to achieve an agreement on defreezing those assets. Therefore, the demands of justice may not be attainable. I recall that we, as a committee, were urged not to use “reparations” —that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I think—but instead to use “compensation”, which is a far less loaded term. Does anyone with a sense of history consider Russian agreement likely for such a proud nation? Equally, the United States is likely to ensure that any agreement or a settlement may have some territorial concessions, particularly given the warm relationship between President Trump and President Putin, but it is unlikely to lead to the sort of outcome we would all like. Similarly, China could of course use its limited influence in this field to side with Putin.
I concede that that would be a most unfortunate conclusion and against all justice. However, after the immense efforts, the costs and the work of all those experts—possibly extending over a decade or more, given the size of the claims that they have to consider—it may be that no money will ultimately accrue to the poor claimants who have suffered so much. We should be aware from the outset that there is a great danger of that. Now, the sceptics will argue this, and they may be proved right at the end of a long period. As we say in the committee’s report, expectations may, alas, not be realised.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
Before the noble Lord sits down, I want to raise one point to which he referred: the large number of people who were compensated by the Iraq-Kuwait compensation commission set up by the UN Security Council. There were many hundreds of thousands of them, because workers from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and the Philippines were all grievously damaged and lost huge amounts of money, and they were all compensated by the commission. It was not the case that the Iraq commission dealt simply with the oil and the damage created by it being spilled, although it did do that; it also resulted in lots of very poor individuals receiving full compensation.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
I hear the noble Lord, but I think he would agree that the amounts and numbers involved are vastly more in the case of Ukraine than was the case of the relatively simple—as compared with Ukraine—precedent of Iraq and Kuwait.