Appointment of Lord Lebedev

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I am puzzled by the Solicitor General’s speech, which sounded as if he had written it before the Government decided at lunchtime not to oppose the motion after a revolt by their Back-Bench Members. Perhaps he, or his fellow Minister, will be able to clarify that in their response to the debate. Madam Deputy Speaker, perhaps you or Mr Speaker will be able to clarify the consequences were the Government to refuse to comply with the demands of this motion, if it is passed.

It would have been an easy solution for the Government to get out of this mess with their own Back Benchers, and out of the mess on Russian interference altogether, if only they had published and implemented in full the recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report. They finally published the report after months of resistance by the Prime Minister and an attempt to fix the Committee by putting in a Chair who would not publish the report, but they still have not implemented its recommendations. Most importantly, the Government have not implemented the report’s central recommendation to hold a proper inquiry into Russian interference in Britain’s democracy. I do not understand why that still has not happened.

There is a pattern, because it was this Prime Minister, when I first asked him and his predecessor about this in 2016, who told the House that there was no evidence of “successful” Russian interference in our democracy and democratic processes. They have stuck very carefully to that description. Time and again I was treated as some kind of eccentric, batty person when I first starting raising this as a genuine concern. I was simply expressing the concerns I had picked up from our intelligence and security services, which we now know made those concerns very plain to the Prime Minister in relation to his intention to give a peerage to Lord Lebedev.

There is a pattern here. We saw it in the Prime Minister’s extraordinary trip, in the immediate aftermath of a NATO summit following the Skripal poisoning and chemical weapon attack in Salisbury, to the Lebedev castle in Tuscany for one of those parties—rather over-the-top parties, by the sound of it. The senior Lebedev was also present at that party, and of course it was President Putin who said, “Once a KGB officer, always a KGB officer.” And the Prime Minister sent his close-protection officers away in an absolutely extraordinary breach of normal protocol.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Alex Lebedev owns Lebedev Holdings, which owns 75% of the Evening Standard. He supported the invasion of Crimea, on which he held a number of events in 2014. We do not know whether he tried to influence the Prime Minister at that point on Ukraine’s territorial integrity; we now see that the invasion of the whole Ukraine was emboldened by that earlier invasion. The Government should release more information, because we just do not know what has happened.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Mr Lebedev’s public statements were mealy-mouthed after the invasion of Crimea and we know that Lebedev senior has ongoing business interests in illegally occupied Crimea. I would be interested to know whether the Paymaster General knows or has even bothered to try to find out whether Lebedev junior does as well or whether he benefits from those business interests. We have had years of denials and obfuscation from this Prime Minister. We know, thanks to what the intelligence services have put on the public record, that they did warn the Prime Minister against this peerage, he ignored the advice and the rest is history, which is why we are debating this motion today. So when the Paymaster General or his colleague responds to this debate, will they confirm that if the House passes this motion, they will comply with it and publish all the relevant documentation in full, including the WhatsApp messages of the Prime Minister? We have heard other reports elsewhere in recent days that WhatsApp messages have mysteriously and conveniently disappeared from the Prime Minister’s telephone. This is a completely unacceptable way of running a Government in a democracy, particularly one as precious and long standing as ours. That confirmation about all of those documents and the Government adhering to this motion will be very important.

Let us recall the credulity of the Minister at the Dispatch Box when he said, “Oh, Lebedev has been critical of Putin and of Crimea, and has done all these great charitable works.” An effective Kremlin asset in this country is not exactly going to make a reputation for themselves as being a massive supporter of the Kremlin, are they? The credulity of successive Ministers in this Conservative Government makes me feel as though something does not smell right here. They are still refusing to implement the recommendations of the Russia report and I do not see how that position is sustainable after the war in Ukraine—everything has changed. They could get away with this before that. They could get away with, as the Intelligence and Security Committee described it, the wilful ignoring of Russian interference—that is what it said happened under successive Conservative Prime Ministers and under this Government. They cannot get away with that any more. I advise the Paymaster General to go back to Downing Street and speak to the Cabinet and say, “Look, this is the way we are going to avoid this problem.” These problems are going to be repeated in the weeks and months to come, because more stories like this are going to come out about Russian interference and influence in our political system, many of which will touch the Conservative party. But this is not a party political thing, as there are Labour peers who are in equally invidious situations, but the Conservatives are in government and that makes this much more serious. This is friendly advice to the Paymaster General and his ministerial colleagues: come clean and put it all out in the open; implement the recommendations of the Russia report—stop running away from them and hiding from them; and have that inquiry into Russian interference and then everything can be out in the open and transparent. That is the only way, in the medium and long run, that we are going to be confident and satisfied in this country that our politics, democracy, political parties and individuals are not being subverted by the sort of behaviour we have seen from Putin, not just in this country, but in the United States and across the western and democratic world. I support the motion moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and I hope the House will vote for it today, but the Government are going to have to implement it, and quickly.