Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend, and pay tribute to the work that he and the Foreign Affairs Committee have done. I thought he mentioned three foreign policy triumphs, but I felt a bit short-changed because he missed one out. [Interruption] There is plenty of time yet. I thank him for his warm words. We fully respect and engage with scrutiny from that Committee, but it is also good when we can work together and produce results, and today’s regulations are an example of that. He asked about China, and recently the Human Rights Council led a statement with 27 countries on the human rights situation in Xinjiang, as well as in Hong Kong. Of course, as with China and many other countries, people will wish to come up with further suggestions going forward, and we will consider those carefully, based on the evidence. If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not pre-empt what the next wave of designations will be, but I assure him that we are already working on them.

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

I also thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement. He is entitled to a quiet moment of personal satisfaction today, and it would be remiss not to recognise his role in getting the House and Government to this point. The SNP certainly supports those measures. We would like to see more of them. We called for them repeatedly for a number of years. I have to say, however, that I was surprised to read about them in the Financial Times before we heard about them today. That is something that we should all consider about how announcements are made.

I will pick up on two aspects of the statement, particularly on international co-operation. It is vital that the measures, welcome as they are, are co-ordinated across other countries—obviously with the European Union and the Five Eyes partners. I would also like a statement from the Foreign Secretary on how they will interact with British overseas territories. There is already a vast array of loopholes to tax transparency and other mechanisms of accountability. This is a welcome step, but how will it work with the other territories where we have some influence?

The Foreign Secretary said in his statement that dictators will not be able to launder their blood money in this country. Who would not be able to support that? Progress on the ground, however, suggests that we have an awful lot still to do. I refer him and the House to the Open Democracy report published last month that said that

“400,000 British companies do not, will not or cannot say who controls them”,

and, from its own research, Britain has long operated

“as a global hub for financial crime”.

We have a long way to go to build on today’s announcements. Scotland is not immune to that. Scottish limited companies have been abusing money laundering. We all need to work on this together. I would be grateful for some statements about how the British overseas territories will interact with the measures and, indeed, on the wider financial transparency reform that we need in order to clean up the UK’s jurisdiction.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Member for his support for the measures and the designations, and for his kind words. He is right about international co-ordination; the measures will be most effective if we can conjure a groundswell of co-ordinated action, even if we want to be free to assign the designations as and when we see fit based on the evidence. Co-operation with the Five Eyes countries, both those that have existing Magnitsky mechanisms in place and those that are working on it, like Australia, is important. Certain EU member states already have them, particularly in the Baltics, I think, but there is no EU-wide human rights regime. Certainly, if it wishes to consider that, that will be an area for strong ongoing co-operation, notwithstanding our departure from the EU.

The hon. Member asked particularly about the OTs. As I thought I made clear, we will ensure that the measure extends the regulations, and indeed the designations, to all the overseas territories and, of course, the Crown dependencies.