Criminal Finances Bill

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Tom Brake

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) for putting together the proposal in new clause 1 and the Minister for responding positively. I have been in the House for long enough to know that Ministers rarely respond positively to approaches, even cross-party ones, so it is welcome that the Minister has taken on board the spirit of the proposal. I also pay tribute to Bill Browder—many Members in the Chamber will have met him—who has really led the charge on this issue. However, I am sure that Bill wants not a tribute but action.

I share some of the reservations of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). In other countries, assets have been seized in relation to the Magnitsky case, but it seems that that is not so in London. Many Members would accept that London is a place where many Russians, sometimes of rather dubious backgrounds, like to put their assets, so it seems strange, while assets are being seized almost everywhere else around the world in relation to this case, for London to be the one place where they have not been seized.

The Minister reassured us that the prosecuting authorities—of course he cannot put pressure on them, but he has confirmed this—would prosecute if there was evidence. I assure Bill Browder and others that they will have the support of the House if evidence—or further or more detailed evidence—is forthcoming, as the Minister for one endorsed the need for very firm action. He said that action might be taken under existing legislation, but that it could be taken even more effectively under Government new clause 7.

Like other Members, I would prefer new clause 1 to the Government’s proposal, but I understand why the Minister preferred to table his own new clause. Unfortunately, I suspect that we would not have the numbers in the House to win a Division today on cross-party new clause 1. We will therefore have to follow the matter very closely, and I welcome the fact that the Minister will publish statistics.

Several hon. Members referred to the Magnitsky Act. If they want to see the list of names, they could read my early-day motion 1344—it has been signed by a number of Members—which lists Russian citizens subject to the Magnitsky Act in America. The hon. Member for Rhondda reminded me that I need to retable my early-day motion because, as he said, new names have been added to the American list. The information is there if Members need to refer to it.

I welcome the fact that the Government have moved on this issue, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If evidence is forthcoming that such assets are in this country, in the way that Bill Browder and others believe is the case, the Government must ensure that those responsible are prosecuted and brought to justice for the gross human rights violations they have committed.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I, as a signatory of new clause 1, can be very brief because my right hon. and hon. Friends, and indeed Opposition Members, have made the case with such eloquence on what is known as the Magnitsky amendment. It seems to me, as such a signatory, that the Government have listened. The Minister has quite rightly heard the cross-party voice on these issues and tabled new clause 7, and I certainly congratulate him on having achieved that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who has done such a good job on this issue, pointed out, in accepting the Government new clause, that we must not allow the best to be the enemy of the good. The story that my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles), the anti-corruption tsar, told us about his Paris meeting reminds me of just how complex is the attack on corruption, of which we must all be a part.

I remember a very eminent New York anti-corruption lawyer, who had been involved in a variety of anti-corruption mechanisms, telling me that he was once invited to Afghanistan to give a lecture on how to tackle corruption, and a vast number of Afghan officials turned up in the auditorium. To his horror, observing the Rolex watches on the wrists of so many of those officials, he suddenly realised halfway through the lecture that they had turned up to learn not how to tackle corruption, but how to evade the tackling of corruption.

Corruption is a cancer: it is insidious in a whole variety of ways. One of the good things about the Bill is that it seeks, in a very complex area, to make progress on some very clear aspects of the issue. The former Prime Minister, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Government Members have also made a very big contribution in the fight to tackle corruption in this area.

I want to make two brief final points. The first is that in the Magnitsky case, as I think the Minister has recognised—I know Bill Browder and I was absolutely horrified to hear the tale of the experience he has undergone—it is clear that the British law enforcement agencies have shown, to put it no more strongly than this, a degree of confusion, delay and obfuscation in their handling of such matters. There are issues of administrative co-ordination and effectiveness, and I very much hope that the Minister ensures that tackling this issue remains clearly on his agenda.

My second and final point is that Britain needs to send a very clear signal about the approach we take to human rights abuses and money laundering. The failure to send a very clear signal—I hope that that will be ended by the decision the House will take this afternoon—damages our international relations. Britain’s relations and dealings with Russia are very complex. We need to work with Russia on a number of matters on which we have a common interest, but we also need to be absolutely clear where we stand on the issues—my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) set them out so eloquently in his speech—so that there is no misunderstanding about where the British Government stand on many of the horrific aspects of Russian governance and conduct. I have been a strong critic in this House of Russian abuses of human rights and, indeed, of war crimes in Syria. Given the other dimension of areas on which we must be able to work constructively with Russia, it is extremely important that we in this House are absolutely clear with the Government about where we stand on human rights issues.

Aleppo and Syria

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Tom Brake

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend has made his point with great eloquence.

We are not using the opportunity—if I may put it in that way—to provide an education for the children in the camps, given that they at least constitute a captive audience. Every child in a camp in one of the surrounding countries should be receiving an education. There should be education and training, and, indeed, there should be opportunities for the countries that are receiving all the refugees to have free access to the European Union for their goods and services. That is not happening. Moreover, because some countries have failed to pay their dues to the United Nations in some of the camps, the children and adults there are receiving only half the rations that they should be receiving, and they are down to starvation rations at that.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I recently received a parliamentary answer from the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), on the subject of air drops. He stated:

“The use of air drops to deliver aid is high risk and should only be considered as a last resort when all other means have failed”.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would seem that “all other means” have indeed failed?

[Mr Mitchell]

Not in respect of the camp. On the basis of my knowledge of these matters, I think that my hon. Friend the Minister of State was right to say that air drops should be used only as a last resort, but clearly they should be used if we reach that point.

The sixth and final barrier to progress has, of course, been the reception of refugees in Europe, where there has not been proper processing. Many of these people have cast themselves into the hands of the modern-day equivalent of the slave trader in the hope of reaching a more prosperous and safer shore. I think that Europe as a whole—which, admittedly, has its inward-facing problems—has failed to address this problem adequately, and to show proper solidarity with Greece and Italy as they tackle a very severe problem.

There are only two ways in which this can end: a military victory by one side or the other, or through negotiation. I submit that there is no way in which a military victory will be secured by any side in Syria. We must therefore hope that the fighting stops as soon as possible in order to create the space in which negotiations for the future can take place. We have all seen the heroic work that has been done by Staffan de Mistura, and the backing provided to him and the International Syria Support Group is essential. I will say more about that in a moment. To bring about a cessation in fighting we need the influence of the United Nations, of the great powers and of the countries in the region who have influence over some of the protagonists, in particular Iran and the Saudis. Where a country is able to exercise influence to stop the fighting and create the space for politicians to engage, in Geneva and elsewhere, it is absolutely essential that it should do so.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Tom Brake

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). I much enjoyed serving with him in Cabinet and on the National Security Council. I feel that history is likely to treat his time as our Deputy Prime Minister rather more kindly than the electorate did on what he must regard, but we do not, as a very dark night for his party and for him—but that is the awesome power of democracy.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) and my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on brilliantly proposing and seconding the Loyal Address. Some 23 years ago, I had the privilege of seconding the Address, and I know what a terrifying ordeal it is. They both did it with great grace, good sense and humour.

I am obviously delighted to have been returned by the citizens of the royal town of Sutton Coldfield with an increased vote—and, indeed, an increased percentage of the vote. They are, after all, the jury that I trust and respect, and I am delighted with their verdict. Throughout the election on the doorstep—thank goodness the doorstep was right and the polls were wrong—I heard about many important issues, some of which are in the Queen’s Speech and some of which are not, that I intend to champion during the course of this Parliament. I will mention just two. The first is mental health, which was referred to briefly by Her Majesty. The second is individual and collective liberty, which this House has sometimes neglected in the past and to which, during this Parliament, we will undoubtedly return.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Mitchell]

Those liberties must be defended—often, I suspect, with a cross-party approach, and I therefore give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Tom Brake]

I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned civil liberties. Does he agree that the snoopers’ charter is a disproportionate response that puts at risk our civil liberties; a cripplingly expensive response, at £1.8 billion; and a rushed response, because David Anderson handed in his review of RIPA—the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000—only on 6 May, and therefore the Prime Minister cannot possibly have taken it into account?

[Mr Mitchell]

We shall return to these issues during the course of this Parliament.

I want to say at the outset that this is an excellent Queen’s Speech. It is a Queen’s Speech, and as secretary of the One Nation Group, on and off, since 1992, I am obviously delighted to see its content.

Thanks to the referendum pledge that the Prime Minister has championed, the Government are in a very good place on an extremely difficult and contentious issue. I got all this grey hair in whipping the party during the Maastricht debates between 1992 and 1994, much of that time spent with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who is not in his place. There is a clear road map: renegotiation followed by a referendum when everyone will be able to decide. It will not be politicians in what used to be called smoke-filled rooms making those decisions; it will be up to everyone to decide. The United Kingdom can clearly survive inside or outside the European Union—not because of the whims of politicians but because we are a great trading nation—but I am absolutely certain that the always edgy relationship that we have had with the EU since we joined in the early 1970s can now be rectified by this renegotiation, and I very much hope that it will be. My advice to those on the Government Front Bench is not to fetter Ministers with regard to the referendum but to let this momentous decision be guided by individual conviction and allow all Ministers, including Cabinet Ministers, to vote as they see fit.

I want to express strong support for the Government’s proposals to tackle the deficit. The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) said that the deficit and the debt in Britain were unsustainable, and in the long term he is absolutely right. Our generation of politicians has been too willing to throw money at problems and has forgotten that it is not Government money—the Government do not have any money—but the money of our constituents and those hard-working people who pay all their taxes. It is the money of the people, whose servants we are as politicians, that we are spending.

If we do not repay this enormous debt and attack all the deficit very thoroughly now, it will be the next generation—our children and grandchildren—who will have to pay it off. It will be an intergenerational transfer of debt and deficit, and a blight on young people, who face many challenges which my generation certainly did not face. For example, those leaving university now pay fees—correctly in my view, although my generation received a grant. They have no idea when they will be able to retire or whether they will receive a pension, whereas my generation expected to retire at the age of 65, quite often on a pension linked to earnings. There are many difficulties to be faced in tackling the deficit, but the Government are right to do that now and to do so urgently to stop it becoming an endemic intergenerational transfer of debt.

But the hard truth is that it is incredibly difficult, as I learned as a Social Security Minister in 1995, to tackle and to cut welfare spending. People argue that cutting £1 billion off the huge welfare budget—less than 1%—is easy, but it is not: £1 billion is £100 from 10 million people, or more than 15,000 people per constituency. The lesson is: do not remove cash, but cut future increased expenditure. That is the sensible, one nation way to do it, and it will make it much easier for the Government to take these extremely difficult and complex decisions.

I want to say that the Government are absolutely right to proceed with caution on human rights legislation, as outlined today. I must say that I never thought a British Government, let alone a Conservative one, would ever consider withdrawing from the European convention on human rights, for which our party was responsible.