Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regulations 2021

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, last week in the debate on the hybrid Parliament, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, explained to the House that she was, in effect, understudying for the leader of the Labour group, the other noble Baroness, Lady Smith. This afternoon, I feel as if I am understudying for my noble friend Lady Northover. As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, pointed out, my noble friend has worked very hard pushing the Government on Magnitsky sanctions over the years and she is very sorry not to be here this afternoon.

I am leading on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, but my normal forays into probing the Government’s views on sanctions have been limited to sanctions associated with human rights abuses and, in particular, genocide. So I come to wind up from the Liberal Democrat Benches with similar questions to many other noble Lords. I welcome the statutory instrument but, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, I wonder why we have to debate a statutory instrument under the affirmative procedure when it has already come into effect. It was laid on 23 April and came into effect on 26 April; we are meant to debate it within 28 days of its being laid. I realise that there was Prorogation, but there seems to be a practice of Members of your Lordships’ House being required to scrutinise statutory instruments after they have come into effect. I realise that it might not be the noble Lord the Minister’s job to give an answer on this today, but can he take back to the usual channels the question of whether the Government can look again at tabling statutory instruments in a timely fashion?

This statutory instrument has been broadly welcomed and it is clearly appropriate that the United Kingdom is able to impose sanctions for corruption, precisely for the reasons outlined by the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, at the outset: corruption undermines democracy, human rights and the rule of law. I am minded to ask the Minister whether he is able to opine on some of the comments raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, because we are looking at a statutory instrument that clearly has a territorial extent of the United Kingdom, but we are talking about global sanctions understood to be for third countries—that is how I have read the statutory instrument. Am I correct in that reading and, if I am, what thought have the Government given to similar legislation on corruption within the United Kingdom? Are we looking at double standards between what we say we want to support and advocate globally and what we have on the statute book domestically?

Overall, the statutory instrument is welcome. There are very few points that I want to raise specifically, but I do have one question about Regulation 9, “Confidential information in certain cases where designation power used”. This relates back to Regulation 8, which talks about a designation being made and, essentially, a restriction on anybody knowing that a person is a designated person. Given that a lot of the statutory instrument requires people who are not the designated person and businesses to act in particular ways if they believe that somebody is a designated person, is it not somewhat strange to have a provision that somebody is a designated person and it not be known to other people? How can they then act appropriately?

These provisions are welcome. There are some questions, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, raised, about the extent to which we might also be looking at other sanctions. I had assumed that the statutory instruments on sanctions that came in in 2019 would be extant and that the statutory instrument brought forward today is an additional one. Are we expecting a suite of documents to be coming forward? Can the Minister explain to the House whether the Government envisage not just bringing forward sanctions for corruption but looking at how we deal with a country like Belarus?

Finally, apart from joining everybody else in asking what counts as “serious” in the context of corruption, there has been a lot of comment about the fact that this statutory instrument will bring the United Kingdom in line with the USA and Canada. What action have the Government taken to work with our neighbours in the EU 27 to ensure that, where possible, sanctions are done in co-ordination with the EU? Inevitably, the more countries that impose sanctions simultaneously, the more effective such sanctions are likely to be.