Human Rights Abuses: Magnitsky Sanctions

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 8th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. We have a tool here that can be used to drive back those who act badly—in this particular case, against a country illegally invading a neighbouring democratic state—so we should use this ability to sanction those involved and to increase such sanctions dramatically. I know Labour Members will be raising this issue, but they will have noted what he has said.

The UK and the US have imposed extensive additional sanctions on Russian individuals and entities under the Russia-specific sanctions regimes. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) may want to note, those regimes use broader designation grounds and, crucially, do not usually acknowledge an individual’s direct involvement in human rights abuses in Ukraine or elsewhere. That distinction matters, and this should be rectified by the UK Government. The symbolic and moral force of the Magnitsky sanctions is precisely to name perpetrators and link consequences directly to human rights abuses, and that is what sets them apart. In sheer volume, the contrast is stark. The US has imposed well over 5,000 such Russia-related non-Magnitsky designations, and the UK about 2,900. Yet despite this scale, the absence in most cases of any explicit human rights attribution in such regimes means an important opportunity for accountability is being missed.

As a mechanism in the Government’s foreign policy toolkit, Magnitsky sanctions have a huge potential. However, important gaps remain in their implementation, raising serious concerns about their overall effectiveness. There is no publicly available information on the number of Magnitsky sanctions evidence dossiers received by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. However, based on estimates since the inception of the UK’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020, the FCDO receives on average about two or three dossiers of evidence per month from civil society organisations, which often identify between three and 15 individuals or entities alleged to be implicated in human rights violations. This means that since July 2020, the FCDO has received evidence on anywhere between 360 and 3,000 alleged perpetrators of serious human rights violations. In stark contrast, only 229 individuals and entities have been sanctioned under the global human rights regime and global anti-corruption regime, to date.

The limited number of Magnitsky sanctions imposed undermines their effectiveness. Designations tend to overlook broader command structures, instead focusing on isolated actors, excluding key backers or enablers and failing to adopt when sanctioned entities rebrand. For example, Chen Zhi is one of the many leaders of scam networks with bases in south-east Asia trafficking and torturing vulnerable individuals to compel them to scam citizens here in the UK and abroad. The news that the UK and the US sanctioned some of those responsible is always welcome, but those sanctions fail to target Cambodian Government figures who are themselves implicated in the practice, or who turn a blind eye to those violations.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on obtaining the debate and on highlighting how the Magnitsky sanctions could be used more effectively. Could he explain to the House, and for my benefit, what effect, if one applies sanctions to some foreign leader, dictator or person who is in a completely different jurisdiction, does a sanction actually have and how can it be made to bite on the interests of that person so that the sanctions are actually felt by that person?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It has two effects. First, anything to do with any finance or movement or visitations to the United Kingdom are immediately ruled out and the seizure of financial entities can take place. Secondly, it influences other countries to do the same. America may work with us on that, too. Two of the greatest financial markets are then shut to an individual, who may be part of a Government, thus making it highly difficult for them to operate, or to come and enjoy themselves—a lot of that is done. They become pariahs internationally and that has a huge effect, because it influences what others near them will do when they realise they are about to lose their access to very important areas—cities and financial markets. It has already shown to have had a massive knock-on effect.

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[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The whole point of the debate is to ensure that we know where the money comes from, that we know how it has been gained, and that the individuals must pay a penalty if they are involved in what is illegal or inhuman. The key point is that all those matters can be picked out by the Magnitsky sanctions.

I mentioned Myanmar earlier. Despite historically leaning on sanctions against Myanmar’s military junta for its role in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity against its civilian population after the 2021 coup, the UK has failed to target the State Security and Peace Commission, the military’s successor to the UK-sanctioned State Administration Council. Without additional sanctions, the State Security and Peace Commission, which was established in an attempt by the military to rebrand itself and rebuild financial ties with international partners, has effectively succeeded in its mission. That is exactly what we should have been tackling through the sanctions available to us, but we have not done so.

Finally, last month the UK placed sanctions on four senior commanders of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces suspected of involvement in heinous violence against civilians in the city of El Fasher. However, no action was taken against their key military and diplomatic backer, the United Arab Emirates, or their chief commander. That highlights a broader, troubling trend: to date, only a fraction of Magnitsky sanctions have ever been applied by the UK Government to perpetrators from countries considered strategic allies of the UK. That is a very important point to make; politics have an awful lot to do with this issue. As reported by REDRESS, several of the most notorious human rights abusers and corrupt actors, including in Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, China, Eritrea, the UAE and Egypt—we have mentioned Russia, too—have not been sanctioned by the UK.

I will now come to some examples of individuals and contexts that remain unsanctioned despite overwhelming evidence of involvement in corruption and serious human rights issues. Let me deal now with China. While the UK imposed sanctions on four individuals and one entity involved in China’s violent repression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang in 2021, it never acted on detailed evidence received from human rights organisations. REDRESS— I know, because I have seen the evidence—previously submitted it to the FCDO, calling for targeted sanctions on the following individuals and entities for their involvement in serious human rights violations in Xinjiang.

All of the following are sanctioned by the US—our ally—but not by the UK. The persons recommended for designations are: Chen Quanguo, party secretary of the Xinjiang Chinese Communist party and the key driver of the policy of genocide; Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps; Sun Jinlong, former political commissar of the XPCC, who was sanctioned by the US on 31 July 2020; Peng Jiarui, deputy party secretary and commander of the XPCC, sanctioned by the US on 31 July 2020; and Huo Liujun, former leader of the Public Security Bureau, sanctioned by the US on 9 July 2020. As somebody sanctioned by the Chinese Government myself—like you, Madam Deputy Speaker—for raising the issues of Xinjiang at the time, I think that that is a major omission. These are the key people—close almost to President Xi himself—who, when sanctioned, will really feel it. They are locked out of America, but have not been locked out by us. Will the Minister therefore outline what steps the FCDO will take to ensure that sanctions are consistently applied to all actors involved in human rights abuses and corruption?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Why is there no transatlantic co-operation on this? What does my right hon. Friend think is the cause of that lack of co-operation ?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I really do not know the answer to that question. All I can say to my hon. Friend is that we act individually and are supposed to co-operate, but that does not always work. We have seen with the Chinese and others that America leads the way and we half follow, or do not follow at all. My concern is that we do not champion such action in the way that we could and should as an upholder of human rights and freedom. This country has a huge record in that area and we need to use it much more.

I am not the only Member of this House to have raised concerns about the relationship between the Government of the United Arab Emirates and the activities of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. What is going on in Sudan is brutal, bloody and huge, even in comparison to what is happening in somewhere like Gaza. It is an astonishing abuse of human rights and the value of life. The RSF is responsible for brutal murders, rapes, attacks on hospitals and significant numbers of killings, and yet this organisation has been supported heavily by the UAE. It is said that without the support of the UAE, there would not now be a major war going on in Sudan. There are really big questions to be asked here, because without those arms shipments and other support, there would not be the fighting and terrible consequences that we see in Sudan.

I wish to draw the attention of the Minister to reporting by The New York Times in June last year, which, citing US intelligence sources, references the involvement of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Deputy President of the UAE, in co-ordination with the RSF and in his role as chair of two charities funding hospitals in Chad that have allegedly been used in the distribution of weapons to the RSF. The investigation further reports that the US envoy to Sudan confronted Sheikh Mansour personally in 2024 about his support for General Hamdan of the RSF. As the ultimate owner of Manchester City football club, Sheikh Mansour is possibly the most high-profile UAE investor in the UK economy. What are we going to do about that? That is a signal and serious problem for us.

Will the Minister confirm that, given the appalling crimes of the RSF, which fall squarely in the purview of the global human rights sanctions scheme, the Department has carried out a full assessment of whether representatives of the UAE Government may meet the criteria for sanctions, given the significant role the UAE is alleged to play in support of the RSF and the substantial influence of the UAE on investments in the UK economy and public life? If such an assessment has not been carried out, will the Minister say whether it is the Government’s intention to do so?

Individuals arbitrarily detained abroad are particularly vulnerable to torture, ill treatment and other serious human rights violations, from the moment they are detained. The Government’s own figures show that in 2024 the FCDO received 186 new allegations of torture and mistreatment from British nationals overseas. Arbitrary detention and related human rights abuses have long-lasting effects on those who experience them; following release, survivors must bear the physical, psychological and socioeconomic toll of their captivity.

This makes it all the more concerning that the list of British nationals currently subject to arbitrary detention abroad is long. I am going to read out the names on it: Jagtar Singh Johal; Ryan Cornelius, whose family are with us today in the Gallery; Jimmy Lai; Nnamdi Kanu; Christian James Michel; Matthew Alexander Pascoe; Ramze Shihab Ahmed al-Rifa’i; Charles Ridley; Mehran Raoof; Craig and Lindsay Foreman; and Ahmed al-Doush. I want to focus on two particular cases that exemplify the FCDO’s reluctance to use Magnitsky sanctions to challenge arbitrary detention: first, Ryan Cornelius; secondly, Jimmy Lai.

A case that underscores the ongoing failure of the UK Government—and, I have to say, that of their predecessor—to effectively employ Magnitsky sanctions to deter and punish those responsible for arbitrarily detaining and mistreating UK nationals is, of course, that of Ryan Cornelius, who has been arbitrarily detained in Dubai for more than 17 years. I want to mention the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), who has raised this issue on a number of occasions. I congratulate him on his support for the Cornelius family. This arbitrary detention also applies to Charles Ridley, Ryan Cornelius’s business partner, but I will focus today on Ryan.

Unlike the case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ryan’s plight has been met with deafening silence, despite well-documented evidence of an unfair trial and the inhumane treatment that has been meted out to him. His detention has been found arbitrary by the UN working group on arbitrary detention. Ryan’s original 10-year sentence was extended by 20 years at the behest of the Dubai Islamic Bank, which has used his imprisonment as leverage to seize his assets, rendering his family essentially homeless.

The FCDO has been reluctant to engage fully with the detail of Ryan’s case from the very beginning. Even now, Ryan’s family—who, as I said, are with us in the Public Gallery—are repeatedly forced to set out the basic facts of his case at every single meeting with the FCDO or Ministers, despite the fact that they are fully known to them. Despite repeated calls from Ryan’s family and from MPs for sanctions against Dubai officials, the UK Government have taken no action. Not a single individual has been sanctioned for their role in this case.

I urge the Minister to look at imposing targeted Magnitsky sanctions on those responsible for Mr Cornelius’s arbitrary detention and asset seizure. I am going to list just eight people who are involved in the board of the Dubai bank: His Excellency Mohammed Al Shaibani; Yahya Saeed Ahmad Nasser Lootah, vice-chairman of the board of directors; Hamad Abdulla Rashed Obaid Al Shamsi, a board member; Ahmad Mohammad Saeed Bin Humaidan, also a board member; Abdul Aziz Ahmed Rahma Mohamed Al Muhairi; Dr Hamad Buamim; Javier Marin Romano; Bader Saeed Abdulla Hareb; and Dr Cigdem Kogar. I offer up the names of these people, all of whom are involved in this case, for the Government to think carefully about taking action. Unfortunately, Ryan’s case appears to be a clear example of economic interests taking precedence over human rights, largely because the UAE is such a major financial investor and trading partner.

I am afraid that that double standard is not limited to Ryan’s case. India—another country with a recent trade deal—continues to hold a British citizen in arbitrary detention without consequences. Jagtar Singh Johal, from Dumbarton, Scotland, was violently arrested in 2017 while in India to get married. He was tortured and has endured eight years of detention, which the UN working group on arbitrary detention has ruled

“lacks legal basis and is arbitrary”.

After lots of hearings—hundreds of them—prosecutors in India have failed to produce credible evidence against Jagtar, and the UK must now use every diplomatic lever to bring him home.

I want to return, finally, to the case of Jimmy Lai. The time has come, surely, for the UK to wield its sanctions authority against the officials responsible for repression in Hong Kong. Jimmy Lai’s guilty conviction for “foreign collusion” and “sedition” on 15 December, which paves the way for Hong Kong’s courts to sentence the 78-year-old British citizen to life in prison, is the final straw.

Beijing has trashed the Sino-British joint declaration, crushed the freedoms it promised Hongkongers and the world, and imprisoned nearly 2,000 political prisoners, including Jimmy Lai. I have long called for the Government to hold the Hong Kong authorities to account for their persecution of the pro-democracy campaigner, who is guilty only of performing his duties as publisher of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper by speaking to diplomats and other overseas officials.

Not a single Hong Kong individual is named on the UK sanctions list, which sets out all the people, entities and vessels sanctioned by Britain. In comparison, the US has sanctioned 11 officials from the top of Hong Kong’s Administration downwards. How is it that this country, which used to administer and run Hong Kong, has not sanctioned a single person in that process? The three judges responsible for Jimmy Lai’s outrageous guilty verdict—Esther Toh, Alex Lee and Susana D’Almada Remedios, two of whom were called to the bar in London—should be immediate targets, as should the prosecutors: Maggie Yang, Anthony Chau, Ivan Cheung, Crystan Chan and Karen Ng Ka-yue.

Despite the clear role that Magnitsky sanctions could play in these cases, the Government do not treat them as a core foreign policy tool for protecting British citizens abroad. They should not be reserved for politically convenient situations but applied consistently, particularly when we have economic leverage over the perpetrating state. The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally recommended the use of Magnitsky sanctions to deter state hostage taking, and survivors themselves have repeatedly called for their use.

I will listen very carefully to what the Minister has to say, as I think the House wants to get a sense of where the Government are moving on this and whether they intend to increase the level of sanctions or speed them up. If they do so, they will receive my support and, I believe, the support of the Opposition side of the House. These are important moments, and this debate is important.

When this House passed the Magnitsky Act, we did so in good faith. This singular tool would help us in the fight against the abuses of powerful people, particularly in the defence of British citizens who have been wrongly detained and are without the ability to defend themselves. It will help our fight against the powerful people who have control over others who have no redress and no hope for their future.

With the rise of totalitarian states and their satellites, who threaten our very belief in freedom and due process, and who are tearing apart what we call the international rules-based order—such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran—this facility is needed more than ever. Its use is to deter others as much as to punish those who have acted without the law, and such action should be co-ordinated among our allies.

This House has to hold the Government to account—that is our task—and that is what today’s debate is all about. If we do not speak for those languishing under the control of others and the power of powerful states, then who will? I say to the Government simply: this is not parti pris, and nor is it personal; it is an idea that originated here in this place. It is the idea of freedom—freedom of the individual and their protections under the law. For those who carry out the most heinous crimes, there has to be some kind of sanction. The Magnitsky sanction is the best tool that we have. We should surely use it, and use it well, and we must make sure that those out there realise that if they get up to these most disgusting and debilitating acts, they will face a consequence and that consequence will last as long as they do.

War in Ukraine

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 4th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

That is certainly true, but the Russians are also depending more and more on what they produce in their factories rather than their legacy stock, which is making the war more and more expensive for them. They are not in an ideal position.

The initial Russian dash for Kyiv was disastrous for the Russian army. The Russians failed from day one to establish air superiority over Ukraine, which is effectively a no-fly zone for Russian military aircraft. Ukraine has succeeded in developing technology and tactics that make Russian attempts to advance extraordinarily costly. Ukraine’s ability to strike at Russian military and economic assets deep in Russia is increasing. There is absolutely nothing inevitable about a Russian victory over Ukraine. If we continue to sustain Ukraine and to undermine the Russian economy with sanctions, Russia will be forced to change its calculus for carrying on.

Nevertheless, Putin is projecting confidence that he is winning, but let us be clear: this is not because of the military situation but because of a lack of political will in so many NATO countries. If Putin wins, it is only because we let Putin win, as we let him win in Georgia, the Crimea and the Russian oblasts of eastern Ukraine before he embarked on the attempt to take Kyiv. He proved that we are soft, and his confidence is based on his continued belief that nothing has changed.

It has often been pointed out that the combined GDP of all NATO is vastly greater than Russia’s, so we should have nothing to fear, but that advantage only matters if we have the will to use this economic superiority to defeat Russia’s expansionist agenda. War is about nothing if it is not about willpower. Sadly, with a few notable exceptions such as the Baltic states and Poland, we have yet to demonstrate that willpower to win.

That is particularly due to the United States. First, the vacillation of President Biden and his fear of fuelling escalation gave Russia time to build up its war machine and exploit wider alliances. Now, the despicable and disastrous attitude of President Trump seems to offer Putin the opportunity to achieve everything he wants: the subjugation of Ukraine, the humiliation of NATO and the enlargement of the Russian sphere of influence at the expense of European security. Ironically, the effect of the Trump Administration’s 28-point peace plan has been to encourage Putin to keep the war going. That is because Trump appears ready to give President Putin everything he wants—Ukraine as a Russian vassal state. There is no incentive for Putin to stop this war under these circumstances, while the US is seeking to force Ukraine and Europe to accept peace at any price. It sometimes looks as if European resolve might also crumble. Trump thinks he is the master of the universe, but he is in fact being psychologically manipulated by Putin with flattery and—I make no bones about it—with bribes.

But something positive in Europe may finally be happening. Despite the tendency of European leaders to focus on the differences between them, Merz, Macron, our own Prime Minister and the leaders of NATO and the EU have shown remarkable unity. There is a realisation that a so-called peace agreed on Trump’s terms would not be peace at all. Putin would continue his campaign by other means. There would be little or no deterrence to discourage Putin from resuming military action on some bogus pretext at some future date. As Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, has explained:

“Russia has never truly had to come to terms with its brutal past or bear the consequences of its actions”.

She has argued that the nature of the Russian regime means that

“rewarding aggression will bring more war, not less”.

She is right: Putin will come back for more.

The democratic world cannot forget the lessons of history. The attitude of some is an eerie parallel of what Chamberlain said about Hitler’s annexation of the Czech Sudetenland, which he described as

“a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”

Let this House never forget that Russia signed the 2004 Budapest memorandum, which probits the use of military force in Ukraine. President Putin disregarded that undertaking when he annexed Crimea and then attacked eastern Ukraine. How many times do we need to learn this lesson? In Putin’s world, Russia recognises no international law, only its own absolute sovereignty, so a Russian signature on any treaty is not to be trusted, unless it can be externally guaranteed by people who have the necessary force.

Putin is already taunting the UK and NATO with hybrid war attacks. A Russian ship firing lasers at UK military aircraft in neutral airspace would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. This cannot just be ignored. Russia is testing NATO responses and mocking our slow pace of re-arming. The consequences of remaining passive would be dire for the credibility of NATO as a deterrent force. Letting Russia have its agenda would also increase Russia’s credibility with neutral countries, at the expense of NATO and our allies. They will see the EU and NATO as representing waning powers, unable to contain Russia as we did during the cold war.

The agreement on much tougher proposals at Geneva last week, while still engaging with Secretary of State Rubio, is a real achievement. The latest news that Putin has again refused to stop the war exposes him as the true aggressor. This is a war that he could instantly stop oh so easily. So long as Europe and NATO continue to support Ukraine, and Ukraine refuses to settle on Russian terms, then Putin will not agree to a ceasefire, until he realises that there is no diplomatic shortcut open to him.

The biggest risk we face is that Trump loses interest in his peace effort and withdraws support for Ukraine. However, there is already evidence that Trump’s power over the Congress is waning. Abandoning Ukraine would split US politics. We must hope that the US will also continue with intelligence support, but we should be ready for that to stop. If necessary, Europe should offer to pay for that intelligence, if that enables that intelligence support to be continued.

Settling for a fake peace on unsustainable Trump-Witkoff terms would be far worse. We in Europe have to accept that President Trump’s actions have demonstrated that he does not care about Ukraine, and his commitment to European security is, at best, ambiguous. The right plan is for European NATO to be ready to continue to support Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s demands whatever happens, to continue to support Ukraine’s military, and to help to finance Ukraine’s increasingly effective defence industries. That is why today’s motion refers to the release of the €140 billion Russian frozen assets in Europe, which is vital. Russia will then continue to suffer the astronomical attrition, on men and matériel, at vast financial cost. More intensive sanctions must also bite on their economy.

In truth, we can kid ourselves about the Russian economy, but it remains pretty resilient. However, sanctions have reduced foreign exchange earnings by some 20%—they come only from the export of oil and gas—and Russia’s domestic banks are now the only buyers of Russian Government bonds. This is not a long-term sustainable position for Russia. Secondary sanctions applied to the Russian shadow fleet, and to countries that enable that shadow fleet to exist, have made and can continue to make the export of oil and gas less and less profitable, or even loss-making for Russia.

Above all, we see the Russian army advancing so slowly in Ukraine, taking tiny areas of land at incredible human cost. We are seeing a land war that Russia cannot win. It has taken all of this year for Russia to take the small town of Pokrovsk, and at the cost of some 100,000 casualties.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

They have not really taken it.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

My right hon. Friend is right: the Russians have not already taken the town, although they say they have. The US ambassador to NATO pointed out recently that a snail crawling from the Russia border westwards would now be in the middle of Poland, had it left at the same time as the beginning of the invasion—that is how badly the Russians are doing militarily.

There is no breakthrough that would give Russia strategic military success, so Putin escalates by ramping up hybrid warfare on NATO states. He wants to move the focus of the war on to fresh battlefields. He attacks Ukrainian energy infrastructure. He could launch a miliary attack on a NATO member country using a form of warfare for which that country, unlike Ukraine, is not prepared. Such an attack on an ally would necessitate a response by the UK, if deterrence is to remain credible. It might even involve UK troops in Estonia, for example. Our troops are not prepared for the kind of drone warfare that we are seeing in Ukraine. If Russia did that, what would we do? I leave that question hanging in the air.

An attack could involve a missile attack on targets within the UK, for which we are equally unprepared, or on our offshore assets. Our allies in Germany, Poland and Finland take very seriously the real risk that Europe may be drawn into a more military confrontation with Russia, and a lot sooner than is comfortable to acknowledge.

What must we do in the face of this now obvious threat to our security? We must acknowledge and explain to our population that we are indeed at war now, and we must explain the nature of the hybrid threat. We must call out Russian hybrid attacks for what they are and we must devise robust responses, as well as increasing our own defences. Are these interceptions, and no more, a sufficient response?

We must constantly adapt the use of sanctions, realising that, like any weapon, Russia will devise countermeasures to evade them. We must, as a real priority, increase our military and economic support to Ukraine, however difficult that might be. We need to make it clear, by both our words and our actions, that Russia cannot win this war. I say to the Minister for the Armed Forces, who will respond to the debate, that it is not enough for us to repeat the mantra “for as long as it takes.” What does that mean? It has already taken far too long. We must commit to supporting Ukraine until Ukraine achieves victory, and soon, and that is possible.

What does that victory look like? Ukraine must be able to sustain itself as a secure and independent sovereign state, as part of the family of free and democratic nations. Victory is no threat to Russian territory or sovereignty—there is no plan or objective to topple President Putin—but this victory is the only way to prevent Russia from discrediting NATO and corroding the confidence that we democracies can and must use to prevent despots from degrading the global international order.

To help to achieve peace, we in the UK must accelerate our own war readiness, as the Defence Committee set out in its recent report. The noble Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who oversaw the Government’s strategic defence review, recently remarked:

“We are under-prepared…we’re under attack and we’re not safe”.

Changing that does not simply mean strengthening our armed forces, although that is essential; it also means adapting a lot of things in our country so that we can survive and fight a war. That will be difficult, even painful, so the sooner we start, the better, because it is weakness that encourages Putin—the stronger we are, the less likely we are to be attacked.

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[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on his opening remarks, which were specific and precise; I will try not to repeat many of them, but to get into some of the other issues.

My personal connection with Ukraine goes right back to a matter of months after the original invasion. I was involved with a Scottish charity called Siobhan’s Trust, which went out there to help those who were fleeing at the Polish border. When that had settled a little, the charity decided to cross the border and carry on feeding people who had been dispossessed behind the frontline. I see the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) in his place; I call him an hon. Friend in this, because he came out there with me to see the same remarkable charity. It is a wonderfully bonkers British charity. The team wear kilts, put the pipes in their mouths, and dance and entertain the Ukrainians only a few miles behind enemy lines, risking themselves at the same time. They show the remarkable bond that we in this country have forged with the Ukrainians in their hour of need. The charity is peculiarly British, and that is what we are about.

We know what this is all about. We do not need this House to lead this debate. In truth, if we were to ask ordinary people on the high streets of this great country, they would immediately react, “We stand with Ukraine.” Why? Because they know what it is all about. History tells us what happens when countries fall: they do not rise again unless somebody else can rescue them. There is nobody to rescue countries like Ukraine if it is not us, after all our experiences of the second world war and our determination to ensure such a brutal war never takes place again. It is happening now.

I have to remind the US that, even if it is not a guarantor, it certainly has an obligation to Ukraine under the Budapest memorandum. It cannot sweep that aside. The obligation came about mostly because Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. I wonder whether Putin would have invaded if it had kept its nuclear weapons. Ukraine was misled by the west. We said that we would stand by the Ukrainians, and away went their nuclear weapons Then, of course, Putin eventually decides to invade—at first piecemeal, invading part of the territory, and then fully later on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is quite right that the Russians have been both singularly appalling in the way that they have behaved and incredibly poor in terms of their military activity. That notwithstanding, they would never have done this if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, which would have been its major line of defence.

I have travelled many times to Ukraine to visit charities and others and have spoken to many Ministers in Kyiv about the difficulties and problems, including in Kharkiv, not long after Ukraine had driven the Russians back. Another Deputy Speaker, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), was with me in Kharkiv, and we saw the devastation. How quickly the Ukrainians repair it is another marvel: I saw many buildings that had been shot at and blown apart—people had died—and by the next time I went to see them, which was a year later, they were back up and standing. That is a phenomenal testimony to the capability of the Ukrainians to recognise that, despite this terrible war, they have to keep on making efforts to live as natural and normal a life as they can.

President Zelensky has rightly become the signal and the character of the defence. I know there has been a difficult relationship with the White House over his desire to wear fatigues—that strikes me as a rather petty point but, no matter how big they are, some people can be incredibly petty. His whole character, responsibility and defiance in staying in Kyiv, when Russia attacked and was determined to find and kill him, shows the courage of the Ukrainians embodied in one man. We need to support him in difficult times.

We know that Ukraine is not perfect. Which country can put its hand on its heart and say it has never had corruption? Which countries have come out of the Soviet Union and not struggled with corruption? The only way people could exist in a Soviet country was through corruption, because that was how to get things done, because things were so bureaucratic and hopeless and people were not properly paid. The Ukranians are trying to get on top of that. They want to be a democracy, and they want to have freedom and human rights. Even if nothing else had happened, surely it should have been our responsibility to stand by Ukraine in its attempt to get that done. We only have to go back 150 years in this country, and we were riddled with corruption. We changed how we ran things, we changed the civil service code and we changed payments, and we got on top of it for the most part. When we talk about our lack of corruption, it came after a number of years of hardship many years ago in our history. Those who complain about corruption and point the finger should point the finger at themselves, because it is a misunderstanding of history and our obligation to a people who wish to be free. They will one day be utterly free, if we stand with them.

Russia has engaged in appalling war crimes. If people go to the battlefield, they will see what the Russians have been doing. They deliberately target civilians, so that the military will come to try and help them, and then they get a bigger target. The whole nature of warfare has been turned on its head in Ukraine. A soldier who had had his leg blown off told me the other day, “There is no safe space behind the frontline, as there always was before. You have to go miles back before you can even begin to think of putting up some kind of hospital or first aid centre, because those drones fly all day and all night. What they do is hit one soldier and lay them out, dead or alive. Then, as the others run to him, they rain down on them with their explosives.” That is why more than 50,000 people in Ukraine today who have been serving on the frontline need prosthetics.

Ukraine has the most advanced prosthetics laboratories that I have ever seen. They could teach us a thing or two. There is a whole problem with the tourniquet, because it cannot be released. Soldiers cannot get to the wounded soldier lying on the ground, because they know what will happen if they go to them, so the wounded soldier lies, often for an hour or more, with a tourniquet destroying their arm, even though it may be saving their life. They end up with terrible prosthetics requirements into their shoulder blades. Do they moan and complain about that? No, they do not. They sit down technically and work out how to solve it. We have a lot to learn from them, including on the battlefield and how they counter the drones. The Ukranians are way ahead of us, and I hope that the MOD realises that it is not us who can teach them a lesson, but they who can teach us. I spend time trying to bring companies over from Ukraine to give us that technology on drones and all these other areas where we should learn from them.

The other point I want people to learn is that we seem to talk about Ukrainians as though they were capable of little themselves. They had no defence manufacturing capability worth talking about, but today they manufacture more than 50% of their own defence needs. They do it unbelievably efficiently and they do it under regular fire from Russia. I have visited companies in Ukraine where half of the place gets blown up and in about four days they are back manufacturing and fixing things. Those are things that we used to do when we were in the second world war being bombarded. The Ukranians show the same resilience, the same application and the same flexibility.

We must stand with Ukraine. We stand with Ukranians because of what they want to be and because it is our responsibility to defend those who seek freedom and democracy as their cause. It is as simple as that. The UK has been the most united over this, and I applaud colleagues from all parts of the House, because we have all stood together. It is noticeable that when we talk to Ukrainians, they always raise that point. The UK is united, and that is the most important point.

I will finish on sanctions. The problem for us is that we have failed to settle our sanctions responsibility to the degree that we should have. There are huge problems over the shadow fleet, as has been mentioned, and over individual sanctions, which we should have been using on a number of occasions. It is remarkable that with the one thing we had complete control over—the sale of Chelsea football club—£2.5 billion has sat there for three years, because we defined the ability to use it so poorly that there is now a dispute as to whether Abramovich’s own companies have a right to use the money, or whether we can seize it. We have to deal with this. If we cannot deal with that one issue, it shows how bad it will be for us in seeking reparations across the board.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Do we think for a moment that Russia would pause seizing any assets it could to fund the conflict? Is it not ironic that the Russians use the rule of law against us, despite the fact that they have no respect for it themselves?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is, of course, a fact that we stand by the rule of law and teach others to do so, but the reality is that this whole problem could be resolved if there was greater resolve—by the way, this is a criticism not just of the present Government but the previous one—in the Foreign Office and the Treasury to leave no stone unturned and resolve this matter by seizing the money.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

They need the will to do so.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The will is non-existent.

I will conclude by simply saying that Ukraine should not be written off. The issue is not whether Ukraine has to make a deal now because it cannot win. Winning, for the Ukrainians, is getting back their land, their rights and their country. It is written into the constitution of Ukraine that the land that Russia occupies is theirs. People talk glibly about handing over territory as a way of resolving the conflict, but this would only lead, as has been said previously, to Russia moving again within a matter of months or years and seizing the rest of Ukraine. Putin does not care about territory; he cares about Ukraine. He believes Ukraine should be part of Russia, and he will never stop. If we show weakness by agreeing to some stupid 28-point plan, which would sell the Ukrainians down the river, Putin would come back. We would walk away and say, “Well, we did our best.” That is not good enough.

I urge the Minister to make it absolutely clear that we do not agree with any of the 28-point plan, which would sell territory for peace. But it would not be peace; it would be a short-term abdication of responsibility that would lead to the death of many millions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Within the last few minutes, I read that President Zelensky is on a state visit to Dublin, but his arriving plane was buzzed by four mysterious military-grade drones. That is what we are up against, and there is not sufficient awareness of that. The fact that this Chamber is sparsely populated this afternoon suggests that this whole debate is yet to get into the mainstream of our politics and our national discourse. I emphasise again that the Government have yet to deliver the national conversation that they promised in their strategic defence review. I recognise the efforts that people in the defence community are making, and that includes Ministers, but involving the whole of Government, the whole of the Opposition and the whole of politics is what is required.

I hoped that this debate would demonstrate the unity across the House that has indeed been shown today. I thank every colleague, from every part of the House, for their contribution, and all those who signed the motion who could not be here today. The motion was intended to be a clear statement of our national intent. I imagine that it will go through without a vote, so that the signal will be sent to the world about what this country believes, and what it believes must be done. But I come back to the point that we need to underline our will and signal the force of our intent if we are to achieve what we want to achieve, and to lead our allies from the front. I believe that the United Kingdom is capable of doing that, and is to some extent doing its best to achieve it, but also that other countries are looking to us to take a stronger lead and set the best example, in line with the achievements of our history and our values. I am very grateful that this debate has taken place, and it has been an honour to lead it.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You sit in the Chair and are not allowed to speak, so many in the House may not realise your role in all this. You have visited Ukraine with me and others, and you have been a stalwart champion of all that we have been debating today, so I wanted to make sure that the House recognised the incredible attention and support that you have given.

Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 14th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am grateful for your tolerance, Mr Mundell. I start by saying to the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), and one or two others on the Government Benches, that to accuse people like myself who served in Northern Ireland of supporting the legacy Act and then demeaning ourselves by apparently attacking others is utter nonsense. We are after one purpose and one purpose only: to find a way to protect veterans who have been pursued through the courts in a vexatious manner and had their lives destroyed in their latter years. That was the sole purpose of my support for the legacy Act. Even though I had my doubts about it, I supported it for that reason. There was nothing else on the table to provide support for those veterans, so I really take it ill, and the hon. Member for South Ribble demeans himself by attacking people on that personal basis.

[Emma Lewell in the Chair]

This is an issue about inconsistency, and it covers all previous Governments. The problem is that we were originally involved in the law of armed conflict, which settled these issues, and we have had a collision with the Human Rights Act 1998, which has changed everything. The real point is that there is no moral equivalence between people who set out to kill, maim and destroy in a democracy, which happened in Northern Ireland, as the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) laid out, and the British servicemen who were ordered to go to Northern Ireland. They went out of their duty to protect the citizens of Northern Ireland against a violent and destructive insurrection.

I have to tell anybody with the idea that there is some kind of equivalence here—that if we cannot proceed against IRA terrorists we have taken them out of the equation—to go back and find out about when we pursued IRA terrorists through the court. There is no evidence. There were no records kept. They know that very well. If anyone thinks they will get 400 witness statements from people who know they are protected by the lack of evidence, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) said, they must be living in a different world from the one that I am living in.

The reality is that the only people who will be prosecuted, unless this Government do something to end that process, will be the veterans. Even if they are not prosecuted and eventually found guilty, the persecution and the chasing of people who served their country ruins their lives and makes them worry for the rest of their lives.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

That point cannot be overstated, because many Northern Ireland veterans already suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems. I speak as a vice-president of the mental health charity Combat Stress. The very idea that there are people who are nowhere near a prosecution or potential prosecution but are now haunted by not only the trauma of their service but the possibility that they will be dragged to a court and exposed in some way, with their families saying, “Daddy, did you really do something wrong?”—it cannot be overstated how utterly brutal this is. It is a deliberate campaign by those who are trying to bring these prosecutions.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend: that is what is really hanging over us. If nothing is done and the existing Act is repealed, we are left with the single problem we started with: how do we protect veterans from the vexatious persecution that has been going on? I have lots of respect for many Government Members, particularly the Veterans Minister. He knows very well that that is their interest. I say to them simply that they cannot repeal the Act without replacing it with protection for the veterans who served their country.

I served in Northern Ireland. I did not ask to go to Northern Ireland. I went out with my regiment, the Scots Guards, and we served, I think, pretty well in Northern Ireland, but we did not want to be there—to be spat at by people in the United Kingdom and wonder, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) said, what was coming around the corner next. We put up with all that in the United Kingdom. It is a unique experience—it is not like going abroad to fight a war. Being on the streets of the United Kingdom, carrying a rifle and trying to protect those who are also under attack from those who would will their destruction is something very peculiar, yet my soldiers and many others acted with the most phenomenal restraint. Provocation was there all the time, but they acted with the utmost restraint. I know of no other country whose soldiers would have ever done that, no matter what their background was. I am immensely proud to have been one of them. We should stop demeaning each other about politics in this. This is about protection, and we should be talking about that.

I lost a very good friend in Northern Ireland. It is pretty awful, really, when I think back to what actually happened. Robert Nairac was kidnapped. He was tortured for a long time. We know not what happened to his body, although we may guess. He was executed after having escaped—that much we do know. No one from the IRA who committed that atrocity will ever, I suspect, be held to account in any court of law. That is the injustice of this process. His parents died never knowing where his body was, and his family today still do not know. Talk about injustice—that is injustice.

UK-EU Summit

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) and his flowery optimism for the future of this country, with it somehow being a terribly good thing that we are realigning ourselves with the European Union without actually rejoining it. It makes me wonder about all the debates I have attended over 33 years in the House about our relationship with what used to be called the common market, then the European Communities and now the European Union.

This debate has a ring of familiarity about it, because there are two sides in the House that tend to completely misunderstand each other—only, I think that Conservative Members now understand the truth, because that came out in the referendum. The referendum demonstrated that the House of Commons was completely out of alignment with the population on the question of our membership of the European Union. The whole Brexit story was about a battle within the House as to whether the pro-EU majority would assert itself and somehow negate the referendum, or whether the referendum would be respected. That is why my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and her shadow Cabinet colleagues are right to put at the front of the motion the importance of honouring the referendum result.

The fact is that a referendum result represents a superior mandate to a single term of election for an elected Government, because that referendum takes place on a single issue. I do not think anyone would pretend that the European Union was the main issue at the last general election, so anyone in the Government or indeed in the Liberal Democrats trying to use the general election result as a mandate to circumvent the result of the 2016 referendum is playing a dangerous political game.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Of course, that argument was used in reverse on those of us who had had concerns about Europe for 40 years as we were told—exactly to my hon. Friend’s point—that a referendum was superior to continuous elections. We made a decision after the last referendum; that was a generational move. We have hardly had a generation in the few years since the referendum.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. The important point is that we do not have a written constitution, but we do have in our minds a hierarchy of legitimacy on which, in the end, the democratic credibility of the House depends. The fact is, a referendum represents a superior mandate on a single issue and, with a great struggle, the pro-EU majority eventually aligned itself with the decision that the British people had taken on our membership of the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am happy to point out that after the referendum and since we left the European Union, we are spending way more than £350 million a week more on the NHS than we were, and our contributions to the European Union have fallen dramatically—in fact, much faster than was expected under the withdrawal agreement. So the benefit that was on the side of the bus has turned out to be correct, although I believe it was a statistical sleight of hand to use that particular number; I disowned it at the time. But have no doubt that if we are to get drawn back into the European Union, we will have to start raiding the NHS to make payments to the European Union again. I do not think that is what the British people voted for.

That brings me back to this great defence fund, which I think will be borrowed. Will we have to borrow some of that fund as well? No, it was going to be borrowed through some European Central Bank mechanism. Will it instead be taxed? In any case, it is all Government borrowing, so will we add to Government borrowing by participating in the borrowing or funding of that fund, or would it not be better if we just remained aloof from it to concentrate on spending money on our own defence? That is the point that has already been made: the money that we have committed to defence over the years, in the period since the second world war and, indeed, since the end of the cold war, is far greater than that of the vast majority of EU countries. We also mandate our nuclear deterrent to the protection of the whole of Europe. We play our part in the defence of Europe. As for the idea that we can deploy troops more quickly through free movement of people, what planet are the Liberal Democrats on? It is utterly ludicrous.

I come back to the point about the defence fund. There have been such funds in Europe before, but I can assure Members that the game that every country plays is the one where what they put in, they get out. The French are past masters at that. They will participate in a multilateral programme, but if they do not get the lion’s share, they pull out. They pulled out of the Eurofighter programme when that was meant to be part of their deal because they were not getting enough work out of it. Therefore, the idea that it is a freebie for British defence companies to participate in the fund and get extra money into the British defence industries will simply not happen.

In any case, this fund is not about creating warfighting capability this year or next year, which is what we need; it is about the very long-term, big programmes that the defence industries want. That will not rescue us from America’s absence from NATO, if that were to occur for more than a few months or a few years under Donald Trump. Let us also remember that Donald Trump will not be there forever; he has 45 more months to go. Let us not do more damage to NATO by making it look to the other side of the Atlantic that we will take care of our own defence in Europe from now on. That is very dangerous.

I remember Madeleine Albright, a Democrat Secretary of State, railing against what was then called the European security and defence policy. She warned that it represented the “Three Ds”: the duplication of NATO assets, which was wasteful and unnecessary; the discrimination against non-EU members of NATO such as Norway, Turkey, Canada and the United States; and the decoupling of American and European defence policy. Is that what we want? Is that what this House wants? Is that what the Labour party wants? No. The Labour party says that NATO is the cornerstone of our defence and rightly so, but what signal is it sending to President Trump?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I ask that he wait just a minute.

What signal is it sending to Donald Trump by suggesting that we will have an EU defence policy that excludes the United States? It is exactly the wrong signal for this moment.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend raises that point, which I want to elaborate further. The real point is that J. D. Vance, the vice president, came over to Munich and ripped a hole through the Europeans, including ourselves, for not having spent enough, although we were one of the top spenders. Since then, the Americans have gone on and on about that, but each time we get the sense that they are keener to decouple. Does what we are about to do not give strength to the argument that we do not need them any longer and therefore they need to look somewhere else? That is the danger, because NATO was not just about defence of the west; it was about making sure that the US never goes into isolationism again.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Yes. That promise of creating an EU defence capability has been on the table since the St Malo declaration of 1999, in the aftermath of the Maastricht treaty that first introduced the word “defence” into the EU. That was when France and the United Kingdom, under a Labour Government, declared that the EU would have autonomous military capability, with separable but not separate military forces from NATO.

We still have the absurdity in which the armed forces of the EU countries are allocated to NATO tasks but, at the same time, are ready for EU tasks. There had to be a complicated de-confliction arrangement to try to ensure that an EU defence mission does not conflict with a NATO defence mission. We finished up with something called the Berlin-plus arrangements, which Turkey has never accepted because it is not a member of the EU but is a member of NATO.

There has always been an impasse between NATO and the EU on those two questions, and it is all completely unnecessary because NATO has a military headquarters, it has a political committee and it is an international organisation. Indeed, it is the most successful military alliance in the world. Why is the EU trying to duplicate it just for itself? The EU is more interested in statecraft and state-building than defending our own continent. The anger with which Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz have attacked Trump reflects a latent anti-Americanism that has always been there and which we could do without at this moment.