Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Bob Seely and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I am aware that the only consistent thing in the Labour leadership is its inconsistency. Will the shadow Minister confirm that in the past decade Rwanda was assumed to be so unsafe that the UN safely rehoused there 30,000 refugees from other countries?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I am very glad that he asks about what has happened in the past decade. Let us not forget that, just six years ago, 11 refugees were shot dead by the Rwandan police for protesting about food shortages, as reported by the UN. I thank him for his intervention, because he makes the point clearly for me: six years ago, 11 refugees were shot dead.

[Bob Seely]

rose—

[Stephen Kinnock]

I would welcome the hon. Member’s comments on that point.

[Bob Seely]

I am sorry about that incident, but 30,000 refugees have been safely rehoused in Rwanda. Rwanda is deemed to be safe by the United Nations. It is deemed to be safe by pretty much everybody apart from the Labour party. That is my point.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The whole point of this is that we do not have a crystal ball. The evidence of what happened six years ago should clearly give us some cause for concern. All that this amendment seeks to do is create a position whereby the independent monitoring committee, handpicked by the Government, is able to advise the Home Secretary on laying a statement, which is absolutely fair enough.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Bob Seely and Stephen Kinnock

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I think I was crystal clear that we oppose the Bill. It will be entirely counterproductive and make all the challenges that we face worse. Labour Members believe in supporting legislation that addresses the substance of an issue rather than one that chases tabloid headlines.

The competition for the most absurd aspect of this entire process is pretty stiff, but the programme motion is a strong contender. Ministers in their infinite wisdom decided that we should debate the second half of the Bill on the first day, and the first half on the second day. Whatever the rationale for that, I suppose that there is something strangely appropriate about the idea that we should consider the Bill back to front given that so many of its provisions put the cart before the horse.

The other point that I wish to make at the outset is that the refusal of the Home Office to publish a full set of impact assessments ahead of Second Reading—and they still have not been published—is completely unacceptable. Surely, as a matter of basic respect for this House and for our constituents, Members should be entitled to expect to be given the opportunity to have an informed debate, based on comprehensive assessments of the impact that the Government expect their proposals to have.

The fact is that the Government’s entire handling of this shambles of a Bill has been utterly chaotic, while Ministers’ statements have generally been incoherent, inconsistent or simply incomprehensible. I spoke earlier in my point of order about the Government’s conjuring up statistics to suit their needs that have now been rubbished by the statistics watchdog. However, we are where we are, and on that basis I will move on to consider some of the substantive issues.

It is with regret that, given the time available, I will have to limit my remarks to our own Front-Bench amendments tabled on behalf of the Opposition. I begin with our new clause 25, which sets out how Labour would approach these matters if we were in government, in order to deliver meaningful progress on a range of issues, from border security, to authorised safe routes, as part of a comprehensive strategy to stop the crossings and keep people safe, in line with our international commitments. In particular, new clause 25 calls for a multifaceted overarching strategy for securing the agreements with international partners that our country urgently needs.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

We have already come to agreements with international partners and we are signing more all the time—a new deal with the French, a new deal with the Albanians—but we have had 480,000 asylum places granted here since 2015. How many hundreds of thousands more people does the hon. Gentleman want coming to the country?

[Stephen Kinnock]

It may have escaped the hon. Gentleman’s notice that when the botched Brexit negotiations took place we left the Dublin convention, which is crucial for returns. We have to find a deal that replaces it. That is about protecting our borders, because it is about returning people when their asylum claims are not successful.

A strategy for securing Britain’s borders must begin with a clear and honest recognition that we cannot solve these problems unilaterally. This is a collective international issue that requires a collective international solution, so closer co-operation with our nearest friends and neighbours must be our starting point and our No. 1 priority. That means urgent action, which will be taken forward from day 1 of a Labour Government, to negotiate a returns agreement with the EU to replace our previous participation in the Dublin system.

That is just the start, however. We also need to restore access for our law enforcement agencies to the treasure trove of information—from biometrics to travel history—that Eurodac and other databases provide in support of efforts to ensure that the removal of asylum seekers from the UK to safe EU countries is possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

As I have just said, we support clause 51; I do not know whether the hon. Lady was listening. We support the idea of safe and legal routes that are capped. What she needs to understand is that for people escaping war and conflict, the idea of being detained in a deterrence centre that does not exist or of being removed to other countries when no removal agreements are in place is not a deterrent. For a deterrent to be effective, it has to be credible. The Bill has zero credibility because it is impossible to operationalise. That is the key point that the hon. Lady seems to fail to understand.

[Bob Seely]

rose—

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am going to make some progress.

A range of proposals have been put forward, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), who has a record of huge commitment to addressing these matters. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) also have a long history of working diligently on these issues.

The number of new clauses, including one of my own, that seek to build on and expand access to family reunion visas for refugees clearly reflects the high level of support for such schemes among Members on both sides of the House. In speaking to new clause 24 on behalf of the Opposition, I make it clear that providing better safe routes for unaccompanied children with family in the UK is not just right from a moral point of view; it will also demonstrate to our European neighbours, whose support on issues from returns to tackling people smuggling is so fundamentally important to this country, that we are serious about making progress in negotiations on the range of issues that I outlined in relation to new clause 25.

Foreign Lobbying

Debate between Bob Seely and Stephen Kinnock

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely]

That is a good question; I am not sure I can define it. It is possible to define the outcome, which is trying to influence events in an unethical, potentially illegal way, while not doing so overtly—for instance, by the Russian intelligence service, the GRU. It is apparently not illegal for someone to be a PR person for the GRU. If they were given secret documents, it would be illegal.

Do I think a definition of covert influence should just be somebody working for what they believe to be a foreign state intelligence agency? No, I think it is much broader than that. It would cover people such as Russian oligarchs and Chinese corporations. The issue is that, in a one-party state, it is difficult to make a distinction between state entities, and significant and powerful individuals, who are using covert, non-declared forms of influence to project either their own power, or their own and state power. That is the issue.

I used to hate definitions, and then I did a PhD and found that definitions are rather useful, because one has to decide what one is talking about. One thing I thought was slightly disappointing, though maybe understandable, occurred when the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs looked at the National Security and Investment Bill. We put forward a suggestion for a definition of national security, which the Government did not want to include. A definition of some of these things would be highly valuable. I would certainly welcome attempts by the Government in that regard. In fact, I may do it myself, so I thank my hon. Friend for the question.

The Government said they would adopt a form of foreign agent registration, by looking at

“like-minded international partners’ legislation.”

The two most important, by some distance, are the Foreign Agents Registration Act process in the United States, and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act in Australia. FARA, in the US, came in in 1938 as a result of covert Nazi lobbying, and was very timely, three years before the US entry into the war. In 2018, the Australians adopted their own foreign influence transparency scheme, largely because of the role of Chinese covert influence in Australia. That has been well documented by the author Clive Hamilton, in his book “Silent Invasion”, which I recommend.

In the US alone, foreign agents spent nearly $1 billion a year over a three-year period influencing the US Government. In the US, it is big business, and I suggest it is also big business in the UK.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. On the point of how clearly to define lobbying and influence, I can briefly give an example. In 2019, I wrote to the then chair of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), who is now the Northern Ireland Secretary, raising concerns about a gentleman called Ehud Sheleg, who at the time was treasurer of the Conservative party. I raised concerns around national security and permissible donations, because of Mr Sheleg’s very close connections to Russia; his father-in-law was a pro-Kremlin politician in Ukraine at the time. The right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth chose to reply by threatening to sue me for libel. I would welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) regarding that response.

Last week, The New York Times revealed that Mr Sheleg had made a large donation to the Conservative party, which was connected to a gift he said he had received from his father-in-law that had bounced around five or six different bank accounts in Europe before landing in Mr Sheleg’s account. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that somebody like Mr Sheleg would meet the threshold for being registered as a foreign agent, even at the time that he was treasurer of the Conservative party?

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Gentleman raises a valuable point. I am not sure I can argue the details of that because I do not know enough about the individual case. Simply put, if that individual is deemed to be an informal agent of influence, he should be on a registration process. But that is a big if—if he is deemed to be. The question is, who would deem it?

There is a wider question. Would any Government willingly put China as one of those states that are using covert influence? They absolutely should do, but perhaps several years ago they would not have done so, because any Government, including new Labour, would wish to curry favour with China.

On the wider point about questionable behaviour, there are a number of Members of the House of Lords whose behaviour has frankly been questionable, and that is, I am afraid, on both sides of the House. There is a very well known and senior former new Labour Minister who set himself up as a strategist in order to avoid, frankly, giving up almost any information at all on who his clients are. Considering that that person was also a senior EU Commissioner, he was one of the most powerful people in the land, and he was conducting, probably—I do not know, because we know so little about his business—very powerful, high-level and discreet lobbying, including for Russian clients. There is also a former Labour Attorney General who has taken time out of the House of Lords primarily to give legal advice, seemingly to Russian state or proxy interests.

Is that healthy? Should those people be in Parliament? No. There are, unfortunately, Conservative Ministers who have also behaved, frankly, shamefully, including people who have advised Deripaska. What on earth these individuals are doing and why on earth we allow any of them in Parliament I do not know. I do not say, “Everything we do is fine and everything you do is rubbish,” because that is pitiful and embarrassing. This is a political class problem, not an issue with one particular party. That is the only thing I would say on that. I should probably crack on and make some progress, Dame Angela.

In the UK, no FARA-like legislation exists. The closest thing we have to it is the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014. Which was brought in by the coalition Government. It made some progress, but not enough. It brought in a mandatory register for written and oral questions to Ministers and permanent secretaries by so-called consultant lobbyists. That said, the definition of consultant lobbyists is very narrow. In addition, the Act does not differentiate between clients and those represented, or between foreign and domestic clients.

Thus, a UK entity—be it a peer, a PR company, a finance house or a law firm offering a one-stop shop to oligarchs and other companies—can act on behalf of a foreign entity without that foreign entity being registered. To my mind, that is highly questionable. We know that hostile states are engaged in covert and overt lobbying activities. Most recently, and slightly embarrassingly for the Member concerned, we found out that our secret agencies were discussing one particular case of a Chinese lady working for a Member of Parliament—we all know which one that is.

Cultivating legal and overt, but also questionable and illicit, relationships with serving and retired politicians, civil servants—we often overlook them, but they, not MPs, are the policy experts and policy wonks—academic institutions, think-tanks and regulatory bodies, and using power and influence through an enabling class of finance and legal firms, buys power. Most repugnantly and obviously, this has been practised through the use of lawfare: intimidating legal actions designed to silence those who have attempted to look into, for example, Putin’s oligarchs. There are people here who have spoken out very eloquently on that issue.

The Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report highlighted the role of lobbying in the Kremlin’s subversive activities. We know from The Guardian’s leak of secret Russian documents that there was an attempt to influence the UK and US. We have had testimony from Bill Browder, talking about Russia indirectly employing public relations firms and helping Russian individuals to avoid EU sanctions. We have had the excellent book and work from Edward Lucas, who has argued much the same. We have also had this from the former Secret Intelligence Service agent Christopher Steele, who said that lobbyists are used to penetrate “British political and business life”.

None of this is ethical. We know about some of it not because we have good laws in this country to protect us, but because of the work of FARA—the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the United States. The only reason that we found out about the extensive lobbying done by one Member of the House of Lords, Lord Barker, on behalf of Deripaska—

Russian Federation Activity

Debate between Bob Seely and Stephen Kinnock

Thursday 28th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Russian Federation activity in the UK and globally.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. This is an important issue for me and I hope that others will see it as important, too. I am thankful to those who are taking part in this debate.

One of the most significant challenges that we face in this era is the Kremlin’s political conflict against the west. It is one of our most complex problems. Western states arguably face a new kind of conflict, in which all the tools of the state, non-military as much as military, are combined in a dynamic, efficient and integrated way to achieve political effect. I have called this brief debate to seek updates from the Government on a series of issues. If the Minister will allow me, I will outline 10 ideas concisely, which I hope the Government will take on board. That does not mean that I am not supportive of Government policy at the moment. We have some down time after the immediacy of the Skripal poisoning to think more comprehensively about our relationship with the Russian Federation and its Government.

It is important to note that this is not about being anti-Russian, despite some of the nonsense that comes out of the Russian embassy and Russia Today. The friendliness of Russians to the English during the World cup, shows that the Kremlin’s hostility to the UK is not shared more widely, regardless of whether we think President Putin is a popular leader or not. The World cup, however, is proving to be a PR godsend to his regime, because elsewhere it is business as usual for the Kremlin. The same day that England beat Panama 6-1, which everyone was very happy about, Russian jets were in operation in southern Syria, allegedly hitting civilian targets, the war in eastern Ukraine continued and dirty money continued to flow through and to London.

Critically, Russia’s slide towards an authoritarian stance is part of a trend taking place around the globe—the rise of authoritarian states, which use open societies to protect and promote their interests, as well as to damage those open societies. China, Russia and Iran, as well as non-state actors such as Hezbollah, all use a complex mix of tactics.

One of the problems for western states is that we have not had a definition of this hybrid or full-spectrum war. A month ago I presented what I think may have been the first comprehensive, peer-reviewed definition in the western world. I argued that contemporary Russian conflict was sophisticated and integrated. At its heart is the old KGB active measures conflict, as it was called, a form of political warfare, around which has been wrapped the full spectrum of state power. I argued that there are at least 50 tools within this full spectrum of warfare, which can be divided up in six broad elements with command and control at its heart. This Matryoshka doll of conflict is one of the forms of conflict that we in the west will have to get used to, because it will be used. It is important to understand that Russia is probably the most sophisticated user of those tactics, but not the only one.

Russia’s aims towards the west are perhaps more difficult to fathom. Contemporary Russian conflict appears to seek to divide and demoralise us—especially those states that border Russia—to damage the cohesion of NATO and the European Union, and potentially to break down the bonds that bind western alliances within the European Union.

Russia’s allies are doing rather well at the moment. The Freedom party in Austria and the Northern League in Italy are both in power. For me, the most important point is that it is about reorienting Russian society away from a liberal model of development—albeit a corrupt, chaotic and unsuccessful one in the 1990s—to a much more authoritarian model. We are the enemy, not only because we represent an alternative to that but because the Kremlin security establishment needs an enemy to help it to exert control over the Russian people. We see that in the daily diet of propaganda on Russian state television.

I strongly support the Government’s actions in recent months, but now that the immediacy of the Skripal case has passed, I would like to propose a series of measures, which I would be grateful if the Government would at least consider and maybe discuss with me at a time of their own convenience. First, I believe that we need to methodically expose what Russians and others are doing. In the 1970s and 1980s the United States established what it called an inter-agency active measures group, which investigated and publicised what was then known as active measures—the KGB form of subversion. As I said, that included tools such as disinformation, propaganda, assassination, support for terrorist groups, smears and espionage, running agents of influence, etc. I believe that we need to set up something similar, some kind of permanent structure to look at subversive operations against the west, the UK and our allies.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will come on to this point. Does he agree that the Electoral Commission, in responding to measures aimed at subverting democratic processes in this country, is entirely unfit for purpose, that it is an analogue regulator in a digital age, and that, in fact, we should be integrating its functions into the National Crime Agency and giving it real forensic investigatory ability, to ensure that attempts to subvert our democracy are dealt with effectively and properly?

[Mr Seely]

I think the hon. Gentleman is more of an expert than I am on that. I absolutely think that the strength of our electoral systems and their vulnerability is one of the critical issues. I think it is number 8 on my list, so I will come to it shortly. I am grateful for his suggestion, which goes further than what I would propose.

To wind up the first point, occasional Government statements are good, as are some excellent Select Committee reports, but I believe we need something more permanent —not something that points fingers at the Russians but something that seeks to methodically understand the way subversive operations operate in the western world. We face a new kind of political conflict from hackers, trolls, assassins, politically connected business executives and market manipulators, spin doctors, paid-for protestors and criminals, who are often more usable and useful than conventional tools of conflict. On that point about market manipulators, given the Bloomberg investigation earlier this week, which showed that hedge funds had been buying private polling data that effectively allowed them to front-run the Brexit vote, is it not time to initiate a parliamentary inquiry into the behaviour of those involved, especially considering statements made by some party political leaders at the time of the result, which appeared to concede defeat, despite possibly being told by their favoured pollsters that the Leave campaign would likely win? I choose my words carefully, but I think there is a prima facie case here, which is concerning.

Secondly, I believe we should introduce a list, as they have in the United States, of PR and other agents of Russian influence in the UK. Russians will have influence in this country that is clear and above board, but people who work for President Putin, one of the oligarchs, a proxy front or a third group linked to them need to be open about it and we need to have some kind of register. Perhaps that will be a voluntary thing for PR companies to do; it may be something for the Select Committees to do; but it may equally be something for Government to look at. We also need to ensure that the House of Lords has the same anti-sleaze standards as the House of Commons. It does not at the moment, and I think we can expect more scandals.

We do have a problem with Russian influence here, on both the hard right and the hard left. I have written about Seamus Milne’s mirroring of Russian lines in 2014 and 2015, when he was working for The Guardian. I wrote about it in The Sunday Times in the spring. He is clearly one of a number of people with uncomfortably close links to the Kremlin around the Labour leadership. I believe that that does not serve democracy well.

Thirdly, we should introduce laws to ensure a health warning on broadcasters and other media that are paid-for propagandists for authoritarian states. A counter-propaganda Bill is going through Congress to do just that. Just as we have a public health warning on a packet of cigarettes, we can have some kind of public health warning on a TV channel that is a propagandistic outfit for an authoritarian state, which does not have an independent editorial line. If we shut down Russia Today or RT—or whatever it is calling itself this week—in our country, we can expect the Russians to shut down the BBC in their country and they would probably quite like an opportunity to do so. I am not suggesting that we do that. I am suggesting that TV stations that do not have an independent editorial line should be forced to advertise that fact in some way. The Countering Foreign Propaganda Bill, which is going through Congress at the moment, is potentially a model.

Fourthly, we should properly fund the BBC World Service radio and TV, and boost the Russian service more than is currently being done. We are in a battle with authoritarian states globally to promote free speech and open societies. I do not think this is a battle we should aim to lose; it is an important one to win. For me —this is a wider point—the Department for International Development should be paying all £400 million for that, as part of a fundamental rethink of what global Britain means and how we spend that 0.7%, because I do not believe that we get value for money for it at the moment.

Fifthly, we should change our visa regime to make it easier for ordinary Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians and people from that part of the world to come here, and more difficult for oligarchs, rather than the other way around. At the moment, our visa regime with too many countries rewards kleptocrats at the expense of ordinary people. I congratulate the Government, potentially, on a recent oligarch visa decision.

Sixthly, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office needs to be more active in seeing Russian influence in the round. I am sure the Minister would say that it does, but more vocality, if that is the right word—being more vocal—on Nord Stream 2 would not go amiss. I am aware of recent statements by the German leadership about oil concerns for Ukraine, but we know how the Kremlin tends to get around such promises. We also need to ensure that the Kremlin’s appalling war crimes in Syria, which are genuine, significant, serious and consistent, are recorded for history. We should work with others, if need be, to shout about it and use open-source information to highlight it.

We should also take much more interest in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, in relation to the manipulation of the US presidential elections, which may be one of the most serious and significant cases of Kremlin and Russian espionage that we will ever witness in our lifetime. An important part of that process took place in London and probably involved Mr Julian Assange as the recipient and online publisher of the material stolen from the DNC. It is bizarre that we have not heard more from the Mueller inquiry in relation to London, because so many links seem to go through it.

I ask the Minister, and I choose my words carefully, what the current Ecuadorian Government are doing to encourage Mr Assange’s exit and an end to this process. What representations have the Government had from Jennifer Robinson or other members of his Australian, UK-Australian and UK legal team? Two Australian consular officials recently visited Mr Assange, and I am curious as to why.

What passport does Mr Assange hold? I was told that it was an Ecuadorian diplomatic one, but it may not be. I ask that because the Soviets sprang George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 and I am aware that under the previous Ecuadorian Government, the Ecuadorian secret service looked at a series of possibilities to get Mr Assange out, including a rooftop escape by helicopter, getting lost in the crowds in Harrods—I did not know it was that popular—being smuggled out in the ambassador’s car and being made the Ecuadorian ambassador to the United Nations. I stress that there has been a change of Government in Ecuador, and I suspect those plans are no longer in the state they were before, but I would be grateful for the assurance that the Government are aware of the risks, especially in propaganda terms.

There are several potential suspects. A courier—a cut-out—was likely used to take the DNC-hacked material from the GRU, Russian military intelligence, and the Guccifer 2.0 account from Moscow to Mr Assange in London, possibly via a diplomatic pouch or a third country. Two weeks ago, James Clapper, a former director of US national intelligence, said that a suspect had been identified last year, so this is a live issue that very much relates to Russian activity in the United Kingdom and the United States.