Sanctions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

The instruments before us were laid under the powers provided by the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018—also known as the sanctions Act. These instruments came into effect at midnight last night.

As stated by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, we have announced the largest and the most severe package of punitive economic and trade sanctions that Russia has ever seen in response to Putin’s pre-meditated, pre-planned and barbaric invasion. We will continue to ratchet up the pressure, working in concert with our allies around the world. We have already imposed sanctions on Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, five Russian banks, 120 businesses and a long list of Russian oligarchs. Taken together, this targets assets worth hundreds of billions of pounds. Throughout, we have worked with our allies, including to agree to remove selected Russian banks from the SWIFT system and we have agreed to target the Russian central bank, but we will go further. I want to say to this House that we will continue to stand with the Ukrainian people in their heroic efforts to face up to unbridled aggression and that nothing is off the table.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Let me take the right hon. and learned Gentleman back to what he said about the number of individuals who have been sanctioned, as I do not think it is hundreds since this situation in Ukraine—it is eight. It is hundreds since 2014, and that conflation is unhelpful. As I understand it, the Government are finding it difficult to get all their ducks in a row in relation to these individual oligarchs, and the European Union is doing this much quicker. I hope he heard what I said earlier, because I think that that is because the legislative measure used in the EU is more effective in providing legal certainty for the sanctioning body. Why do we not put names of people on our sanctions? There is not a single name on the measure before us. We do this in a very legalistic way and the danger is that Mr Abramovich will have sold everything by the time we get round to sanctioning him.

[Michael Ellis]

I note what the hon. Gentleman says, but it is not often that people refer to the mechanisms of the EU as speedy. If he says that they are speedier than ours, clearly that is something for the system to look at. But we have a system that we are using at the moment, that has applied and that is what we have to go through. We are acting faster than ever before and we are leading the way in this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister said earlier that all these measures come into force immediately. Why on earth does the Government measure allow VTB Bank, the second-largest Russian bank, 30 days for clients to be able to remove their assets? I do not even know what the metaphor is in terms of horses and bolts and having already escaped, but this seems preposterous.

[Michael Ellis]

I do not think the individuals involved will consider it a weak measure; on the contrary, I think they will consider it a draconian measure, which is exactly what it is.