British Nationals Detained Overseas

Debate between Chris Bryant and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Ms Ali. I had not expected to be called so quickly.

I warmly commend my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) for securing this debate, not least because I think all the members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs have been making arguments about some of the issues for some considerable time.

In particular, there was the situation of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The former Prime Minister managed to make things more difficult when, as Foreign Secretary, he suggested to the Foreign Affairs Committee that she was engaged in other activities. That possibly led to her being kept in an Iranian jail for much longer than was necessary. In addition, as the current Chancellor admitted when he was Foreign Secretary, sometimes we have not devoted enough energy to making sure that British citizens get a fair trial and are treated properly in prison, or that, if possible, their sentence can be served in the UK.

I will very briefly explain one of the things that I did when I was a Foreign Office Minister for five minutes. There was a British woman who was arrested in Laos. I will not name her, but she was pregnant, and she was arrested for an offence that would have been an offence in the United Kingdom. Laos is a very closed country, politically—a communist country and very difficult. At the time, we did not have an embassy in Laos and we were being helped by the Australians. I said, “Well, I’m sorry, but she’s pregnant; I don’t want a British child to be born in a Laos prison, in filthy conditions, and likely to have a miserable life, if a life of any kind at all. I want that child to be born in a British prison.” All the officials said, “No, that is nonsense, Minister. It is nothing to do with you. It will simply make life difficult.” But I went and I had a difficult but good, thorough meeting with my counterpart in Vientiane. We had a wonderful lunch afterwards, and it thawed the relationship. I said, “I’m going to ring you every Monday morning.” That is what I did, and after three months we got her out and she came back to a British prison. She has no idea; I am absolutely sure of that.

Ministers may be doing that all the time and we do not know about it—I have never told that story before—but I gently say to them that that is kind of what a Minister is for. There will be times when officials will go, “Oh, Minister, that is very brave, very courageous,” but I think there are times when Ministers need to do exactly that.

Another case that is very prominent for me is that of Jagtar Singh Johal, who is still in prison in India. As I understand it, our Prime Minister is going to visit India soon. I do not know why the Prime Minister is not saying clearly and categorically that he should be released. Every single independent assessment that has been done shows that this man is innocent of the crimes that he has been fitted up for, but, as I understand it, the Foreign Secretary has actually written to the families concerned to say that he will not raise this matter because it

“could impact the co-operation we depend on from the relevant authorities to conduct consular visits, resolve welfare cases and attend court proceedings”

I think that is to presume that the Indian Government will react negatively, but I think that every single time we do that, particularly with Governments who have a tendency towards autocracy—not so much perhaps in India but certainly in other countries—all we end up doing is inviting them to adopt a yet more hard-line attitude.

That takes me to the situation in China. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston is absolutely right about the situation facing Jimmy Lai. I understand that the British Government regular position is, “Well, we don’t want to push too far”. I am sorry, but I do not understand why a British Foreign Secretary would not say before going to China that some of the people in this Chamber should not be on a sanctions list. That is incomprehensible, because it is as if we are saying, “I’m sorry; our democracy doesn’t really matter. We don’t really mind what you’re doing.”

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am very much enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Three Sundays ago, we joined the fastest-growing, biggest trading bloc in the world—the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-pacific partnership in the far east. Does he agree that we ought to use our position in the CPTPP to restrict Chinese entry to the bloc as long as it continues to behave in this manner?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Yes, and not only because of the sanctioning of the right hon. and hon. Members present but because of the complete reneging on our agreement with China on Hong Kong. When I talk to Hongkongers who have left Hong Kong, who now nearly all leave with nothing, leaving everything behind them, they talk of genuine fear for their family back at home, if they have stayed.

Russia’s Grand Strategy

Debate between Chris Bryant and Daniel Kawczynski

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate the be-knighted Member, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), on securing this very important debate.

I suspect I am going to agree with everybody and that everybody is going to agree wholeheartedly with one another today, but I think that that is important because it is important that Russia understands that the UK has a single voice on this matter. I am absolutely delighted that my political party has now returned to common sense on these issues. I welcome the new shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), and I am delighted that he is here for the whole debate. If I am honest, I wish that the Foreign Secretary were here, because this is the kind of debate that the Foreign Secretary should listen to. Let me start with some things I have said before. I have been saying some of them for a very long time, and when they were not very popular things to say in this Chamber.

In essence, there is a great lie at the heart of Putin’s strategy. His lie, first of all, is that the west is threatening Russia. In fact, the first clause of Russian military doctrine states that the existence of NATO is the greatest threat to the Russian Federation. That is a lie. Everybody in this Chamber would agree that NATO is a defensive alliance. There is no aggressive intention whatever behind our alliance. The second part of the lie is that Ukraine is oppressing Russians. That is remarkably similar to what Hitler said about the Sudeten Germans in the 1930s. It is also a blatant lie. Thirdly, he says that Russia is interested only in self-defence and auto-determination, and that that is the policy it tries to advance all around the world. That is a blatant lie. As we can see in all its activities, whether in Syria or the Balkans, it is very clear that Russia is always pursuing its own self-interest.

The last bit of the lie, repeated regularly in particular by Russian ambassadors to the Court of St James’s, is that everybody who disagrees with Russia’s attitude on any individual case is a Russophobe. It is almost an equivalent to antisemitism as far as they are concerned. That is a lie. Every single person in this House who takes an interest in Russia does so because we have a phenomenal respect for the Russian people, their history, their traditions, their arts and their culture. We only have to go to Russia for a day to understand what a phenomenal history they have. Whether we are talking about art, music, poetry or novelists, they have made such a phenomenal contribution to the world. None of us in this debate today is a Russophobe. We are all lovers of the Russian people.

What is actually happening in Russia, rather than Putin’s big lie, is an aggressive campaign of destabilisation. It takes two forms. The first is a destabilisation of the democratic west. This is a repeated theme. It is quite cheap. It is much cheaper to try to destabilise us rather than to go to war with us. I will say a little bit more about that later in relation to some of the secret documents I have obtained from the Kremlin.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is a strong proponent of the European Union and campaigned for our membership of it; how does he react to Germany and France bypassing sanctions on Russia and supporting things such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that clearly undermine our NATO partners in central and eastern Europe?

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman about Nord Stream—indeed, I regularly try to berate British Government Ministers for not being robust enough and decisive enough on that issue. My anxiety about our having left the European Union is that there is a danger, in respect of the Europeans’ common security and defence policy, that they will renege on the kind of policies that we would like to see. I would like us to find a way of still sitting at the table so that we can influence such decisions. The Spanish Prime Minister once said to me that one problem with the EU maintaining its sanctions regime was that once Britain—frankly, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—was no longer in the room, everybody started to fracture apart. I come to the same conclusion as the hon. Gentleman but from a different perspective.

Others have talked about the pattern of behaviour, about South Ossetia and Abkhazia, about the problems in North Macedonia and Catalunya, about the destabilisation in the United States of America and, of course, about the invasion of Crimea, as well as about the recent problems in Montenegro. All that is, of course, a deliberate distraction from the real problems of the Russian economy. I say that because I have a copy of a document—as does the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely); he may refer to it later—signed by President Putin himself on 22 January 2016. It clearly outlines Russia’s strategic aims. First, it notes the falling incomes of Russian people which, it says, could lead to significant social tension. It also notes the positive effect of the invasion of Crimea and the policy in the Donbass region on public opinion in Russia, but points out that that positive effect has been only temporary and may not last.

The document suggests that, consequently, Russia has to engage in a process of influencing other states in the world, particularly the United States of America and western democracies. It says it should do this, first, by the provocation of the emergence of a sociopolitical crisis in the United States of America; secondly, by the delegitimisation in the public consciousness of the state system in western democracies; thirdly, by instilling an internal social split in order to facilitate a general increase in the radicalisation of society in western democracies; and fourthly, by provoking the emergence of and strengthening non-traditional communities in the United States, with ideological focuses ranging from extremely right to extreme left but always with one message: they do not hear us. That is precisely what the Russian state has been doing for the past few years in the United States of America and in every western democracy, including the United Kingdom.

I know that the Intelligence and Security Committee looked at this issue, although I do not think it had that document. I do not understand why, when our own Intelligence and Security Committee has recommended changes in this policy area and the proper investigation of attempts to try to destabilise the British political system, the Government have simply refused to do so.

Frankly, we have been getting our policy on Russia wrong for two decades now. We vacillate and send off mixed messages all the time. We look weak and indecisive. We look as if we need Russia, rather than the other way round. We constantly make ourselves the supplicants—the demandeurs: “Please, don’t do that, Mr Putin. Please don’t do that!”

We tempt Russian oligarchs to the United Kingdom with easy visas: we had these golden visas that largely went to extremely wealthy oligarchs who had made their money corruptly in Russia, with no questions asked other than, “Do you have enough money?” We did not even ask, “Are you going to invest it in the United Kingdom?” We boast about our clever lawyers and accountants who can tidy things up so that assets are protected, however they have been obtained. We open up our high-end housing market to Russian billionaires even though we know that the best way to squirrel away a dirty fortune or, indeed, to launder £20 million is to buy a property that is worth £10 million for £20 million. Yes, £10 million is lost, but we have managed to clean up £10 million. That is precisely what has affected the London housing market so deleteriously. We even grant—Government Ministers do this—some Russian individuals anonymity in what is meant to be the public register in Companies House of beneficial ownership of companies.

Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

Debate between Chris Bryant and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman, and will talk about some of the extraordinary behaviour of Russia in its own neighbourhood and domestically within its own jurisdiction, and how it is undermining and subverting democracy in its own country.

When I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee I called for dialogue with the Russians. I still stand by that. I think we have to talk to these people, but we have to do so from a position of strength. Giving them this umbilical cord to the heart of Europe undermines that negotiating position. One thing we know about the Russians was taught to us by Reagan and Thatcher—Thatcher invited Gorbachev to Chequers in December 1984, the first western leader to invite him for discussions. They taught us that we can only negotiate with those people from a position of strength. Divided among us, they will eat us for breakfast.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I agree with every word the hon. Gentleman has said in the debate and I congratulate him on securing it. It is a geostrategic mistake for Germany to encourage this, and we need to get the French on board. If we have three out of the five Security Council members, that is an even stronger position. I am anxious that the UK Government seem to be going a bit quiet on this issue, as they have on the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, which is yet another flagrant abuse of human rights in Russia.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and agree with every word that he has said. Later in my speech, I will chide my own Government. They have been almost mute on this issue, and that position does not reflect the urgency of the situation and the responsibility that our country has.

Countries in central and eastern Europe are not just leaving this all to us to deal with. They have created the Three Seas initiative; 12 countries, all of whom are members of the European Union, and all of whom are members of NATO—apart from Austria. It is a regional, relatively homogeneous bloc. The 12 member countries are on the frontline with Russia. My office and I have spent the past few weeks interviewing all the ambassadors from these 12 countries. We have interviewed 10 out of 12 so far, and we will be writing a report for Members of Parliament about the initiative. These countries are trying to create strategic investments across the whole bloc to safeguard individual members from undue Russian pressure.