National Security and Russia

Debate between Chris Bryant and Stewart Malcolm McDonald

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In relation to Ukraine, however, what angered me more than anything else, in a sense, was the fact that the whole point of the Budapest accord was that all who signed up to it, including Russia and the United Kingdom, were guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine so that it would surrender its nuclear weapons. I suspect that if that had not happened, Putin would not subsequently have gone into Ukraine.

That is precisely the sort of long-term, deliberate pattern of lying and territorial ambition that I think is characteristic of the man—let alone the murder of political opponents such as Boris Nemtsov, and the trials that, in so many instances, do not even attempt to pretend to be fair. I went to Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s second trial, which was clearly being run by a martinet of a judge who was simply taking orders directly from the Kremlin. Most extraordinarily, the criminal justice system is now being used in Russia to prosecute Sergei Magnitsky after his death. I sometimes think that those in the Putin regime want to believe that they are in a satire, because that is a way of cocking a snook at the rest of the world just to point out how much centralised power the regime has.

But even more disturbing in a sense for those who care about Russia and her people is the state of the economy: there have been dramatic cuts to the salaries and pensions of public sector workers in recent years; the average wage has fallen; and as for the death rate, people are dying younger now than they used to, which is an extraordinary phenomenon in a modern economy. The Russian economy was proclaimed some 10 years ago as one of the BRIC economies that was going to be the future of the world, growing and all the rest of it, but it is now stagnating, because it is to all intents and purposes a “monogorod”, an economy based on a single industry: petrocarbons. Russia’s economic growth rate is languishing at 1.2%. We might be having growth of only 1.2%, but an economy at its level in the world needs to be on 5%, 6%, 7% and 8% if it is not going to completely stagnate as a country and gross inequalities are not going to get worse.

What the Russians should have done for the last 10 years was build on their phenomenal human capital, because Russia is one of the most educated countries in the world, and tackle the corruption. Unfortunately, they have instead built on the corruption and tackled the education, so there is now a massive brain-drain of clever Russians leaving for elsewhere, and Russia has fallen further down the transparency list, as one of countries around the world with increasing corruption.

I personally find one of the most bizarre elements of the whole Putin charade his personal and his regime’s utter obsession with homosexuality. For a man who seems to like taking his shirt off more than any other political leader, that strikes me as phenomenally bizarre. [Interruption.] I gather he also likes Abba; what can I say?

What should the British response be both to this present situation and also to everything we have seen over recent years, as this is part of a pattern and should be seen as such? Some say we should tackle the Russian money that is swashing around in Britain, much of which might be dirty, and some say we should adopt a more robust political and defence posture. I think we need to do both. I know some are reluctant to tackle the financial issues and some are reluctant to tackle the defence issues, but we must do the two in harmony, which is in essence what the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks was saying.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

On the defence side of what can be done, will the hon. Gentleman back the calls of myself and my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) that we should ask our allies to stop allowing the Russian fleet to refuel in their ports?

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, and, indeed, one of the first things I did when I knew about the incident in Salisbury was check with the Spanish ambassador whether Spain is maintaining its posture of refusing to allow Russian boats to refuel in Ceuta, and indeed it is; it has been very strong on this and is absolutely resolute with us, as it has been for the last 10 years.

Turning to some of the financial aspects, earlier in the debate I asked the Prime Minister about the tier 1 investor visa. This has to all intents and purposes acted as a magnet for some Russians who want to place their money, beyond the grasping hands of others in Russia or in other domains, in the UK, and hardly any questions have been asked. I hope the Government will now do a full review of the tier 1 investor visa.

Secondly, trusts in this country and in the dependent territories are used as a means of obscuring from public view the real owners of major assets including land and property. That needs to end. I am happy for the trust system to remain, because in many ways it is a strong element of our financial system, but it must be fully transparent because otherwise it is far too easy for Russians to hide their money. I hope the Government will review this matter. They have been asked time and again whether they will consider making the beneficial ownership of trusts a public register, rather than one that is only available to the authorities. That would be valuable, because the public and journalists in this country have done a phenomenal job in recent years of managing to winkle out additional financial information that others might not choose to bother looking at.

We also need to bring in full financial transparency in the overseas territories. I know that the Minister who is going to be closing the debate agrees with this policy, and I hope this might be an opportunity to twist their arms a little further up their backs, because otherwise it is too easy for someone like Mr Deripaska to buy a property in London, only not really buy it but buy it via a trust based in the British Virgin Islands and have it completely obscured from view. Some of us were taken on the kleptocracy tour last week, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who is sitting on the Labour Front Bench, and one of the interesting facts is that quite often Russians are now buying houses in the UK deliberately for grossly inflated prices as a means of laundering their money via a third party. I hope the authorities are investigating that.

Turning to the more defence-related elements that we need to address, we must have properly sceptical investigation by the police and all the authorities—if necessary, the counter-terrorism authorities as well—of the 14 deaths of Russians in the last few years which have been suspicious, and not just those in the last couple of weeks. It seems unlikely that anybody would choose not to investigate, but it still seems possible that that might have happened. We also need full-spectrum readiness—more counter-intelligence, and more cyber-security—and we must also stand very strong with our NATO allies and, as the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks said, we need to devote more than 2% of our national income to defence.

We can see this through, but we will only do so by being robust and firm and steady—rather than by flip-flopping.