British Justice System and International Corruption Cases
David Davis Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
This is the third debate on oligarchs and lawfare that I have led in the past two years. It is unfortunate that it is necessary to return once again to this matter, but it is just as crucial as ever.
In the last three decades, London has been swamped by a tidal wave of money that has poured in from Russia, other ex-Soviet states, China, and other corrupt regimes around the world. Cash-hungry charities, universities and political parties have gladly accepted that money, and have looked at those deep-pocketed oligarchs with green-eyed gullibility. All have shown an excessive willingness to overlook the misbehaviour of the people supplying the money.
My previous debate on this subject was in response to the bullying of a former Member of this place, Charlotte Leslie, by someone who has sought to take advantage of this cash-for-access attitude: Mohamed Amersi. Over the past decade, Amersi has set out to purchase a reputation in the British establishment, seeking to be known as an upright citizen and philanthropist. He even has a name for it: “access capitalism.” However, his fame has turned to notoriety, as more and more worrying information has come to light about his past. He trained his sights on Ms Leslie because of her proper exercise of due diligence in regard to him. That came after he attempted to take control of the Conservative Middle East Council, which Ms Leslie runs, and then in turn sought to set up his own rival organisation.
Amersi accused Ms Leslie of libel for what she had said about him, in an excessively long, drawn-out and expensive legal case that also encompassed a wrongful claim of a breach of data protection rules. But his campaign against her went far beyond the case itself; he set out to destroy her reputation. There were lies that she sexually blackmailed men; the collection of intimate details about her family; physical intimidation; threatening letters sent by notorious legal firm Carter-Ruck to journalists and MPs, including myself, claiming that Ms Leslie consorted with sanctioned individuals; and an obsessive, misogynistic and ultimately defamatory hate campaign conducted on social media by Amersi himself.
Ms Leslie has at last been vindicated in court, with Mr Justice Nicklin noting Amersi’s
“exorbitant approach to the litigation”,
and the fact that
“Subjecting a person to successive civil claims can be a hallmark of abusive conduct”.
Amersi clearly hoped that he could break Ms Leslie’s resolve and force her to concede through bullying, intimidation and the threat of financial ruin. He failed. He also sought to intimidate a current Member of this place, the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), who had likewise tried to shed light on his dealings.
Thanks to those two people and the relentless work of journalists such as Tom Burgis, upon whose new book “Cuckooland” I will draw today, we know that Amersi is deeply immersed in a twilight world of backroom bribes, creative accountancy, and a whole lot of smoke and mirrors. That is why he was so desperate to suppress Ms Leslie’s claims: he did not want to be exposed and have his carefully crafted public image—that of a savvy entrepreneur and generous philanthropist—shredded. With that in mind, a closer look at his past is warranted.
The names of the regimes that Amersi has aided, abetted and enriched make for a shopping list of dictatorships and autocracies. First, let us look at Russia—as with so many tales of corruption and kleptocracy, the story starts in Russia. In 2005, Amersi was an adviser in a deal with the Danish lawyer and businessman Jeffrey Galmond. Galmond claimed to own a large swathe of the Russian telecoms market. In reality, though, he was said to be a frontman for the Russian telecoms Minister and Putin ally Leonid Reiman, who used Galmond to exercise his control over the sector. That was confirmed by a Swiss arbitration tribunal in 2006, which noted that Reiman arranged deals to “misappropriate” Russian state assets “for his personal enrichment”. It seems likely that Amersi’s payment for the deal—$4 million—came from the proceeds of crime against the Russian people, funnelled via Galmond.
In an affidavit issued by Galmond the year before the deal Amersi advised on, Galmond acknowledged the existence of allegations about his relationship with Reiman. We know that Amersi would have had a copy of that affidavit, which surely should have raised some questions in his mind, yet the deal went ahead and Amersi got his $4 million. It was a straightforward case of a fixer being rewarded for facilitating a deal. Of course, Amersi denies knowing the truth about Galmond, but we have to ask ourselves how ignorant someone working on such deals could really have been. It had been clear for years that the post-Soviet regime in Russia was a kleptocracy. Indeed, Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in 2006 because he had been investigating post-Soviet corruption.
However, Russia is not the only place of interest. I also want to focus on a few places where Amersi has been active: Uzbekistan, Nepal and Kazakhstan. In those places, Amersi worked as a representative of TeliaSonera, a large Swedish telecoms firm. His pay was an astonishing £19,000 a day. That gives us an idea of what TeliaSonera thought he brought to the company, but the question has to be asked: what on earth could Amersi possibly bring to the table to justify a salary of nearly £7 million a year?
In Uzbekistan, the deal Amersi was involved in led to a finding of criminal activity. In essence, TeliaSonera—the company Amersi worked for—agreed to buy a company controlled by the President of Uzbekistan’s daughter for a hugely inflated price in order to gain access to the Uzbek market. That company and its Uzbek subsidiary later admitted that it had paid
“more than $331 million in bribes to an Uzbek official”.
That is corruption 101: paying a bribe by vastly overpaying in a business deal that ultimately profits members of a corrupt regime. The American Department of Justice confirmed that TeliaSonera
“corruptly built a lucrative telecommunications business in Uzbekistan, using bribe payments wired around the world through accounts here in New York City.”
As a result of all this, various judicial authorities ended up imposing fines of nearly $1 billion on TeliaSonera in 2017. Amersi pleads ignorance—if we believe his version of events, he had no idea that TeliaSonera was crafting a massive bung for a corrupt post-Soviet regime. However, Amersi knew that the Uzbek businessman with whom TeliaSonera was dealing ran a telecoms company that, according to a memo that Amersi had seen, was controlled by affiliates of the Uzbek President’s daughter. That will be something of a theme in these cases: Amersi saying that he could not possibly have known, but then being exposed by the documentary evidence. The pattern is that of a specialist in shady dealing, and it was for that specialism that TeliaSonera was paying him nearly £7 million a year.
Amersi’s work for TeliaSonera extended to Nepal, where he helped that company gain access to the telecoms market. At the time, Nepal was controlled by a corrupt Maoist regime. In this sphere, Amersi facilitated a deal with Nepalese business tycoon Ajeya Raj Sumargi, which involved many millions of dollars finding its way to Sumargi. However, it was not really Sumargi whose friendship TeliaSonera sought; it was that of the corrupt Maoist Government. That much is clear from a 2013 report commissioned by TeliaSonera and carried out by private intelligence specialists Control Risks, which notes that its sources believed Sumargi
“handles and invests unaccounted money for various Maoist leaders.”
Control Risks further reported that Sumargi’s relationship with leading Nepalese politician, and now Prime Minister, Prachanda
“extends beyond the realms of business”.
It appears Sumargi even bought Prachanda a house in his sister-in-law’s name. The report also noted existing allegations of bribery and corruption against Sumargi, and claims of
“unethical or illegal business practices”.
Even after this report, Amersi urged TeliaSonera to maintain its relationship with Sumargi, which it did to the tune of millions of dollars.
Yet another example of this pattern is found in Kazakhstan, where Amersi facilitated a large questionable business deal to the benefit of a banker accused of being a front for the corrupt Kazakh regime. Both TeliaSonera and Amersi were handsomely rewarded for this. Once again, Amersi will claim he could not possibly have known of this corruption, but this is a clear pattern of behaviour. This is a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
As I have said, in all these cases Amersi maintains his innocence. In fact, he told Mr Burgis that he would only deem a potential business partner to be corrupt if there was 100% proof—a higher bar, of course, than that of a criminal court, and a bar rarely reached, but never reached if you always look the other way.
A report by the highly respected legal firm Norton Rose Fulbright, commissioned by TeliaSonera in the wake of its corruption scandal, noted that the
“nature of the services and the relationships provided”
by Amersi were
“not transparent, it appears often deliberately so.”
It stated that, in his dealings with TeliaSonera, Amersi
“was taking no obvious risk”,
and did not have the kind of overheads associated with an investment bank, yet was being paid like one. Throughout the report, Amersi was referred to as Mr “XY”, if Members care to read it. The report noted that in some cases he was apparently paid twice for providing the same service, at one point receiving a fee of $30 million. It also highlighted back-to-back payment arrangements—a classic laundering exercise—whereby TeliaSonera would pay his company, and his company would then pay the third party in question the same amount.
I would like to turn to Amersi’s relationship with the British legal system, which is the core of this. Much has been said about this in the past, and I do not want to repeat what I and others have said in this House, but there is one aspect we must focus on, and it relates to Amersi’s legal case against Charlotte Leslie. That was one of the key strategic lawsuits against public participation that we talked about when we raised the SLAPPs campaign back in January 2022.
In a hearing in this case in June last year, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, asked both sides to state what costs they had incurred in fighting the case to that point. Ms Leslie’s team provided the information, but Mr Amersi’s lawyers failed or refused to do so. This was rather odd: as Justice Nicklin pointed out, Amersi’s lawyers were declining to provide information that was already in the public domain. As he put it:
“Would you help me with how you can maintain a claim of confidentiality when you have given an interview to a newspaper in which you have told the newspaper how much your costs are?”
That interview from June 2021 was with Tom Burgis and published in the Financial Times.
The lawyers’ response in court was to say that Burgis’s reporting was inaccurate and misrepresented the truth: the figure quoted by Burgis—£300,000—was wrong, and Amersi had never said it. In fact, however, the transcript of the interview shows exactly what he said:
“£260,000 worth of costs, right? Nearly £300,000 now, after the DPA”—
Data Protection Act—
“filings’ against Ms Leslie.”
Amersi went on to confirm the £300,000 figure in an email to the Private Eye journalist Richard Brooks in 2021, and his lawyers—from the notorious firm Carter-Ruck—did the same in a threatening letter they sent to the Financial Times in 2022. Yet in court, Amersi’s lawyers told Mr Justice Nicklin that the costs had
“not been revealed to Mr Burgis”,
which is a lie. Amersi claimed in a sworn witness statement that he
“did not say that my legal costs were approaching £300,000”,
which is also a lie. In short, Burgis’s reporting was correct, and Amersi and his lawyers knew that when they told the court it was not. I am not a lawyer, but that would appear to me to be perjury.
A picture emerges of an attempt to avoid justice by obscuring the truth. Indeed, it is not only the court system that Mr Amersi has sought to bend his will; he has attempted to buy his way into the British establishment and, worryingly, he has had some success. Amersi has managed to recast himself as a philanthropist and a benefactor, rather than the shady political fixer for corrupt politicians that he really is. He has donated to charities, academic institutions and the Conservative party, and apparently he now intends to donate to Labour. Clearly, he will do whatever he can to get influence.
The British establishment is clearly vulnerable. There is a green-eyed gullibility at the top of our society, with institutions happy to hoover up cash without asking questions. I am afraid that the origin of that vulnerability dates back to the Blair years, when a tendency to overlook inconvenient truths about wealthy donors became embedded, but it has to be said that it did not improve with subsequent Governments either. Indeed, the sad truth is that Amersi is just one of many people who take advantage of our freedoms to enrich themselves and to dodge accountability.
I welcome that the action the Government have taken to make it harder for oligarchs and their enablers to bend our justice system to their will, but there is much more work to be done to ensure that British justice is the enemy of these corrupt individuals, and not a tool for achieving their wicked ends. The Government are properly starting to change the law on SLAPPs, but to deal with current misbehaviour, we need to enforce the laws that already exist to protect ordinary British citizens. There must also be more scrutiny of such people’s attempts to buy their way to a good reputation.
Although I have set out to detail an accurate account of Amersi’s behaviour based on extensive documentation, it is for the appropriate legal bodies to come to a decision on his innocence or guilt. However, we know that Amersi facilitated corrupt deals. The repeat nature of the murky practices involved is striking, and he put Charlotte Leslie through years of persecution and torture for her due diligence, in what may have amounted—in my view, it did—to criminal harassment.
The Bribery Act 2010 is clear that it is an offence for a British citizen to bribe a foreign public official, no matter where in the world that action takes place. Mr Amersi is a British citizen, and he must obey British law. His dealings in the former Soviet Union and Nepal are therefore surely a matter for the National Crime Agency to consider. Furthermore, the Metropolitan police must now consider whether the actions against Charlotte Leslie constitute criminal harassment, and the judiciary should consider the question of perjury that I outlined a moment or two ago. I will send copies of the Hansard for today’s debate to all those agencies. I know that the Solicitors Regulation Authority is already reviewing a complaint about the conduct of Carter-Ruck in these matters.
The very due diligence that Ms Leslie has been attacked for is exactly what we need when it comes to people like Amersi. We must ensure that it happens, and that it is not prevented by the kind of bullying deployed by Mr Amersi. All this is a test case for how we handle corruption and cronyism in our country. It is imperative we meet that test if London is not to become a global capital for sleaze.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Alex Chalk
It is important to establish what is already available to the police: section 39 on common assault, section 47 on assault occasioning actual bodily harm and—heaven forbid—sections 20 and 18, which relate to more serious cases of grievous bodily harm. Plus, if an individual is convicted on any of those grounds, the courts can—indeed, ought to—consider assault on a retail worker as an aggravating factor. As I have indicated, that can mean the difference between a non-custodial and a custodial penalty.
We will keep these matters under review, but the central point is that before someone can go before the court, they have to be arrested. That is why I am delighted that we have more police officers than at any time in our history, ready to take the fight to those who assault shop workers.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
My right hon. and learned Friend has a terrific record on dealing with SLAPPs—strategic lawsuits against public participation—so he will understand how greedy lawyers encourage their billionaire clients to crush their opponents by extending court cases, dragging them out and multiplying them. What has not been taken on board is that that also costs the taxpayer millions of pounds. I think those lawyers should have to meet those costs. With that in mind, will he publish the costs incurred by SLAPPs cases?
Alex Chalk
No one in this House has done more than my right hon. Friend to clamp down on this iniquitous behaviour, and I am pleased that we have been able to make some progress. He makes a really important point: every day that is spent in court pursuing ill-founded and abusive litigation is time that could be spent on other matters in the public interest. I will certainly look into the interesting suggestion he makes about publishing the cost of that behaviour.
Lawfare
David Davis Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
On 20 January last year, I opened a Backbench Business debate on the use of lawfare and strategic litigation against public participation by those seeking to suppress public debate, bully people into submission and conceal vital information that is in the public interest. Free speech matters—that is a truism of our age—but why does it matter? There are many reasons, but the important one is that free speech helps keep our society clean; free of corruption, criminality and the abuse of power.
Typically, such corruption is curbed when whistleblowers expose it; when journalists and a free press report it; and when politicians or judicial authorities act on it. As such, over-mighty men and organisations that have acquired their power and money through corrupt means hate free speech, and use their wealth to suppress it. To do that, they use SLAPPs—strategic litigation against public participation.
SLAPPs are a suite of litigious techniques, used by corrupt plutocrats, that are designed to intimidate, suppress and destroy the same whistleblowers, journalists and politicians who are trying to expose malpractice. They are designed to do this even when the plutocrat has no substantive case at all. They are designed to grind down decent, honest, public-spirited people and ruin them.
Earlier this week in the House of Lords, the Government introduced the first legislative changes designed to tackle this issue of lawfare—SLAPPs. In the intervening period, the problem has been exemplified by the actions of the businessman Mohamed Amersi. I have already named this gentleman several times in the House in connection with our colleague Charlotte Leslie, who had to face two and a half years of fighting Amersi’s spurious legal claims against her. That court case was concluded in Charlotte Leslie’s favour a few weeks ago.
The judge found that Amersi’s case failed on the facts, but, importantly, he added that “several aspects” of Amersi’s conduct gave “real cause for concern” about the intent behind his legal case. Amersi delayed the start of defamation proceedings, took an
“exorbitant approach to the litigation”
and pursued an unnecessarily complex case. He also pursued a data protection claim and a defamation claim in succession rather than properly in one action, thereby spinning out the case and maximising the stress and cost on Charlotte Leslie. This was clearly an attempt to bully, intimidate and financially ruin Ms Leslie in order to suppress the truth. These are the classic characteristics of a SLAPP case, being designed to destroy free speech, not to deliver justice. The judge also noted that Amersi offered to drop his claim against Charlotte Leslie if he got his way and was given the green light to launch a rival group to Ms Leslie’s Conservative Middle East Council. This was a clear attempt to blackmail the Conservative party via a sort of judicial hostage taking.
These are all standard SLAPP tactics, which is unsurprising given that Mr Amersi was represented by Carter-Ruck, the go-to law firm for every bad actor seeking to undermine or misuse British justice. However, Carter-Ruck is not the only law firm willing to aid legal intimidation by dishonest and dishonourable means, if paid the right price. Others include CMS, Mishcon de Reya, Skadden, Taylor Wessing, Schillings and Harbottle & Lewis.
Charlotte Leslie is not alone in facing lawfare at the hands of Mr Amersi. He is also suing the BBC’s “Panorama” programme, and he has threatened The Guardian, Chatham House and Private Eye. He has also used legal threats to bully King’s College London into withdrawing a report on tax avoidance, tax evasion, economic crime and the way this has impacted on our public space and politics. The report was written in 2021 by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), who was a visiting professor at King’s College and is a long-standing campaigner against international corruption. The report was published in May 2022, but due to Amersi’s threats it was removed a few weeks later. This report was in the public interest, and highly relevant to our debates on the role and influence of Russian oligarchs and on the economic crime Bill, but access to it by the public, and indeed by Members, was prevented.
Why did Amersi do this? Because he did not like what was being written about him, and because our laws allow those with deep pockets to bully people, suppress negative commentary in the media and stop us holding their actions to public account—and because he is rich enough to do it. But what was it that Mr Amersi wanted to conceal with his SLAPPS? In a word, the truth—a long history of involvement in corruption, in bribery and in buying access to politicians.
Amersi is a wealthy businessman who made large sums of money in Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Nepal, which are all countries where corruption is rife. In 2005, Amersi made $4 million arranging the acquisition of a Russian telecoms company on behalf of a company he knew was secretly owned by a powerful Putin ally, the then Russian telecoms Minister, Leonid Reiman. He made another $1.5 million by buying and selling on a Russian telecoms venture, Komet, which was backed by a Russian general. In the UK, Amersi used his fortune to gain access to powerful people. He coined the term “access capitalism”, describing his own attempts to gain access to the royal household and Ministers, with payments to Prince Charles’s charities and the Conservative party. He and his partner gave £750,000 to the Conservative party, and he makes no bones about what he thought he was buying.
When the Pandora papers were leaked in 2021, they exposed some of the most egregious instances of corruption, economic crime and money laundering. Amersi was in the thick of it. Following the leak, a joint investigation by the BBC and The Guardian revealed that he profited from a corrupt deal involving the Swedish energy company Telia, and a high-profile kleptocrat in Uzbekistan. Most of the investigation relied on court documents, and a settlement reached between the Telia and the US Department of Justice, following a four-year investigation into that company’s activities. A leaked internal company report described the activities of a consultant called “Mr XY”, who it transpires is Mohamed Amersi. It said that some of the payments to Amersi
“may have been utilised to improperly acquire regulatory benefits and/or secure the go-ahead of the transaction.”
The report recommended that Telia sack him. That is not surprising, given that Telia’s former chief compliance officer said that he had been
“involved in one of the biggest corruption scandals that we have seen in Sweden.”
Amersi helped to facilitate a $220 million purchase of shares from a shell company owned by the daughter of the Uzbek President at the time. That share purchase was in fact a concealed bribe—that was the clear view of the US Department of Justice. Mr Amersi pocketed a $500,000 million “success fee” following the deal. He claims he was employed by Telia, at a rate of $10 million a year, for his advanced skills and aptitude for negotiating. Despite those apparent skills, he claims not to have realised that a financial arrangement he helped design facilitated a multimillion dollar bribe. Either he knew it was a bribe, or he was extremely naive and therefore grossly overpaid. I know my view, but I will leave the public to decide theirs.
This is precisely why the right hon. Member for Barking wrote about Mr Amersi in her report last year. This story had already been reported in The Guardian and the BBC, and this is the first paragraph that he wanted removed from the right hon. Lady’s paper— I will quote exactly:
“The figures behind the [Pandora] leak are mind-boggling, and the documents contain many scandalous stories which really confirm how utterly awful the abuse of offshore has become. The papers bring to light how Conservative Party donor, Mohamed Amersi, allegedly used BVI-based companies to profit from apparently corrupt deals between a Swedish telecoms giant and a key power broker in the kleptocratic regime in Uzbekistan. They reveal the offshore structures deployed by Putin’s inner circle of oligarchs and allies to buy million-dollar properties along the Monaco seafront. They demonstrate that money flows into onshore tax havens, such as US states like South Dakota, where there is around $360 billion hidden in secret trusts, including money that could have been derived from corrupt regimes or criminal activities.”
This is the second paragraph that he wanted removed:
“Comments from Mohamed Amersi, a Kenyan-born telecoms millionaire who, as previously discussed, was named in the Pandora Papers, seems to confirm that political donations can have a sinister purpose, after he described his frustrations at what he called ‘access capitalism’. Amersi previously admitted to buying access to Prince Charles and he has also donated £750,000 to the Conservative Party since 2017. He claims to have paid £250,000 to become a member of the party’s ‘Advisory Board’ which has regular meetings with Boris Johnson and leading Cabinet members, and claims that he was promised the chairmanship of a new body, the Conservative Friends of the Middle East and North Africa, a promise that has yet to materialise. The role would have given him significant power and influence as he would have acted as a link between Governments in the region and British Ministers. Amersi is now mired in an international corruption scandal.”
The report of the right hon. Member for Barking, “Losing our moral compass” was about illicit finance and its corrosive impact. It summarised and analysed the features of many corruption cases in the public domain. It was a well-researched and argued paper, designed to inform public debate and written to show how dirty money threatens the integrity of our economy and our political institutions. Ironically, what followed illustrates how right she was.
Within days of the report being published, King’s College and the right hon. Member received legal threats. Through his lawyers at Carter-Ruck, Amersi branded the report highly defamatory. He demanded an apology and that the passages referring to him be either changed or entirely removed. Amersi bullied King’s College into removing the paper. As notional defenders of academic freedom, it should have stood up to him, but it capitulated in the face of his threats. His threat effectively silenced the right hon. Member and suppressed her vital work exposing economic crime and dirty money.
We know that Amersi is no stranger to using his financial might to get what he wants. He has previously paid to meet senior members of the royal family, but organisations such as the Conservative party and Buckingham Palace take serious reputational risks in associating with people like Amersi. His attempts to remove important information from public view are a textbook example of strategic litigation against public participation. They are clearly an exercise in lawfare.
We have an individual with deep pockets who can use British lawyers and courts to suppress the publication of information that is clearly in the public interest. It is done in the knowledge that lengthy legal battles will likely bankrupt politicians, journalists, academic institutions, whistleblowers and others who are brave enough to tell the truth about public corruption. Amersi, like many oligarchs with huge wealth of doubtful origin, is in the business of silencing people. His actions are an example of how the rich and powerful can silence anyone who criticises them. The kleptocrats, oligarchs and bad actors do not care if that means stifling free speech or public debate. Now they are even prepared to try to silence elected Members of Parliament and to block the publication of information that is plainly in the public interest.
We find ourselves in a dangerous situation, where the abuse of the legal system is now damaging the very core of our democracy. The cases faced by the right hon. Member for Barking and Charlotte Leslie serve as a glaring example of that. It is to the disadvantage of the whole country when public interest investigations by Tom Burgis, HarperCollins, Catherine Belton, Eliot Higgins, openDemocracy, Oliver Bullough and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism are shut down. Fortunately, the Government responded quickly to our debates on this issue last January. They almost immediately held a major consultation, which resulted in proposals for reform. On Tuesday this week, they introduced the first anti-SLAPP measures in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament.
The measures will empower the courts to strike out SLAPPs before trial. They will also prevent courts from ordering defendants to pay claimants’ costs in relation to a SLAPP claim, unless misconduct by the defendants justifies that. Once a claim is deemed to be a SLAPP, the burden will be on the claimant to prove that their claim is more likely than not to succeed. If not, the claim can be struck out. This is a welcome reversal of the burden of proof. Taken together, these measures are a great win for those looking to shine a spotlight on economic crime and speak truth to power, but we must go further.
As things stand, the measures only apply to economic crimes. Approximately 70% of the crimes listed in April 2022 in the Foreign Policy Centre report were connected to financial crime and corruption, but SLAPPs have also been used to silence reporting on human rights abuses, labour practices, regulatory non-compliance and an array of other abuses that do not relate to economic crime. To be truly effective, we must broaden anti-SLAPP provisions so that they apply to all defamation lawsuits, because ultimately we want to ensure that people such as Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been in the news this week, are not able to silence and intimidate journalists, as he did to a Bellingcat reporter earlier this year. I welcome the commitment from Lord Bellamy on Tuesday that the Government will complete
“the jigsaw as soon as a suitable legislative vehicle appears.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 June 2023; Vol. 831, c. 629.]
The issue will not end with reforms to defamation law. Data protection law and subject access requests are becoming yet another weapon for bullying people into silence. We also need proper regulation of private investigators, who in many instances have enabled SLAPPs through intrusive and often illegal surveillance or hacking. Justice Nicklin said that the tactic that Amersi’s lawyers used against Charlotte Leslie—that of bringing separate claims in succession—
“can be a hallmark of abusive conduct”.
I think he was being delicate in that reference to SLAPPs.
We could improve the Government’s proposals by allowing the courts to make the law firms and solicitors involved in SLAPPs pay the cost to the public purse, and so take the fight directly to those who enable SLAPPs. The London lawyers I listed earlier—Carter-Ruck and the rest—have designed a litany of tactics not to promote justice, but to suppress truth; not to protect reputations, but to silence legitimate criticism; not to ensure accountability, but to cover up corruption. That behaviour should not go unpunished. They should be made to meet the costs of wasting the courts’ time.
Our legal system is a source of pride. Britain is home to some of the fairest and best courts in the world. We cannot allow individuals with deep pockets and questionable motives to exploit our justice system and destroy our reputation as a trusted jurisdiction. Expanding anti-SLAPP measures will put an end to this perversion of our legal system that seeks to intimidate, threaten, and suppress British journalists, academics, civil society, and sitting Members of Parliament. We have made good progress, but if we fail to understand the magnitude of this issue and to fully address this problem, then, as the right hon. Member for Barking stated in her report, we are truly at risk of losing our moral compass.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Alex Chalk
Absolutely. The position is that we will do so at the earliest opportunity. As I said before, we are even considering this in legislation before the House at the moment, so I hope that that gives the hon. Member an indication of the urgency. However, the point to note is that it is very easy to say “anti-SLAPPs legislation”, but if we look at other jurisdictions, we see that that can be in the form of costs orders that can have unintended consequences in respect of the law of defamation. I am not suggesting that is any reason not to move quickly—we are going to move quickly—but we have to move quickly and with care. If we do not, we risk undermining the very policy objective we want to deliver.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I will remind the Lord Chancellor that we have debated this matter a number of times in this House over more than the last year, so I do encourage haste. On scope, SLAPPs encourage a lot of other bad practices. For example, we are now the global centre of illegal hacking in this country. We have a very bad record for poorly regulated private investigation, so can he make sure his review covers that as well?
Alex Chalk
As always, my right hon. Friend absolutely has his finger on the pulse of this important issue. He makes a powerful point, and I can assure him that it is being borne in mind.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Dominic Raab
I am afraid that I do not, but I respect the Committee. There has been pretty rampant abuse of the Human Rights Act 1998 when it comes to deporting foreign national offenders. That is what our Bill of Rights will cure.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The recent investigation into lawfare by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Sunday Times revealed how witnesses can be paid vast sums of money—up to £1 million—to appear in British courts. That is illegal in America. Does the Government agree that the payment of such a huge amount of money has the potential to sway witnesses and should be outlawed?
Dominic Raab
I thank my right hon. Friend for bring that to my attention. It sounds very serious and capable of having a negative and pejorative influence on proceedings. If he writes to me or—even better—comes to see me, I will be happy to look into it further.
Lawfare and Investigative Journalism
David Davis Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before I call the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), I thank him for informing the Table Office in advance of the case he intends to raise in his debate, which, I understand, is not sub judice. However, I remind all Members to be mindful of the sub judice resolution and to be careful to avoid raising any issues that could prejudice any future legal proceedings or those currently before the courts.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
On 20 January, a number of us MPs initiated a debate on the use of lawfare by oligarchs and undemocratic states that seek to suppress free speech and scrutiny of their activity. The Ministry of Justice took up the question and has promised new legislation, and I am glad to see the new Minister about to lose his departmental virginity in this debate—it will not hurt; I will be gentle.
Today, I will speak about another outrageous case of lawfare that centres around the former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He was the autocratic ruler of Kazakhstan for three decades. His time in office was characterised by repression, torture and other human rights abuses. He was ousted from power in 2019, but remains a significant influence in the country. He was more or less able to anoint his successor as president, and met Vladimir Putin even after leaving office.
During his 29-year rule, Nazarbayev won elections with claimed results of more than 90% of votes cast, and the capital city was even renamed after him in 2019. The term “rigged dictatorship” comes to mind. As long ago as 1999, the western press aired concerns about assets held by Nazarbayev and his associates. In that year, The New Yorker reported that Swiss officials had found a bank account worth $85 million that was intended for the Kazakh Treasury, but was in fact held by Nazarbayev—$85 million, which turns out to be small change. Three years later, Nazarbayev’s critics in Kazakhstan accused him of hiding $1 billion in oil revenue in offshore accounts.
Now, the Nazarbayev Fund Private Fund, an ostensibly charitable organisation, and a related firm, Jusan Technologies Ltd, have between them started a lawfare campaign against four news bodies, including three based in Britain, which are the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Daily Telegraph and openDemocracy. The supposed provocation for that action was the news bodies’ reports on Nazarbayev and his associates, which revealed several ambiguities and a lack of transparency around his charitable foundations.
First, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a non-profit investigative news platform, published an investigation into charitable foundations set up during Nazarbayev’s rule. It revealed that companies connected to those charitable foundations and to his relatives had received bail-out and loan funding from his Government.
One such case involves the St Regis Astana, which is a hotel in the Kazakh capital that opened in 2017. The company that owns the hotel, the Turion Investment Group, has included among its shareholders Nazarbayev’s daughter and son in law. The hotel project was built with the help of a loan of $85 million from a state-owned development bank, which even the current President Tokayev conceded has become
“the personal bank of a select group of people representing financial, industrial, and construction groups.”
Let us remember that that is supposed to be a state bank.
In the early 2000s, Nazarbayev’s Presidential Affairs Department joined two Kazakh firms in developing a resort on the Turkish coast where Nazarbayev reportedly spends his own holidays. One of the private firms involved was owned by three businessmen who had previously handed cash to Nazarbayev’s university fund. In another instance, two of Nazarbayev’s foundations owned a landscaping business that received $6.5 million in Government contracts between 2012 and 2018.
After those revelations, openDemocracy covered the story and asked the simple question of whether an autocrat’s riches were being allowed into this country without due scrutiny. It was talking about Jusan Technologies, a firm that is incorporated in the United Kingdom and has nearly $8 billion in gross assets, yet had only one member of staff in the UK in 2020.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Daily Telegraph then collaborated to investigate Jusan Technologies. It appears that its registered office at the time was a brass-plate address shared with hundreds of other firms. Its assets have been held in several sectors, including banking, telecoms and retail, and in several countries, from Luxembourg and the UK to Kazakhstan itself. Until recently, it was controlled by three organisations, including the Nazarbayev fund via an intermediary organisation.
The Nazarbayev fund is allegedly run for the benefit of educational institutions in Kazakhstan and stipulates in its charter that Nazarbayev cannot benefit personally from the fund. Yet he remains the chairman of its executive body and has the power to change its rules. It is not clear why a fund ostensibly for education and the benefit of the Kazakh population needs assets in banking or retail.
The fund is also connected to senior Kazakh politicians. Nazarbayev’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Yerbol Orynbayev, was a director of Jusan Tech and owned 4.6% of the company. Moreover, the investigation shows that the First Heartland Jusan Bank, the largest asset owned by Jusan Technologies, has received more than $2 billion in bail-outs from the Kazakh Government. This is a company that has paid out $430 million in shareholder dividends in recent years. An oligarch married to one of Nazarbayev’s relatives owns 20% of the bank. It appears to be steeped in Nazarbayev’s influence.
While Jusan Technologies itself has now changed its ownership structure—it did so shortly before the reports were first published—the new structure is, if anything, even more opaque. The new owner is a non-profit organisation based in Nevada, a jurisdiction the secrecy laws of which have been criticised in the past, including in respect of the Pandora papers. That non-profit is owned by another non-profit, whose president is the chief executive of the Nazarbayev fund as well as Nazarbayev’s former Education Minister.
Frankly, Mr Deputy Speaker, if you are confused by this extraordinary cat’s cradle of different and interlocking organisations, you would not be alone. It is designed to be confusing and designed to be difficult to understand and opaque. Creating organisations of this level of opacity and complexity is not easy, but it is always done for a reason. In this case, the most likely reason is to conceal the extent of Nazarbayev’s control of this web of assets and wealth.
To come back to the point about lawfare, all the news outlets did was ask legitimate questions and try to shine a light on some apparent irregularities and the opaque nature of Nazarbayev’s foundations. They did not even make any allegations of impropriety or money laundering in the articles for which they are being attacked, yet they are now facing potential legal censure. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Daily Telegraph alone have received three threatening legal letters in four months telling them to retract their claims and apologise, and a case has now been filed in the High Court.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I noticed that these cases had been filed, though not yet served, and I tabled a written question in this place about their effects on media freedom. I have to tell the House and the right hon. Gentleman that I was then contacted by lawyers for the company asking me to withdraw that question. What is his response to their asking me to withdraw a perfectly innocent parliamentary question?
Mr Davis
First, the lawyers clearly do not understand parliamentary privilege. Secondly, what they are doing—I will come back to this in a second—is trying to repress free speech and transparency in this country. This is a clear case of an ultra-wealthy individual using the British legal system to try to scare his critics into silence, and what the hon. Gentleman refers to is their trying to extend that to his actions—proper actions—in this House. The work of those who have been targeted is all the more important considering that Nazarbayev has himself had a law passed in Kazakhstan preventing him from being prosecuted there. What he is doing with this lawfare is trying to extend that protection to this country, which, frankly, is an outrage.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate forward. Does he not agree that we can never be in a position where the fear of the personal costs of litigation prevents truth from being revealed by journalists, who are putting their homes and their livelihoods on the line to highlight individuals who will in retaliation sue them until they have not a penny to spare, and that rather than simply saying that this is awful, as we all are, what we really need is the Government to present and bring to this House legislation to prevent it?
Mr Davis
I will come back to that very point in a moment, but as the hon. Gentleman implies, defending oneself against a libel claim, especially by an oligarch or other wealthy person, is often cripplingly expensive. In fact, it is typically cripplingly expensive. The risk is not losing the case, which is improbable in most of these cases. The penalty for exponents of free speech is the sheer cost of a vexatious process, which is what Nazarbayev wants.
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate him on securing this debate and on making a fantastic speech. He has been a passionate and effective campaigner on the growing problem of egregious strategic lawsuits against public participation—SLAPPs—and has argued, along with the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), for urgent action to stop these abuses.
I want to raise the case of Dmitry Leus, a UK resident of Russian-Turkmen origin, who is threatening libel action against Chatham House because of his inclusion in its excellent report, “The UK’s Kleptocracy Problem.” Leus was a Russian banker, convicted of money laundering in Russia in 2004, who arrived in the UK on a Cypriot passport. He has donated to the Conservative party and chaired his local Conservative association. He tried to donate £500,000 to the foundation of the then Prince Charles, but the donation was spurned when the charity learnt of his conviction. In July my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) said in this House that Leus is “absolutely dependent” on the Russian security services.
Mr Davis
I thank the right hon. Lady for drawing the attention of the House to that case. I do not know the substance of it, but the fact is that these cases are best resolved transparently and in public, with fearless reporting, not with repression of free speech. Oligarchs will often bring these claims as they know their opponents will, as in this case, have to back down either through the threat of bankruptcy or because they become bankrupt as a result of the operation, and it is a good example of this problem.
That is why the Government earlier this year found that some journalists
“no longer publish information on certain individuals or topics—such as exposing serious wrong-doing or corruption—because of potential legal costs.”
That also applies to some newspapers and some organisations whose job it is to expose this sort of information.
With every letter and every stage of legal action, organisations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism must divert resources and attention away from public interest reporting and towards defending themselves against bogus or trivial claims. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has a small team, with just a few dozen staff. To defend itself, it has been forced to divert much of its reporting team and senior management, as well as significant financial resources, to dealing with these legal threats.
This kind of lawfare is a potentially existential threat to investigative journalism, and that is precisely what the claimants in these cases intend. These proceedings are not initiated to prove the organisations wrong—the oligarchs know that the organisations are right—but rather to financially and psychologically exhaust them into retraction. What Nazarbayev wants is to import into the UK the contempt for free speech shown in Kazakhstan during his three-decade rule. As the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) pointed out in his intervention, Nazarbayev is bringing to Britain what he imposed on Kazakhstan and we cannot allow that. This should offend the sensibilities of anyone who values a fair and equal justice system, as well as those who rightly appreciate the value of public interest reporting.
It is of some reassurance that the Government intend to reform the law around SLAPPs, but we must move more quickly. I say that directly to the Minister, who is an old friend of mine over the years; I am very pleased he is in his place and in the Department as he will do a fantastic job, but I say to him that we must move more quickly. There is no time to waste when even now we have oligarchs using SLAPPs to curb free speech and evade justice in our country. One of our ex-colleagues, Charlotte Leslie, is facing such a case at the moment. We as Members of Parliament have parliamentary privilege and so can speak without the threat of libel action, but that privilege brings with it a duty to speak up for those who cannot speak for fear of punishment by the likes of Nazarbayev.
In the wake of the war in Ukraine, the Government swiftly introduced sanctions on those with links to the Russian regime, making it harder for them to use our country as a money-laundering venue. It is high time that we applied that same urgency and purpose to addressing the damage that oligarchs are doing to our justice system and our free-speech values. For too long, we have facilitated oligarchs’ dirty money and corruption in the UK.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making a great speech and incredibly good points about lawfare. We have the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill before the House, and it would be wonderful if the Minister, when he is on his feet in a few minutes, confirmed that lawfare will be part of that. We have a lawfare Bill written and ready to go, and the Government could adopt it. There are three elements to it: the abuse of privacy laws; various other factors; and the aggressive abuse of libel law. The problem is, whether we like it or not, we may make grandiose speeches about how free speech must be defended, but it is being attacked all the time. In the last few years, it has been relentlessly attacked by criminals, by oligarchs and by Russian proxies and other corrupt proxies in this country. We need laws brought in now, not at some time in the future.
Mr Davis
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Our friends and neighbours in the US and Europe are taking action, and we must not be left behind. If we do not act, we will let dangerous people off the hook while allowing journalists and researchers to be punished for doing their jobs. What we need now is a commitment from Ministers to bring forward either a free-standing SLAPPs Bill or measures that form a component of another Bill. I do not care which it is, but it must happen soon.
Andy Slaughter
The right hon. Member is making an excellent speech and an excellent case for having anti-SLAPP legislation either as part of the economic crime Bill or as a stand-alone Bill. That needs to happen. There seems to be a general issue with costs, which are being used as a weapon in economic crime, in SLAPPs and in many other areas of law. It was an issue in Leveson as well. Do we not need to look at that and ensure that the courts can do their job unfettered by those outside influences that are causing the best legal system in the world to come into disrepute?
Mr Davis
The hon. Member is exactly right. There are a variety of other mechanisms that we could use. We could give judges the right to strike down egregious cases early. We could even look at the prospect of providing legal aid for journalists pursuing bona fide public interest issues. There are a variety of issues, and we should address all of them. This country is the global home of justice. Our justice system is admired around the world, but, if we are not careful, it will be corrupted, undermined, manipulated and abused by SLAPPS and people using SLAPPs.
I ask the Department and the Minister to take action, or to tell us that they will take action. Brits are rightly proud of how our legal system is a model for the world. If we are to ensure that that remains the case, we must act, and act soon.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I welcome the Minister to his new position.
Gareth Johnson
I hear what the right hon. Lady is saying. I cannot give her the commitment that we will place that within the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill. There are two schools of thought on whether it can be placed in another piece of legislation, and thereby limited by the long title of that Bill, or whether it is better off dealt with in isolation, so it has more of a free rein. I can inform her and the House that the legislation is still, at this stage, being drafted. As a consequence, it is not oven-ready to go straight into another piece of legislation that is before the House now.
Gareth Johnson
I hope, and I hope it is not a naïve hope, that hon. Members on both sides of the House will work with the Ministry of Justice on this, because we do intend to legislate on the issue.
Mr David Davis
Of course we do not want to get in the way of the Ministry of Justice, but the key issue is speed. If the Minister can, not necessarily today—I know Cabinet committees need to deal with this; we are all familiar with that—but at some point in the near future, say to us, “Yes, we are going to do it in this Session. Yes, we are going to do it soon,” he will find that the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill makes much easier progress than otherwise.
Gareth Johnson
I can give my right hon. Friend an assurance that we will do this as soon as the legislation is ready and as soon as parliamentary time allows it to happen.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Robert Buckland
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, this is not a question of our blaming the Crown Prosecution Service. There is a constitutional principle here. The Crown Prosecution Service is independent, and the Law Officers are responsible for the superintendence of that service. I am sure that his colleague the shadow Solicitor General will be able to ask the Law Officers these questions in the next few days.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Robert Buckland
My right hon. Friend will appreciate that there are ongoing proceedings, including in the civil courts, and the extradition proceedings may be subject to further appeals, so it would not be right for me to comment directly on that case. The SFO is superintended by the Law Officers. However, I undertake to talk to him about the general issues of concern that he properly raises.
End-to-end Rape Review
David Davis Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Robert Buckland
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who makes some extremely relevant points and gets to the heart of the issue when it comes to the need to reduce the number of victims in the first place. I was very glad to hear her reference to the curriculum. A lot of work has been done to expand the curriculum on sex education and healthy relationships, and I pay tribute to the work not only of teachers, but of third sector groups that are campaigning actively to improve the quality of that provision. She will be glad to know that the violence against women and girls strategy, which was reopened in the wake of the appalling Sarah Everard killing, has received hundreds of thousands of responses. That is going to be the heart of the Government’s approach to prevention in order to achieve the goal that she and I share.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Most rape victims feel unable to pursue their case because they feel disbelieved or judged. That was highlighted in the DSD and NBV v. Met police in 2018. The words of DSD, who was a victim of John Worboys, were:
“The police made me feel that I’d made it all up.”
It meant that Worboys was able to go on and carry out 100 more rapes of women. The other victim, NBV, said that the police
“asked me whether I’d describe myself as a young lady who would wear red nail polish and red lipstick. They asked me how often I would go out drinking…The way they behaved made me feel like anything that had happened to me was because I deserved it.”
The behaviour of the police in this case is a stark demonstration of why so many victims give up, yet the Metropolitan Police Commissioner rebutted the case, saying that it made their job too difficult. Frankly, unless the senior management of the Met and other large police forces show a willingness to change and learn from these cases, I am afraid we will need to look for new senior management.
Robert Buckland
My right hon. Friend has very graphically illustrated some of the appalling experiences that many complainants and victims have undergone, and that is very much at the core of this review. We need to move away from the fixation with the credibility or believing of the victim and be much more about the perpetrator. If someone’s house is burgled, they do not expect to have a long trawl into their personal history and whether they had left an upstairs window unlocked or whether they had been drinking; it is about trying to find out who did it and who is responsible for the crime. It is that sort of approach that we need in rape and serious sexual offending.
Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [Lords]
David Davis ExcerptsWednesday 2nd September 2020
(3 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Act 2020 View all Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 115-I Marshalled list for Third Reading - (24 Jun 2020)
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
I promise that I will try to keep my comments as brief as possible. It is a bit of an intimidating experience to follow such distinguished lawyers, particularly as I was only sitting my legal practice course finals some two years ago, so to be here debating with the Lord Chancellor on private international law is an interesting one.
A really important point was raised at the start of the debate, which was about making the Bill applicable to real life. To reiterate that point, which was articulated particularly well, I must say, by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), this affects real people’s lives. This is about how businesses operate and how some of the most vulnerable children and young people in our society are protected. I think about the exporters in my region of the west midlands who account for a quarter of a million jobs. The export value of the goods sent out from the black country was something like £3.81 billion in 2018-19. The Bill is really important, because it relates to people’s livelihoods. It is absolutely vital that we get it right.
On the protections for young people who need financial support from absent parents, I have 3,000 lone parents in my constituency who rely on support for their children. Looking at my caseload, I would say that many of them do not get that support. We spend time having to fight very complex battles to receive very complex levels of support, so we must relate this to the situation on the ground. I think of businesses in my constituency, such as KTC Edibles in Wednesbury, which rely on these provisions to do their day-to-day business. It is as simple as that: they rely on private international law to ensure they can trade and can keep their employees in a job.
Turning more widely to the provisions in the Bill, I want to touch on the clause 2 that was removed by the other place. We have heard articulate arguments about that today. In my preparation for this debate, I read the comments in the other place. To an extent, I have sympathy with what was said on the possibility of utilising the delegated powers as some sort of Executive power grab. What I would say—I think this was articulated by my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor—is that the preceding system was one of direct effect, so in a way it took those powers away from this place in the first place. Having said that, however, equally we cannot just remove the role of this place entirely. We cannot allow that to happen. I am somewhat reassured that, through the affirmative procedure, there is a degree of scrutiny. I appreciate that for some Members it is not the desired level of scrutiny, but I have been very impressed by my hon. Friend the Minister’s openness in taking forward suggestions on how it could perhaps be improved on.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Apart from diluting the number of lawyers here for my hon. Friend’s comfort—
Mr Davis
I am the client of the House today.
The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) made the very important point that these prospective pieces of legislation, only under secondary legislation, could actually create criminal offences and therefore impinge directly on the rights of our citizens. They could, when I think about it, even put the rights of those citizens under foreign laws, as has happened with the European arrest warrant and other such measures. Does my hon. Friend think that that specific test of whether it creates a criminal offence that might impinge on our citizens might require rather more than simply secondary affirmative legislation?
Shaun Bailey
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He raises a really important point very eloquently, which I would need to explore. I do not want to give him a definitive answer right now, because I would need to explore it further. If I were to do that I would want to formulate my opinion based on the fullest research, but he makes a really important point that is certainly one to take forward and one that I have listened to with great interest in this debate, which has sort of formed my opinion.
Moving forward with this, and conscious of the fact that I want to keep my remarks as brief as possible, I would say that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) made an important point, which was supported by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood): we have got to ensure that, as we move forward now, this country is at the forefront of improving private international law. We cannot just pass this legislation and think, “Right, okay, there we go. We are an observer, or we are just partaking.” We have to be a leader on this, because when that campaign was happening four years ago and people made that decision, whatever people’s views on that, one premise of the campaign was that we would once again be a leader in the world. To do that, we have to ensure that we take a proactive and positive approach.
I am heartened to see that there has been respect for the devolved Administrations, particularly for Scots law. We need to respect the unique legal structures and legal framework in Scotland. I am pleased to see that in the Bill.
To round up my comments, I would say that this is a Bill that, on the face of it, has broad support from all sides. There are some interesting debates still to be had as it proceeds on its passage and I am heartened by the way those on the Treasury Bench have been open to discussions and to listening. We might think this measure is technical and convoluted—the joy of legal debates among lawyers in the Tea Room—but it is people’s lives. This is every day. This is about keeping people in jobs. This is about ensuring that the most vulnerable in our society remain protected. I commend the Bill to the House.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Davis Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Robert Buckland
I welcome the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman raises his question. When I was Solicitor General, I met the lead official on community sentencing in the Scottish Government, who had a lot of experience here in the capital and elsewhere in England. Yes, there is a lot we can learn, although I am not with him on an absolute abolition of short-term sentences. The evidence does not necessarily point to it making a big contribution to a reduction in reoffending. However, there is a stubborn cohort of prolific offenders who end up in a revolving door situation, and it is that agenda that I will be addressing as part of my smart approach to sentencing later in the year.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
For one category of crime—domestic violence—the moment of release of the perpetrator is the start of a period of fear for their erstwhile victim. Has the Lord Chancellor considered the possibility of extending the restrictions and restraints on those criminals beyond the sentence period they are given in court?
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising an issue of deep concern to us all. He will be reassured to know that a range of options is available now to the courts, including restriction orders, serious crime prevention orders and other types of court order, that can prevent the perpetrator from contact or association with his or her victim. I would be happy to discuss the matter further with him. I do not want to add unnecessarily to the statute book, but he will be encouraged, I think, by the provisions in the domestic abuse Bill that will help to knit together the approach we want to take to protect victims of domestic abuse more effectively.