Sanctions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I will come to more details of the sanctions package and what we hope to achieve with it, but ultimately we are looking to prevent further territorial encroachment and aggression into Ukraine, and to get Russian troops to withdraw back to Russia, to de-escalate and to move away from the Ukrainian border. As I will say later in my speech, if the House gives me the opportunity to progress, we are working and co-ordinating closely with our international partners in our sanctions response to ensure maximum effectiveness.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, because this point is very relevant. I do not mean to put him on the spot—I have the advantage of looking at what the news has just said—but Putin has just now recognised the whole of the Donbas as independent, going beyond the ceasefire line and into the territory now held by the Ukrainian Government. Therefore, what we have announced is already out of date. I appreciate that the Minister may need to confer, but are the sanctions in these regulations appropriate? What is the trigger point for an escalation of sanctions? It was very clear that this House was not satisfied with what was brought forward earlier today.

[James Cleverly]

The instrument that we are discussing is a framework that allows us to deploy a range of measures. As I will say later in my speech, we are also giving ourselves further legislative vehicles through which we can impose punitive sanctions on Russia.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I knew he would have it. We want to see that list actioned.

The trouble right now is that we have had the debate about President Putin and the Russians invading Ukraine as though they were about to invade Ukraine. I keep banging on about this: they have invaded Ukraine. They took over Crimea in 2014 and created this nonsense about separatists in the Donbas region, loads of whom we know to be Russian soldiers, dressed up in different uniforms and creating merry hell. There is no way on earth that they would have held the Ukrainian forces off for this long were it not for the fact that they have some very sophisticated support coming in from Russia. There is an idea that somehow the Russians are invading, but they are not—they have already invaded. Therefore, we have the right to do something about it.

The question therefore is what we do about it. In 2014 we let ourselves down: we did next to nothing. I was in Government at the time and I felt concern then, but the reality is that we did not do enough. The problem in dealing with dictators is that if we do not act early and act hard, the lesson they learn is that we will never act and we will always give way at the end. When will those lessons be learned? We have been through it time and again. Dictators have a single purpose. The problem with democracy is that we have many thoughts, many ideas and many people to bring with us, but we too should have a central purpose.

I have some questions for my right hon. Friend the Minister. Much as I really support what the Government have done, I cannot understand why we have not done much more immediately. Going now and going hard should be the way. If there are other things we are planning to do, there are many others we should be sanctioning—I mentioned one individual earlier in an intervention—and many other levers we could pull.

I do not understand—but perhaps my right hon. Friend can explain to me—why we have not driven forward on the SWIFT banking system or the trading of sovereign debt, which would affect the Russians very much. I agree that the Germans have moved swiftly, as we know, to suspend Nord Stream 2—I would like to see them end the whole idea of it—but if they are going to do more, we should be co-operating with them and going in hard ourselves this one time.

Will my right hon. Friend therefore keep this statutory instrument open so that we could even return to it tomorrow, if necessary, to add to the whole process and take it even further? We have to do more and we have to do it harder than we have done now, because President Putin will not take any lessons.

I come back to the question I asked earlier. Bearing in mind that the Russians still sit in Crimea and still have areas of Donbas, which in a way they were unofficially occupying but now have occupied, what I do not quite understand is what this first phase of sanctions is actually meant to do. I am utterly puzzled by it. Is it meant to say, “Thus far and no further”? My right hon. Friend said that it is meant to say, “Get back.” But if so, then we have to hit very hard with everything we have got, such that President Putin and his cohorts around him suddenly say to themselves, “They really mean business. They are united across the democracies.”

[Layla Moran]

Within 10 minutes of the Minister rising to his feet, the sanctions were already out of date because the Russians had already gone further. During this debate, Putin has already gone further than he had at lunchtime, but we are yet to see any more announcements from the Government about further sanctions. The Russians are already laughing at us, aren’t they?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My worry is very much that they know exactly what they are doing, because they know exactly what we will do and they have already prepared the ground for this. They probably think to themselves, “We’ll do a certain amount and then we’ll discuss an awful lot more about what else we might do,” and then at some point a couple of countries will break ranks, go back to Putin and say, “Let’s work out a deal.” After all, the Minsk deal was a terrible deal because it forced on Ukraine the loss of its own territory, not necessarily in perpetuity but saying, “Don’t fuss about this any longer because we just want peace.” Peace at any price is not peace. Ukraine now faces an extended conflict and we see what is happening. A bad deal is a bad deal, and it leads to further pressure. That is what is happening.

I really do believe that the Government have to take this many notches further and hit the Russians very hard—yes, with the cleaning out of some of the Augean stables in the financial services area, but we also need to go on to grander, more supranational sanctions, working with our allies absolutely to cut off supplies of money, such that the Russians and President Putin cannot find a way through this and they feel the pain. When we hit them with these sanctions we must hear them squeal, not see them smile quietly and say, “They won’t get any further.” Let us do that earlier, now.

In conclusion, and returning to a point I made earlier, I genuinely believe that the free world has been half asleep on the watch. We thought that democracy was triumphant. We thought that there was no way, in coalition with the free markets, that the rest of the world would not turn to democracy automatically and embrace it, and we would have a fair and reasonable place. We failed to realise that the idea of totalitarianism—of brutality and oppression—exists and will go on existing. Unless we fight them wherever they exist, they will rise again. In China now, they practise slave labour, they have genocide, and they persecute people and lock them up. They absolutely dominate the citizens of that country. In Russia they are doing the same, as in Belarus, Iran and many other countries that the hon. Member for Rhondda and I have discussed in the APPG. They are on the move. This axis of totalitarianism supports itself across the board. If we do not act on Putin now and with firmness, then in China they will look at Taiwan and say, “They’ll never do anything; it’s even further away.” Then there is Iran and the nuclear weapons, and Belarus looking across at Poland. We must move hard, we must move now, and we must make them squeal. If we do not do that, then we will have failed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I hope that the main thing that we are getting across to the Minister is our collective sense of the urgency of acting and, frankly, our full support for the Government doing so much more than they have done today. I put it on the record that the Liberal Democrats stand with the people of Ukraine and that we stand ready and waiting to impose the greatest possible sanctions on Vladimir Putin, his associates and the Russian economy if necessary.

We have to lead from the front. In that vein, we must take decisions that are going to be painful. So far we have talked the talk, but I am afraid that today’s list of sanctions was thin gruel. I do not think that it has done anything; I do not even think that there is a line in the sand. Within hours of the sanctions being announced, as the Minister rose to his feet just a couple of hours ago, even more had been done by Putin—and, incidentally, even more has been announced by our allies.

We have to do more. If we do not say that enough is enough now, what will be enough? Is it when Russia has invaded Donbas? Is it when it invades Kyiv, Lviv, Tallinn? Which is it and where is the trigger? We have some clarity in this debate, in so far as that if it does not pull back, time seems to be a trigger. That is good, but I am afraid to say that I do not think we have done anything that will have any effect at all.

Putin’s cronies must be subject to the strongest possible sanctions now, because it is through them that Putin and his inner circle keep their wealth. If we go after his associates, we go after him. Actually, we are rather uniquely placed to do so, because they choose London. They live here—it is “Londongrad” to them. That means that we have leverage. However, the reason for that leverage is more difficult for us to swallow: our country’s failure over many years to stand up for what is right has led us to this point. The blind eye turned, the questions not asked, the quick buck or donation made—that is how Putin’s associates have been able to sink their teeth into our society, our economy and indeed our democracy to such an extent.

Late is better than never, so of course I am glad that the Government are now deciding to do more, but there is so much more still to do. Some £1.5 billion of UK property has been bought with suspicious Russian wealth, according to Transparency International, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. I do of course welcome the sanctions announced today, but Germany’s first tranche of sanctions was Nord Stream 2. Up to this point, for the last two weeks, the narrative was about how we had done more than Germany, but this is round one in the boxing match: Germany has brought Nord Stream 2, and we have brought five banks that do not really matter and three people whom the United States had already sanctioned.

We have heard the Foreign Secretary say that the Government want to impose severe sanctions; well, now is the time. Let me be helpful, and say that I think we need to start by heeding the names of those who were identified by Alexei Navalny and his team as “key enablers” more than a year ago. There is a problem, outside this Chamber, with naming those individuals, because many of them have very deep pockets and very expensive lawyers. The speech of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) underlined the issues involved, and I am well aware that the Minister knows of them, but I am going to use my privilege to name 35 of those individuals, because I think it important for us to have their names. I can reassure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I have already checked this with the Clerks.

Here are those 35 names: Roman Abramovich, Denis Bortnikov, Andrey Kostin, Mikhail Murashko, Dmitry Patrushev, Igor Shuvalov, Vladimir Solovye, Alisher Usmanov, Alexander Bastrykin, Alexander Bortnikov, Konstantin Ernst, Victor Gavrilov, Dmitry Ivanov, Alexander Kalashnikov, Sergei Kirienko, Elena Morozova, Denis Popov, Margarita Simonyan, Igor Yanchuk, Victor Zolotov, Oleg Deripaska, Alexei Miller, Igor Sechin, Gennady Timchenko, Nikolai Tokarev, Alexander Beglov, Yuri Chaika, Andrei Kartapolov, Pavel Krasheninnikov, Mikhail Mishustin, Ella Pamfilova, Dmitry Peskov, Sergei Sobyanin, Anton Vaino and Andrey Vorobyev.

I thank the House for its patience. Some of those people have been named before under privilege, but I believe that it is important for all of them to be named, lest we forget that while Putin’s national security council engaged in that sham discussion—a discussion which, by the way, seemed to have been filmed hours before it was aired—Navalny was being tried, and faces potentially another 15 years in prison. We must be vigilant for any attempt by Putin to use this crisis as a cover for what would be, in effect, the murder of Navalny.

I urge the Government to recognise that now is the time to freeze, and begin the process of seizing, the assets of not just those three individuals, but all Putin’s cronies who are in the UK. We must kick them—and their families—out of this country, and publish the review of the golden visa scheme. Over the weekend the Home Secretary said she would present a statement on that to the House, but we have yet to see it. I hope we will see it this week, because it is time to make it absolutely clear that the era of Russian interference in our society, country and democracy is over.

My final plea, which echoes a plea already made by others, is for the Government to bring forward all the legislation that remains outstanding—legislation which is in the Conservative party manifesto and which Ministers have said from the Dispatch Box that they want to pass. It should not be so difficult to do something that the Government have said time and again that they want to do. Where is that register of beneficial ownership? What has happened to the Registration of Overseas Entities Bill? We know that it is ready; please can the Minister accelerate its passage, and also the passage of the economic crime Bill? We stand ready and waiting for the Government to do more. Our democracy is at risk and so is the international rules-based order. I urge the Minister to heed our calls and do more.