Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between Layla Moran and Iain Duncan Smith

Committee stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and then to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran).

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

First, I will give way to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon.

[Layla Moran]

I was going to make the point that was just made: we should expect oligarchs to abide by the same rules that all the rest of us do.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

We all have to stop agreeing like this, as it will give the House a bad reputation.

Sanctions

Debate between Layla Moran and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.