Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Marie Rimmer

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I said earlier that London is now the preferred strike point for oligarchs in intimidating journalists. When the Foreign Policy Centre, whose work I must commend, surveyed investigative journalists, it found that three quarters of them had suffered some kind of legal attack to silence them. The UK legal system accounted for more of those legal actions than the United States and Europe put together. That is how bad this has now become. That is how rotten our system has now become. That is why it is so outrageous that the head of the Wagner Group was given the licences. Let us be clear about this guy. This is someone who has been running mercenary operations in Sudan, Mozambique, Syria, Central African Republic, Libya and Mali—and, of course, his forces have now been redeployed to the theatres in Ukraine.

It was in August 2020 that Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat began running a series of stories that exposed the barbarities of the Wagner Group in Africa, including offences such as the murder of CNN journalists. It took the British Government and the Foreign Office until 31 December 2020 to put sanctions on Prigozhin, even though, by the way, he had been sanctioned much earlier in the Unites States for the quiet sin of running troll farms intervening in the American presidential campaign. None the less, we got around to it at the back end of 2020. In the citation for sanctions, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office wrote that Prigozhin was providing

“a deniable military capability for the Russian state”.

That feels quite a big sin to me, running a deniable military capability for the Russian state. That sounds like a pretty good reason for sanctions. That sounds like a pretty good reason for not offering carve-outs to sanctions to undermine them in British courts.

When Mr Prigozhin found out about the sanctions he was not very happy, so he sought to undermine them by suing Bellingcat, or Eliot Higgins in an English court. He had a choice and in fact a debate: “Do we do it in a Russian court, a Dutch court or an English court?” The conclusion was to go for Eliot Higgins in an English court. To prosecute the case, he had to fly the lawyers out to St Petersburg, so the Treasury licensed £4,788.04 to help make that happen: over £3,500 for business class flights, £320 for accommodation at the Grand Hotel Europe Belmond, £150 for subsistence—that’ll buy a pretty good dinner—£200 for PCR testing and £400 for express visas. That is what servants of the Crown, under the supervision of Ministers of the Crown, signed off.

The discussions went a bit like this. “What are the objectives here, Mr Prigozhin? Well, we think that, rather than seeking damages, what we really need is to get Mr Higgins for defamation because that is how we undermine all those irritating articles” that led to the sanctions against Mr Prigozhin. Literally, we enabled the enablers. We enabled the cash flow of a Russian warlord to prosecute an English journalist in an English court. And that is why we have to act. No one in this House today thinks that this is okay. The Minister for Security does not think that it is okay. All of us here think it has to stop, but if it is to stop, we have to take aim at the original sin: the fact that it is courts in this country that are being used by oligarchs around the world to silence journalists.

Our new clause, which has drawn cross-party support today, is very simple. It would not stop all strategic legal actions against public participants, but it would stop anybody attempting to silence journalists who are trying to reveal economic crimes. It is within scope; I am grateful to the Clerks for their work helping to refine it and make it good. I know that the Minister will say, as he said in Committee, that this is not the right Bill for it, or that it would not solve all the problems, but that is an argument for making the perfect the enemy of the good.

We have heard the Lord Chancellor talking about his ambition to change the law, but we have also heard that he seeks to do so through the Bill of Rights. The dogs in the street know that the Bill of Rights Bill is dead. It is not coming back to this House any time soon, yet today—this week, next week, next month—journalists and indeed ex-Members of this House are in court, having to pay legal bills because we allow oligarchs to abuse our courts. Let us at least make progress now.

I say to the Minister: please do not be the Minister for mañana. Please be the Minister who did not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Please be the Minister who seeks to do what he can with what we have, where we are, today. We could use this Bill to make progress. Why do we not seize that opportunity with both hands?

I am very grateful for the concerted campaign by Members across this House. I will end by saluting the courage, fortitude and determination of so many good journalists in this country. Oliver Bullough, who wrote the brilliant books “Moneyland” and “Butler to the World”, makes an excellent argument in his openDemocracy article today. He says that journalists going into the business of tackling economic crime have an uphill struggle as it is, with a lot of barriers in their way. They have a pretty difficult job, and the knowledge that the British Government are on the side of the bad guys does not make that job any easier. It is time that we put the force of the state and the force of the Crown behind the good guys for once—and that means agreeing to our new clause today.

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). I applaud his commitment and thoroughness in the work that he has done.

I rise to support new clauses 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 21. Economic crime is usually committed in the shadows, yet its impact is as clear as day: there are the American candy stores down Oxford Street, there are thousands of empty flats in London and—closer to my home—in Liverpool and Manchester, and we know how dirty money laundered here has financed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The crimes that the Bill aims to prevent are so often shrouded in secrecy. The Bill is necessary, as we can all agree, but the Government need to do it right. They need to accommodate sensible amendments—notably those investigated and researched by groups such as the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) has led tirelessly. Indeed, the Minister—the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake)—co-signed the manifesto on which many of today’s amendments are based, so I would expect him to support them. I urge him to do so.

New clauses 1 and 2 are crucial to getting a grip on the London laundromat. Journalists are the fourth estate in our society. They investigate and shed light on the secrecy that surrounds economic crime, yet only this week it was reported that journalist Eliot Higgins was hounded by a British law firm that was given permission by the Government to work on behalf of the murderous and barbaric Wagner Group. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill has clearly outlined what has come out today and what he has been researching.

Wealthy oligarchs cannot be allowed to use English courts to threaten journalists with huge legal costs. If these wealthy individuals are able to abuse their wealth and power, no light will be shed on the secret world of economic crime.