Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Grand Committee

With that said—I am grateful to the Minister for listening—we support the regulations. We wish them to go further. I hope that, if he is not able to respond directly to our questions today, he will write to us to outline what the Government plan to do next.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, one thing that I think we can be absolutely certain of is that this Parliament and this country are fully united in their condemnation of the actions of the Russian state, particularly Putin and his acolytes. We fully support the introduction of these regulations and the Government’s efforts to hold Putin to account.

My main concern is whether the Government’s approach on sanctions is sufficiently broad and deep, and whether we can be certain that they are sustainable. It is a concern that we have shared before in these debates. I note that the Minister has confirmed over 1,000 designations, but it would be interesting to hear from him how many individuals have been specifically targeted, particularly when we know that London in the past has been a refuge for so many oligarchs.

On that point, it is also concerning that the Government’s approach seems to have left gaps that can be exploited for the purposes of asset flight. As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, it should not really have taken 16 days to catch up with Europe on sanctioning Members of the Russian Parliament, for example. It has meant that oligarchs had, in effect, warnings to escape London. For example, Abramovich was able to fly his jet out of Stansted and sail his super-yacht to Montenegro. The BBC website this afternoon made reference to ex-Arsenal shareholder Usmanov’s £82 million London home and Surrey mansion, which were put into trusts linked to him. A spokesman for him said that

“most of the billionaire’s UK property, as well as his yacht, had already been ‘transferred into irrevocable trusts’. Those are trusts which cannot usually be amended, modified, or revoked after they’re created. When the assets were transferred, Mr Usmanov no longer owned them, his spokesman said.”

Has the Minister seen those reports today? What is the Government’s response to ensure that further flight of assets is stopped? It shows that we should do more to co-ordinate with our allies and partners to ensure that we are ready and prepared to implement sanctions together, which I know is a theme that we have repeatedly followed through with the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad. It is making the measures effective that is really important.

We also need to confront economic crime and finally end the use of London for laundering dirty money. Of course, the job is only half done with the introduction of the economic crime Act that we supported through this House and the other place. I know that further legislation will come in the next Session, but we need urgent reform of Companies House to crack down on the shell companies hiding cash. Sanctioning oligarchs will be effective only if we know where their wealth is hidden. There must also be sufficient resourcing to implement and monitor sanctions, including those that have been introduced today.

I hear what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is saying about the errors. It struck me that, at the moment, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation has the full-time equivalent of only 37 employees. I hope that the Minister can tell us how we are ramping up that resource to ensure that, when we make these regulations and laws, they are properly implemented as soon as possible.

On the regulations themselves, and on the No. 4 regulations dealing with shipping sanctions, I hope that the Minister can tell us what assessment the FCDO has made of the levels of Russia-bound cargo ships at major Russian ports since the invasion of Ukraine.

The No. 5 regulations deal with financial services, including banks and wealth funds. On the related issue of financial payments, I hope that the Minister can update us on the effectiveness of the partial exclusion of the Central Bank of Russia from SWIFT, and how that operation is working.