Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, none of us has much time to say a great deal, but since I suspect that we are largely in agreement, across all parties and none, that the Magnitsky sanctions—in this jurisdiction now wrapped up in the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations—are a good thing, that may not matter.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on drawing the case that he mentioned to our attention and on opening this debate so powerfully. It is important that the United Kingdom, no matter what our internal political differences and economic troubles may be, must never avoid imposing sanctions on individuals and Governments on grounds of mere expedience. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, was right to mention Iran and the other matters that he drew to our attention.

I accept that any British Government’s foreign policy, which guides our Ministers, diplomats and international negotiators and thus affects the conduct of diplomacy, will need to anticipate and react to events outside our control. Whereas the conduct of government may be different in different countries, the need to abide by acceptable standards of conduct that do not ignore the rule of law or internationally accepted human rights cannot be compromised, must always be respected and is a universal requirement.

The torture of political prisoners in large, powerful countries, for example, needs to be responded to just as much as torture carried out in economically and militarily weak countries. The fact that we do or could sell more goods or services to a large country than a small one, while a superficially attractive reason and justifiable as realistic and nationally self-interested, to say and do nothing about the appalling behaviour of a large country’s leaders is, in the end, counterproductive and as morally acceptable as it would have been 200 years ago to prolong the slave trade.

Human rights abusers tend to be kleptocrats who thrive on the pain, suffering and stolen assets of the less powerful or politically inconvenient. If they use their ill-gotten gains and the laundered proceeds of crime to fill bank accounts or buy property here, we should recover those assets, tell the world that we have done so and return them to the victims of those crimes.

With these regulations, we now have the means to deter human rights abuses; it is Parliament’s job to ensure that this and any successor Government have the will to do so. I congratulate the Government on what they have done so far, but there is, in my view, a great deal more yet to do.