Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on having gone further and faster than they had originally planned once the gravity of the situation became clear. Although this may be the largest ever package of sanctions from the UK, can the Minister explain to the House why there are so few individuals on our sanctions list compared with the EU’s? Why, in a particular spirit of generosity, are we allowing 18 months from when the legislation comes into effect for those who wish to sell their houses and get the proceeds out of the country to do so?

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness’s last remark. I was on the Joint Committee on the Draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, which sat in 2019. Clearly, 18 months is far too long if Clause 3 of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill is to have any immediate effect.

Is there any possibility of having a look at the enemy aliens Act of 1914? Of course, this is not an exact parallel, but there may be suitable provisions within that old legislation, which was renewed in 1919 after the end of the First World War. Could my noble friend’s officials perhaps look at this legislation to see if there are any useful provisions which could be modernised and brought forward to be of value nowadays—accepting that the United Kingdom is not “at war” with Russia?

While the measures which my noble friend has just announced are hugely valuable, there are three groups of people on whom we need to apply pressure, given that the Ukrainians are actuarily unlikely to win a fighting war, brave as they are and incredible as their resistance has been so far.

First, when the ordinary Russian public are queuing for bread in Moscow because the Russian economy has collapsed, they will begin to wonder why and they will begin to ask why Russian state television and other state-controlled media operations have been less than candid about why the Russian army has gone into Ukraine, its level of success and the number of their children who have been killed. I understand that the Russian army moves, when it can, not just with armoured vehicles, artillery and infantry but with mobile crematoriums, so that the soldiers who are killed are immediately disposed of and the Russian public do not get to know about the huge numbers who have been killed.