Sanctions: Russian Individuals

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

As I have said to the noble Baroness and others, and as I know all noble Lords agree, our fight is not against the Russian people. We have seen the appalling treatment of those Russians who have been brave—let us not forget the tragic case of Mr Navalny. We are currently seeing others being held, and I know noble Lords are very much seized of that. We need to ensure that we stand with the Russian people against the draconian regime which suppresses their rights as well. I add that our own sanctions regime is based on a principle which allows for legal recourse, if an individual or an organisation has been sanctioned unfairly. This again underlines the importance of the system of appealing against sanctions, if the individual or the organisation feels that it has been unfairly applied.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, further to the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, Russian oil and gas exports are up 57% over the last year, primarily to African nations and India via an enormous shadow fleet that goes through the Red Sea. We have debated RAF pilots putting their lives at risk to protect that waterway, and we are also in discussions with the Indian Government about giving their energy sector preferential market access to the UK. Is the noble Lord not right that this is now the time to be putting in place secondary sanctions to those Governments who give landing permits for shadow tankers of Russian oil, circumventing UK sanctions, and to pause any particular aspects of discussions with the Indian Government until there is clarity about their purchasing of what is considered, from our perspective, illegal Russian oil?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I am not going to go into the process of what may happen next. Our relationships with many countries across the world allow us to have quite direct conversations about the issue of sanctions circumvention. The noble Lord is aware of the initiatives we have been taking with a number of countries—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia immediately come to mind. We have also had bilateral engagement with the likes of Turkey and Serbia. The noble Lord raises India specifically. We have a very open, candid and strong relationship with India. While we are in negotiations about the importance of the trade benefit to both countries, we recognise the important role India has to play. I assure the noble Lord that we exchange quite candid conversations on a range of issues, including the illegal war of Russia on Ukraine.