Transnational Repression in the UK (JCHR Report)

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, it was a privilege to be present to listen to my noble friend’s wonderful maiden speech.

This is a brilliant and long overdue report. The committee said it had received

“credible evidence that a number of states have engaged in acts of transnational repression on UK soil”.

The report also says that

“the UK currently lacks a clear strategy to address TNR. There is no formal definition … and the Government does not routinely collect data on TNR events … Police officers often lack the training necessary to respond effectively to TNR, resulting in inconsistent and ineffective support for TNR victims”.

The Government’s response is clear. They say that the Select Committee’s recommendations are “constructive”, they recognise

“TNR as a term to describe certain foreign state-directed crimes against individuals”,

and they note:

“Efforts are underway to … improve data”.


I will therefore use my short contribution to ask the Government to conduct a cold case review of a group of alleged TNR crimes against individuals. I raised this group in the debate on the Queen’s Speech in June 2017, which can be found in Hansard in cols. 399-401 and was reported on in the BuzzFeed.com Reports section in the same month.

It involves more than a dozen suspicious “non-suspicious” deaths in the UK. According to the reports, the then Government declined to comment on any of the deaths due to national security concerns. Nine of the deaths relate to one circle of people. Police declared them “non-suspicious”, but MI6 asked its US counterparts for information about each of them. Eleven of the deaths occurred after the murder of Mr Litvinenko, which we knew from Sir Robert Owen’s report 10 years after his death in 2016. Some were UK public sector employees, about one of whom I had correspondence with the Government after the debate.

These deaths were claimed to be out of scope of local police. One named senior counterterrorism officer claimed they were “brazen” Russian assassinations in Britain

“right out in the daylight”.

I regret that claims were made that the UK failed to get a grip, partly due to the desire to preserve the flow of Russian money into banks and properties in London. I do not propose to go into detail, but I will do as I did at col. 400 on 27 June 2017 and list the names of the people whose deaths were the focus of the reports and the year they occurred: Scot Young, 2014; Boris Berezovsky, 2013; Badri Patarkatsishvili, 2008; Yuri Golubev, 2007; Stephen Moss, 2003; Stephen Curtis, 2004; Paul Castle, 2010; Robert Curtis, 2012; Johnny Elichaoff, 2014; Alexander Litvinenko, 2006—although that was found to be murder; Matthew Puncher, May 2016; Igor Ponomarev, October 2006; Daniel McGrory, 2007; Gareth Williams, 2010; and Alexander Perepilichnyy, 2012.

I have not contacted anyone about this issue that I have raised in the past, so I apologise if there is any distress caused after so long a time. However, we now can have a cold case review of these deaths, especially in the light of the UK Government now taking transnational repression seriously. I think this is long overdue.