Sanctions (EU Exit) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Regulations 2020

Lord Truscott Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Truscott (Ind Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will raise the sanctions on unauthorised drilling in the eastern Mediterranean, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Northbrook and Lord Balfe, and then comment on the UK’s broader sanctions policy.

Turkey’s unauthorised drilling in Greek and Cypriot waters is a cause for concern and it is right that Her Majesty’s Government should align themselves with the EU’s position to give Ankara pause for thought. The EU agreed back in December to condemn Turkey’s aggressiveness and unilateral actions in the eastern Mediterranean, giving Turkey a three-month grace period for further diplomacy. It agreed to add new names of individuals and companies connected with unauthorised and provocative drilling off Cyprus to a sanctions list involving travel bans and asset freezes.

This is a dangerous, complicated and underreported crisis, not least because both Greece and Turkey are members of NATO, there are two strategically important British sovereign bases on Cyprus, the position of Cyprus and Greece as EU members, and Turkey’s status as a candidate for European Union membership. Ankara also has a pivotal role in restricting the flow of migrants, primarily from Libya and Syria, into the EU.

Turkey’s President Erdoğan unhelpfully reignited tensions with Cyprus last November, calling for a two-state solution for the island, divided since 1974, rather than the federalist solution supported by both the EU and UN. However, I am glad that the EU rejected Athens’ proposal last August at the Berlin foreign affairs meeting for sectoral sanctions targeting aspects of the Turkish economy such as the energy and banking sectors.

Here, I want to turn to the general principle of sanctions. While targeted sanctions against individuals or companies can have the desired effect in support of human rights or to correct serious misbehaviour or provocation, sectoral or country-wide sanctions are often counterproductive or have unintended consequences. President Erdoğan’s purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft systems is at least in part because of his belief in the West’s complicity in the 2016 coup attempt against him. While the West and the US were silent, Moscow was effusive in its support. The proposed new US sanctions against Ankara for buying the S-400s will merely throw Erdoğan further into Russia’s embrace.

I commend to the Minister the work of the highly-respected US Brookings Institution on the impact and effectiveness of sanctions. In one of its reports, it said that

“all too often sanctions turn out to be little more than expressions of U.S. preferences … without changing the target’s behavior for the better.”

It points to sanctions’ patchy results, which, as I mentioned, can lead to unintended consequences. The report further outlined:

“More generally, sanctions can have the perverse effect of bolstering authoritarian, statist societies.”


Making the population at large suffer can lead just to the propping up of a regime and a bunker mentality. On the other hand, targeted sanctions against individuals, companies or types of equipment or technology can have a real impact. Finally, the Brookings Institution states:

“Sanctions should not be used to hold major or complex bilateral relationships hostage to a single issue or set of concerns.”


Will the Minister admit that this is why HMG have imposed sanctions on Guinea for the indefensible death of 150 people in 2009 but have held back on sanctions against China for the alleged enslavement and internment of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Lord, Lord Dodds?

We have just had a brief discussion about the effectiveness of sanctions, as raised by the noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Balfe, but can HMG have consistency in its sanctions policy? None of the 40 countries sanctioned is a friend. We have sanctioned Nicaragua for human rights abuses but not Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or Panama, which are arguably as bad if not worse. Having read through the 555-page UK sanctions list, I could not identify a single individual from the Middle East outside Syria, Iraq or Iran condemned for any human rights abuses. James Cleverly, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, said in the other place on 3 February:

“Our sanctions regime is the foundation for an independent sanctions policy in support of our foreign policy and national security interests”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/21; col. 976.]


Yet sanctions should be the last resort of diplomacy, not the first resort that they have often become; nor should we end up using sanctions to impose our British world view rather than to uphold universal values such as human rights and the right to life itself.