Lord West of Spithead
Main Page: Lord West of Spithead (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord West of Spithead's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(3 days, 22 hours ago)
Lords ChamberThe issue of the Ukrainian children who were abducted is one of the most heart-rending situations imaginable and I thank the noble Lord for raising it. There will be further updates going forward but, for today, I will say that the UK has committed £357 million in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and the region, as well as a further £242 million of bilateral funding for Ukraine announced at the G7 in June of this year to support immediate humanitarian energy and stabilisation needs and to lay the foundations for longer-term economic and social recovery and reconstruction.
I also thank the noble Lord for the work he did in government on this and many other issues. He is well respected across the House and is always very open and easy to deal with.
My Lords, first, I completely support everything that the noble and gallant Lord said, but I want to ask a question about secondary sanctions. There is no doubt that, in economic terms, Russia can keep going the way it is because of support from China. Secondary sanctions can have a huge impact on China, which is in a very poor position in terms of the amount it produces relative to what it consumes. Are we looking closely at these secondary sanctions, as they apply to China, to try to have some effect on that financial flow?
As the noble Lord can imagine, our sanctions team has never been busier. We have sanctioned over 2,000 individuals. For very good reason, we are determined to tackle illegal money laundering and kleptocracy across the world wherever we find it and we will take whatever action we need to within the UK’s legal framework.