Sanctions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

My party and the whole House stand with Ukraine. Putin’s attack on Ukraine is an unprovoked, unjustifiable outrage and all those responsible must be held responsible for their war crimes. It is a heinous violation of international law that will have tragic consequences—not just for the people of Ukraine, but for peoples right around our continent.

We stand in complete solidarity with the Ukrainian people as they bravely resist this assault. As this conflict goes on and on, and Putin becomes more and more desperate, the tactics he will use will become more barbaric. Therefore, the sanctions we employ against him must become more sophisticated, clearer and bolder. The horrific reports coming from Kharkiv and the alleged use of cluster munitions are already increasingly alarming. The attack today on a TV tower in Kyiv did little to justify the fabricated claims of de-Nazification, as they hit a holocaust memorial. It is our moral duty to do everything we can to help the Ukrainian people against what is a war crime, a clear war crime and more war crimes coming from Russia.

Somewhere in the Kremlin, there will be a desk officer in the Russian Foreign Ministry making a note of this debate. That note should say clearly that all MPs of every party implored the Government to go further. They all backed the sanctions that were being proposed, but they wanted more. More must come. That is a message I hope the Minister will take loud and clear from this debate.

Now is the time for the hardest possible sanctions to be taken against all those linked to Putin and his tyrannical regime, and against all the Russian Government’s interests, working in a co-ordinated and unified way with our allies to ensure that the Putin regime faces the severest possible consequences for its aggression. As was made clear by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), there is now a sanctions gap between what the United Kingdom is proposing and what our EU friends are proposing. We must close that gap and do so immediately.

Labour will, of course, support these sanctions tonight and I think every party in this House will be doing the same. We have pledged to work with the Government to ensure that we can proceed quickly to ensure that the House can pass the necessary legislative measures. When the Government bring forward further measures, we will work at speed to ensure they can be passed. But there is still so much more to be done. Our Parliament sends a united message that we stand up for justice, democracy and sovereignty against the aggressor, and that we condemn in the strongest possible terms Vladimir Putin’s heinous and unnecessary invasion. We stand unequivocally with the Ukrainian people. The Minister must be in no doubt that there is more work to be done.

I want to briefly summarise the excellent speeches made on both sides of the House. Three main themes have been raised in this debate. First, much more is needed. Bolder sanctions are needed and soon. That means matching what our EU friends have done. It means closing the sanctions gap—that was very clearly set out—and it means acting faster against oligarchs who have been hiding Putin’s wealth, and through whom actions will have the biggest effect on the Putin regime. I pay tribute to Members such as the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) who set out clearly how that web, that network of oligarchs, helps to keep Putin in power. He survives on a sea of dirty money hidden in companies, behind the facades run by the oligarchs. We must go further to tackle them.

The second point that was clear in this debate is that we must target more individuals and more companies. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made very clear that while some of our EU friends are targeting fixed assets, the UK Government have chosen not to do so yet. Some members of the public watching this debate will not understand why the French and Italian Governments are going after the mansions of oligarchs in their countries, while the oligarchs in the UK are able to enjoy their luxury lifestyles. The Minister says that he is doing more and I want to see that, because we need to explain to the British public that we are taking those measures. We want the Government to go further and we must do that.

The third point, however, is a difficult one for the House. Brilliant speeches by Members on both sides made it clear that we must get our house in order. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) made a clear proposal about reform of Companies House, which is long overdue and must be done at pace. Another consultation will not cut it; we need lasting reform.

The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) made a clear case for getting the City of London to step up. He remarked that “morals and money are not always mutually exclusive”. That will be a good lesson for many in the City of London—the corporate lawyers and bankers, the people who enable the dirty money to flow and who seek to shut down criticism—to take on board.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight spoke about enablers and about Michael Foot. As a Plymouth MP, I feel that when someone mentions Michael Foot, it is normally good to quote him back. However, the hon. Member is right to draw parallels between this and Michael Foot’s “Guilty Men”, to talk about those who appeased and those who did not act when they could have done so. We must look closely at the hon. Member’s remarks about the guilty men of today—the men and women who facilitate the agents of fascism—but we must not pretend that that is news to us. This House is aware of Putin’s actions, painfully so—and not just in Georgia, Crimea and Salisbury. We have seen his actions and modus operandi, and we know that to tackle them we need to go further on sanctions and on joining up our efforts with our friends.

The sanctions that we are debating are supported, but I want to pick up on a point about the dual-use sanctions. When we looked at the different areas, we largely concentrated, rightly, on financial instruments. However, on dual-use sanctions, we are talking about not just dual-use goods, but ingredients and components of weapons of war, and it is clear that we should not allow UK companies to export them. I would like the Minister, with his officials, to look at whether there can be greater clarity on what dual-use items can be used in space, because overhead observation is an important part of what is happening in Ukraine. I would be grateful if he commented on the proposed OneWeb satellite launch—a publicly funded satellite provider—at the Baikonur cosmodrome, because it is not right that UK-funded satellite launches are taking place in what is effectively a Russian-backed facility. I would also like to press him on whether our UK satellites could be launched from our European facilities in French Guyana, which would ensure that we keep control and that progress on that project was unhindered.

I want to pick up on some points made about Belarus. If it is true that the invasion of Ukraine is not just Russian, but that Belarusian Government forces are engaged as well, we need to be clear that the sanctions must apply equally to the Government of Belarus, the financial instruments of Belarus and the powers that keep its dictator in power. Russia and Belarus are in a joint enterprise, as was mentioned. Belarus is a Russian client state.

The UK Government initially sanctioned Russia because of its recognition of the so-called breakaway republics. Why are we not using the same tools to pre-emptively sanction Belarus? If Belarusian forces engage in an attack on Kyiv or if they participate in or support Russian aggression any further than they have done, why are we not saying that here is the big stick that the west will hit them with? Let us get those sanctions ready. Let us get them supported. They can be activated on the intelligence that the Minister will be able to see but might not be able to share. We need to send a message, however, that Russian aggression and the aggression of any client states are unacceptable.

We have the ability to go further and the Government know that they will have the support of the House if they do. We can do much more to cut Putin’s rogue regime out of our financial system in terms of not just the banks and the threatening lawyers, but the property and the money stolen from the Russian people that has flowed through the City of London like a stinking sewer for far too long. A number of Members have made the point that it should not have taken a war for action to be taken. This is not a war of our choice, nor is it the choice of the Ukrainian people, but a war has started so our actions need to be serious and severe.

We need to go further. That is why Labour is urging the Government to widen the sanctions; to increase the list of individuals who have been sanctioned; to reform Companies House to crack open the shell companies that are hiding suspect wealth; to introduce an overseas entities Bill to lift the veil on property ownership; and, finally, to bring forward the full details of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill to enhance that.

We do need to go much further, and that is what this House is calling for. Britain has a proud history of standing up to dictators and this House has a proud history of working in a cross-party fashion to enable the Government of the day to stand up to dictators. That is why the actions that I hope the Minister will take in the coming days should go far beyond the statutory instruments before us. Labour will not oppose the SIs—indeed, we support them—but we encourage the Minister, his colleagues and officials to go further, much further, because President Putin must be in no doubt about the resolve of this House to stand with the Ukrainian people and to hunt down the dirty money that enables his regime.