Andrey Lugvoy and Dmitri Kovtun Freezing Order 2020

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 General Committees

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Robertson, and to see new Members on both the Government and Opposition Benches. I agree with the vast majority—if not all—of what the Minister said, which is a first. I sat on the Committee two years ago for the Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun Freezing Order 2018, which this order extends.

As the Minister said, the public inquiry found that Lugovoy and Kovtun poisoned Alexander Litvinenko in 2006; the freeze on Lugovoy and Kovtun, under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, is appropriate. As the Minister indicated, the freeze prohibits individuals and entities from making funds available to the specified persons—that is only right—and is being extended. In the light of the case, the measure is an appropriate, commensurate and proportionate response in relation to the specified persons. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no material changes since the case.

We want to reaffirm the importance of being as open and as transparent in our dealings in these matters as the Russians are in the other direction. David Anderson, who was appointed to the role of independent reviewer of terrorism legislation under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014, said that the purpose of his June 2015 report was

“to inform the public and political debate on these matters, which at its worst can be polarised, intemperate and characterised by technical misunderstandings”.

His summary went on for several more pages.

The important point is that we have to keep watch on ourselves on this issue. We have several codes of practice on such matters that have been in place for a few years. As I am sure the Minister appreciates, to ensure that we are open and transparent we must review them periodically. He may well wish to take that back to the Department and consider when we might review those codes of practice.

There are, for example, codes of practice for the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the Crime and Security Act 2010. We passed the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Search, Seizure and Detention of Property: Code of Practice) Order 2018, and there is a code of practice for the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. We must keep those codes of practice up to date because they are important to ensuring that we are clear and unambiguous in the way that we deal with such matters. We have to be absolutely open and transparent where other organisations are not.

I am sure that the Minister will fully concur with the Labour party’s sentiments about openness and transparency. Glasnost, I suppose, is the order of the day.