Sergei Magnitsky

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on initiating this important debate. I am happy to support the motion, which I signed along with 40 other Members.

Such is the strength of feeling in the House that the debate is a welcome addition to the growing chorus of concern both in this country and internationally about the scandalous case of Sergei Magnitsky. I speak as a fellow lawyer who worked for many years in a free and open legal system, where justice was done and seen to be done. It chills me to the bone to think that a fellow lawyer who was doing his job had to suffer the most appalling indignities and death at the hands of the very authorities he was trying to expose.

For those of us who have heard the account of the life and death of Sergei Magnitsky, the sense of shock and outrage never lessens. For those who are hearing the case for the very first time, I would characterise it in this way: an independent lawyer was arrested, imprisoned, ill-treated and killed for blowing the whistle on the massive theft of tax revenue from the Russian state by its own officials. A simple recitation of those facts underlines the seriousness of the case. It is sadly indicative of the state of kleptocracy, plain and simple, into which the Russian state seems to be descending.

The Conservative party human rights commission, which I have the honour to chair, heard evidence from Bill Browder and others about the Magnitsky case as part of our ongoing inquiry into the role of professional people in countries around the world with poor human rights records. As my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton said, this debate is not just about Russia—it is about freedom itself. The motion is not anti-Russia. Those of us who love Russia and its people, who have visited the country on several occasions both before the end of communism and after, want to see it thrive and march down the road to freedom. At present, though, Russia is sadly far away from that road. That is why the approaches taken in other countries and other legislatures, most notably the United States Senate, are commendable. They point a clear way to concerted international action to deal with the perpetrators of such crimes in a way that affects them most significantly: by limiting their freedom to visit countries such as Britain and by freezing the assets that we know they own internationally. That is not interference in the domestic affairs of another country, but international action designed to express our disapproval, our disgust, at the role of officials in concerted and organised state corruption.

It is time for Russia to have its chance to reach freedom. All we are saying today to the Russian state and to those responsible for these crimes is that they should turn away from oppression and corruption, acknowledge the sins of the past, deal with them properly and join the free world in the fullest sense.