Sanctions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment. She has been working literally through the weekend, night and day, to get these sanctions right and to get them in place. Will she join me in assuring the Russian people that the moneys frozen—the moneys seized—which are, let us face it, very often stolen from them in the first instance, will be held and returned to the Russian people when this criminal conspiracy that laughably calls itself a Government falls and they actually have a proper Administration to which it can be returned? Will she also join me in urging many other countries around the world to join together and create a single fund from which a repayment mechanism can be created for the damage done to Ukraine and the rebuilding of Russia in due course?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right. Our issue is not with the Russian people, many of whom are now protesting against this appalling regime; it is with Putin and his cronies. That is who we are targeting with our hit on oligarchs. My hon. Friend is right that that money should be protected. I will look into the idea that he puts forward.