My hon. Friend is right. Why do we have a system that is so opaque? What is the delay? I have raised this issue at the Dispatch Box at least three times, and I am happy to raise it on a fourth occasion, as my predecessor has done.
At present, this legislation provides for asset freezes of designated persons, but there is space for wider sectoral measures, such as those we have applied to other countries in the past. Will the Government bring forward other legislation to address this?
As Opposition Members have indicated, sanctions on their own are nothing unless they are rigorously enforced by the responsible agencies in the UK. Since the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation was given powers in 2017, it has imposed penalties on only five occasions. If the Government have designed the most comprehensive sanctions package in our history, as the Minister assures us, it must be backed up by the most comprehensive resources it has ever been given. Will the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation get those resources? What steps will the Minister take to ensure that enforcement agencies are able to function and take action under these new measures?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) has already asked, is this not the moment to publish the Russia report? Lay it before the House! Put it in the Library so that we can see its contents, and
so that we can act, move forward and worry those in the Kremlin. We believe that we must go further now. Only five banks and three individuals are facing sanctions as a result of the UK Government’s actions today. This is not a big enough punishment for the blatant breach of international law that has already been made. Let us not be too slow to act and fall behind our international partners.
We should be introducing the full set of sanctions that is available to us now. Russia should be excluded from financial mechanisms such as SWIFT—the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. We should ban trading in Russian sovereign debt. Donetsk and Luhansk should be subject to comprehensive trade embargoes. Putin’s campaign of misinformation must be tackled by preventing Russia Today from broadcasting its propaganda around the world. We should be working to support our allies in the EU to cancel Nord Stream 2. The Foreign Secretary says that we are in lockstep with our allies, but the reality is that our allies have gone further in sanctioning individuals in Putin’s regime. Why have we not done the same?
This is not simply a matter of individuals, of course; it is about fixing a broken system. Ending our openness to fraud and money laundering, our inadequate regulation of political donations, our lax mechanisms of corporate governance and our weakness to foreign interference requires a barrage of new measures, long called for but as yet undelivered, to shut down the shell companies that obscure the origins of wealth and hide corruption, to lift the veil on who owns property and land in the UK through a transparent register, as mentioned time and again, and to bring forward an economic crime Bill that will target the corrupt elites who store their wealth under our noses.
Sadly, due to Putin’s expansionism, targeting Russia may not be enough. The regime in Belarus is supporting Putin’s aggression, playing host to Russian forces and potentially being set up as a springboard for a wider assault on Ukraine. Are the Government considering expanding the powers they have to designate people in Belarus should a wider invasion take place?
This is not the time for half measures. Putin has made his move, and the wider threat that Ukraine faces is immediate. The consequences for Europe and the west are stark. The effects of this moment will depend as much on our response to this aggression as on the aggression itself. Autocrats around the world are watching to see whether we meet the test of our strength and resolve. The Minister will have seen the strength across the House today. We need to go harder, deeper and broader, and we need to do so now. We stand ready to work with the Government to achieve this.