Sanctions

We are leading from the front. For example, we are banning clearing from Sberbank, which the EU is not doing at the moment. We are freezing more bank assets. We have advocated the SWIFT ban, and we want to get all our allies to agree to a SWIFT ban, but this is not a competition between us and our allies; this is a concerted endeavour, where all of us are doing all we can as quickly as we can to show unity and to deliver a massive hit to the Russian economy. The House will have seen the drop in the rouble today, and the impact that this unity is having. I strongly encourage colleagues across the House to support our package, which is unprecedented in United Kingdom history, and to put pressure on more countries to join us, but there are areas where we are going a lot further than our allies. There are some areas where they have gone further than us. We need to continue to make progress together. That is what sends a strong message to Putin.