I too welcome the Bill, but it angers and saddens me that it has taken the invasion of a European sovereign nation, and the fact that women and children in Ukraine are being bombed as we speak, to bring it forward.
We have heard the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) say that this Bill is about closing “loopholes”. No, it is not. This situation is because of a choice that was made. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) said that action should have been taken earlier, and it should have been. The ISC, the Committee I sit on, said in its annual report of 2019-2021 that
“the extent of Russian influence in the UK is very clear—the previous Committee found it to be ‘the new normal’, as successive Governments have welcomed the Russian oligarchy with open arms. As a result, there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business, political and social scene… Yet…few, if any, questions have been asked regarding the provenance of their considerable wealth and this ‘open door’ approach provided ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through the London ‘laundromat’”.
This situation has not happened by accident; it has happened because we have had a Government who have turned a blind eye to what is going on. It now comes as a great shock to some people that we are going to have to legislate. The Prime Minister says we are going to bring in the toughest sanctions against oligarchs, and the hon. Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti) has repeated that we will have the toughest rules in the world. No, we will not, because this Bill will not do that. We will have another economic crime Bill to bring in further legislation, but this issue has been around for years and this Government have turned a blind eye to it. It is no good crying crocodile tears for the people of Ukraine and saying that we are going to react now, when we could have reacted years ago and this Government took a political choice not to.
As the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) said, this is also about having the right culture of enforcement, which we do not have. The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) is correct that it is not just about Russian oligarchs; it is about cleaning up the entire system. For the past 10 years, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and I have been campaigning on landfill tax fraud—another area that has been completely ignored. This Government have had a light touch on economic crime.
The security implications of the money that is around Putin were well documented in the ISC’s Russia report. All I will say—because I cannot say any more—is that this is further well documented in evidence in the secret
annex, which will not be published, quite rightly, for security reasons. The Government say, “We don’t know who to go after; we don’t know what the actual extent is”, but they do.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said, as part of the will to have enforcement, we must ensure that any of the measures in the Bill are properly financed. It is no good the National Crime Agency taking a knife to a gunfight when going up against some of these individuals. That is exactly how it has been described to me by some of the individuals who work for the National Crime Agency. When I asked the Home Secretary whether she had extra resources for the NCA to implement these measures, she ducked and weaved around the answer. Without that, these measures will not be effective.
If we want a lasting testimony to do something really good and ensure that the people now suffering in Ukraine know that we are doing everything we possibly can—not the glib words of the Prime Minister, which we know are just soundbites that do not stand up to a great deal of scrutiny—then we need to ensure we bring in this Bill and very quickly bring in any other provisions to stop this illicit finance. That not only will have an effect in this area but—I agree with the hon. Member for Amber Valley on this—will clean up this country, and that is long been overdue.
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