My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness’s last remark. I was on the Joint Committee on the Draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, which sat in 2019. Clearly, 18 months is far too long if Clause 3 of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill is to have any immediate effect.
Is there any possibility of having a look at the enemy aliens Act of 1914? Of course, this is not an exact parallel, but there may be suitable provisions within that old legislation, which was renewed in 1919 after the end of the First World War. Could my noble friend’s officials perhaps look at this legislation to see if there are any useful provisions which could be modernised and brought forward to be of value nowadays—accepting that the United Kingdom is not “at war” with Russia?
While the measures which my noble friend has just announced are hugely valuable, there are three groups of people on whom we need to apply pressure, given that the Ukrainians are actuarily unlikely to win a fighting war, brave as they are and incredible as their resistance has been so far.
First, when the ordinary Russian public are queuing for bread in Moscow because the Russian economy has collapsed, they will begin to wonder why and they will begin to ask why Russian state television and other state-controlled media operations have been less than candid about why the Russian army has gone into Ukraine, its level of success and the number of their children who have been killed. I understand that the Russian army moves, when it can, not just with armoured vehicles, artillery and infantry but with mobile crematoriums, so that the soldiers who are killed are immediately disposed of and the Russian public do not get to know about the huge numbers who have been killed.
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Secondly, these measures are partly directed towards the oligarchs and the banking system. I understand that the current sanctions have so far caused about $630 billion in foreign currency reserves and about
80% of the Russian banking sector to be disconnected from the United States financial system. I dare say that there will be similar, if not quite so large, consequences for Russians holding money in this jurisdiction. That is good, but there must be plenty more that we could do. Indeed, the European Union has a longer list of targets than we do, and I urge the Government to increase the number of our targets at least to the level of the EU’s. The rouble is in freefall but, despite all these sanctions, we must remember that North Korea, Iran and Syria, despite being sanctioned at various times, still seem to be operating, even if not happily, under their respective and utterly unattractive Governments.
The third group upon which we need to apply pressure, whether directly or indirectly, is the inner and outer circles within the Kremlin. Once they lose faith in Putin—they have plenty of reasons to do so, and these reasons will grow—his position as the modern dictator of Russia will become even weaker than it currently is.
So, there are three groups that I ask the Government to think about, some of whom can be attacked through sanctions, and some through a media and information war; and some can be influenced by the collapse of the Russian economy. As I said, the Ukrainians will not win a fighting war, despite their very best efforts—and I salute everything they are doing to save their country—but we can help them extra-militarily through applying acute and constant pressure on the three groups I have outlined.