Human Rights Abuses and Corruption: UK Sanctions

We will now move on to the two remaining debates of the day. Before we start, let me stress that the Sir David Amess summer Adjournment debate, in particular, is extremely well subscribed, so we are going to have to impose time limits. In the first debate, we will start with a seven-minute limit, but that may have to go down quickly. Sir Iain Duncan Smith has very courteously suggested that I put a bit of guidance on the screens for the 15 minutes that he has allocated for his opening speech. I hope that throughout the afternoon we will be able to get an equal allotment for participating Back Benchers.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered UK sanctions for human rights abuses and corruption.

The UK’s Magnitsky sanctions regime has, as many of us will accept, provided the UK Government with an important tool for tackling the most egregious cases of human rights violations and corruption committed around the world, but several problems undermining the effectiveness of our Magnitsky sanctions regime still exist. From a standing start, at a low base, in the first year of the regime the UK made good progress and sanctioned 102 perpetrators for human rights violations and corruption. Strangely, that number has fallen to only six perpetrators in the second year.

Let us contrast that with what has happened in the United States of America, which is a good benchmark. To mark international Human Rights Day and International Anti-Corruption Day in December 2021, the US announced sanctions on 108 perpetrators; 16 countries were targeted, including China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Liberia, Iran, Syria and Ukraine. In the same week, the UK Government announced just one human rights designation under the Magnitsky regime and four designations under the Myanmar country regime—no sanctions were issued for corruption. That is surprising, because there is a lot of evidence out there about corruption and somehow we did not seem to get moving on it.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has said that it recognises that sanctions are most effective when imposed in concert, yet even as it says that the UK fails to keep pace with its allies, particularly the US, which, again, I come back to as a benchmark. The UK has sanctioned only 20% of the perpetrators sanctioned by the US. That is inexplicable; I have no idea what the US knows that we do not know and why it can act faster and more heavily than we can. We are allowing those sanctioned by the US and other jurisdictions to use the UK as a haven to enjoy much of their ill- gotten gains.

The belated lesson we learned from the international response to the Ukraine crisis shows that such co-ordination is possible, but only if there is sincere determination. That must be reflected in the Government’s effective use of these sanctions. In response to the Ukrainian crisis, the FCDO tripled the size of the sanctions taskforce, but that cannot be just for one country. It is surely vital that the increased organisation does not just focus on Russia; there is an awful lot going on around the world where people are getting away with corruption, brutality and criminality.

That brings us to enforcement. The effectiveness of sanctions is too often undermined by a complete lack of enforcement. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the total value of frozen assets in the UK had not changed significantly since the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation’s first full year of operations, starting at £12.7 billion in 2017-18 and dropping to £12.2 billion in 2020-21. That does not look to me like an awful lot of increased enforcement, although perhaps somebody knows something that we do not. If we look at the money, we see clearly that there was next to nothing happening.

The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and I are tango partners in this—or a tag team, perhaps, depending on which way you want to look at it. I endorse everything he said at the beginning of his speech, but I will start with Iran.

This year, Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, two British citizens, were finally allowed to return to the UK following years of detention and serious human rights abuses in Iran. Those responsible for these abuses are yet to be held accountable and they continue to persecute innocent people, holding them hostage for political gain. In September last year, the FCDO received detailed evidence on 10 individuals involved in state hostage taking and related serious human rights violations that we are also investigating in the Foreign Affairs Committee. In December last year, we named three of those perpetrators during a Westminster Hall debate, as has been mentioned. The FCDO has still failed to take any action in relation to those three people, and that is a mystery to me.

In the wake of this inaction, a number of those individuals known to the FCDO played a key role in the ongoing mistreatment of British citizens, including Nazanin—in particular, Ameneh Sadat Zabihpour, a reporter with state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, who is known for eliciting forced confessions from prisoners in front of camera during interrogations. This is exactly the opposite of what a free media is all about. I understand that she was present at the airport prior to Nazanin’s release, attempting to interview and film her while she was being pressured to confess by the Iranian Government.

The second person is Hossein Taeb, the former head of the intelligence operation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Under him, the IRGC intelligence ran the notorious Section 2A of Evin prison. He was responsible for the mass arrest and torture of hundreds of prisoners and was the driving force behind the IRGC’s hostage taking. I understand that Taeb was instrumental in the continued detention of British citizens, and that his officers enforced the forced, and therefore fake, last-minute confession from Nazanin and subsequently blocked the furlough of other British nationals in defiance of what had been agreed with the United Kingdom.

I declare an interest as one of only three Members of this House to be sanctioned by both China and Russia. My rather lightweight right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has been sanctioned only by China.

This is an important issue, and not just to us. It does not come up every day on the doorstep but, when our constituents understand, they feel strongly about it for three reasons. Our constituents expect our trading partners to respect basic human rights, to be transparent about the nature of the goods and services our constituents might buy on the high street, and to be transparent about jobs. We need that greater transparency.

I would like us to go further in legislation on authentic-ation and quality marks to show that goods are produced by countries, regimes and companies that maintain even basic ethical standards, free of slave labour or whatever, just as we increasingly expect to know about the environmental impact and origins of the goods we buy.

Secondly, our constituents expect our taxpayers’ money to be used for humanitarian and other purposes, and not to be used to aid corrupt regimes and bodies, as too often happened in the past. Thirdly, our constituents expect us to stand up for the rule of law and freedom of expression that we take for granted in the UK. If we cannot see that in the partners we deal with, we should be critical friends and have difficult conversations with them, however sensitive our relationship might be. It is important to our constituents for all those reasons.

The noble Lord Ahmad, a Foreign Office Minister, said earlier this year:

“By leaving the EU and moving to an independent sanctions policy, the UK has become more agile and has real autonomy to decide how we use sanctions and where it is in our interests to do so.”

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who have done so much on this issue, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate. As has been suggested, it might be polite to call the Magnitsky sanctions a work in progress. This should be an issue that brings all of us together, from all sides, and on which we should be able to reach agreement, but, as we have heard, there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality in the way in which the sanctions have been implemented thus far. Indeed, in some instances the rhetoric is not even there.

The introduction of Magnitsky sanctions was a positive step in guaranteeing consequences for those around the world who think that they are above the law. It is just unfortunate that the Government have failed to use them to their full potential, or to apply them equally. The horrific scenes that have emerged from Bucha, and many other places in Ukraine, over the last few months are a reminder of our duty to ensure that the people who carry out such atrocities and violations of human rights should be isolated and ultimately brought to justice.

We have heard about the “drop-off” in the general use of Magnitsky sanctions—which are still relatively new—but more broadly, we have seen the Government’s targeted sanctioning of the bankrollers of the invasion of Ukraine become sluggish. In March, the Lord Chancellor and the former Housing Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), told us that they supported a move from a freeze on assets to pursuing the seizure of assets. They specifically mentioned the seizure of homes belonging to oligarchs to house Ukrainian refugees, but I am afraid we heard no more about that. The Prime Minister said that the aim of the sanctions programme was to “hobble the Russian economy” so that the war became untenable. He also promised that, until Putin responded by withdrawing from Ukraine, he would continue to go further in his efforts. Despite the sanctioning of individuals, I do not think that we have seen that followed through.

I intend to speak only briefly. One of the great privileges of sitting in on a debate such as this is to hear from colleagues who know so much more and have worked so much harder that I on this and have provided real leadership. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), and, indeed, the doubly sanctioned hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will briefly break the cross-party unity. I worry that one reason that we have not tackled the sanctions regime nearly as much as we should, which we could easily have done, as he so well illustrated, is that there is still an awful lot of dirty money sloshing around in the City of London and in the London property market, and there are many people there who perhaps do not want that to be tackled. I understand that, but if we are to defend our values, we have to defend them at home as well as abroad. We have heard a menu of likely candidates today against whom we could easily justify bringing in sanctions. There is absolutely no point bringing in the Magnitsky sanctions if we do not then use them. I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). I welcome the proposals on SLAPPs, and I look forward to any legislation that is required being brought in fairly quickly and having support across the House.

I wish to briefly talk about Mr Bill Browder, of whom I am a huge admirer. I have met him in this House a couple of times. He initiated the whole Magnitsky sanctions debate and the change in the regime. He has been tried in absentia in what is nothing more than a kangaroo court in Russia and been sentenced to ridiculous lengths of time. His commitment to the memory of Sergei Magnitsky and to justice has never been dimmed, and we should pay tribute to Mr Browder and to continue to support him in his work. His book, “Freezing Order”, which I have read—all hon. Members should read it—reads like a spy novel, but it is not fiction; it is reality. It is quite astonishing. He talks about businesses and other organisations which are facilitators and live in the west—in the United Kingdom, the European Union—and live and work in the United States. For whatever reason, they are facilitating the people who, as has been demonstrated, are undertaking human rights violations. They are facilitating those people’s abuse of our political system to delay, frustrate and put barriers in the way of the search for justice. That facilitation would not be possible in the countries that they come from. Just as I talk about the money sloshing around in the City of London, I say we have be alive to those businesses and law companies—my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda has drawn attention to this in previous debates—that are facilitating and supporting the human rights abuses under the cover of our natural commitment to fair justice and to the fact that everyone should be included.

I completely agree that we should have a foreign agents registration Bill. My understanding is that the Government are intending to put that in the middle of the National Security Bill, but only on Report. Is it not vital that we have proper debate on that, with at least two days on the Floor of the House to consider it, because it is a matter of constitutional security?

My hon. Friend is an expert in matters of procedure. He is also an expert in matters Magnitsky. If he thinks that that is the best way forward, I think it is the best way forward.

I do not wish to detain the House any longer, but I pay tribute to Bill Browder and all those people around him who, in the face of death threats, have continued their search for justice. We owe it to them to support them.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing this debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee. I will not be taking part in the Sir David Amess Adjournment debate, so I want to place on record the thanks of my party to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker and the wider team of staff, for all you do to support the House. I hope everybody has a good recess.

It is a sad fact that human rights abuses are taking place everywhere in the world, every day. As an MP elected in 2019, I find the information we get on this subject—the wide variety of places where it is happening and also what we hear from constituents—almost overwhelming. I am very grateful to my constituents in North East Fife for raising such issues with me. Like others, I want to refer to some of the campaigns and issues that have caught my attention.

First, I want to talk about political prisoners in Belarus, where there are currently 1,260 persons classified globally as political prisoners. These include bloggers to business owners, politicians to peaceful protesters—hundreds of people imprisoned in politically motivated persecutions, simply because they have exercised their right to freedom of expression and political participation. Through the #WeStandBYyou solidarity campaign, I am one of a number of godparents to one such political prisoner, and his name is Pavel Drozd. He was arrested on 3 November 2020 for alleged computer hacking and was tried earlier this year—a trial held behind closed doors without any due process. He has been sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony. We sadly know very little about his welfare because his family, quite understandably, have distanced themselves from the campaign for his freedom. They are at threat themselves for speaking out, so I do have sympathy with their position.

The UK’s role as a leader in the protection of human rights is something to be proud of. We are lucky to live in a country where we do not need to worry about having our rights breached or being abused in the worst ways. It is important, however, that we make use of the tools that we have to deter other world leaders from putting minority groups in danger. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) mentioned Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, and it was a good day when we saw their plane touch down on UK soil at RAF Brize Norton.

Turning to China, the state has persecuted and abused minorities for decades there. The Uyghur people are a prime example. The People’s Republic of China has quite openly sought to completely squash a population based on their religion, looking to eradicate them. That campaign has seen the Uyghur tribunal find that the PRC has committed genocide against them. The evidence seen by the tribunal was horrific. It makes for deeply uncomfortable reading, yet the PRC pushed back on the findings—that is unsurprising but galling in the face of the mountains of evidence, because they have so far not faced the necessary consequences for their actions.

The Uyghurs are not the only persecuted minority facing such atrocities in China. It is a country that demands total allegiance to the ruling Chinese Communist party. President Xi Jinping has consolidated his power, asserting himself as the ultimate power in the country in a way that his more recent predecessors did not.

Followers of the religion Falun Gong have also faced a campaign of persecution under the guise of the state’s doctrine of atheism. In reality, it was what the ruling CCP saw as a threat to its total dominance—the religion’s peaceful teachings were popular and its following grew faster than anticipated. Like the Uyghurs, followers of Falun Gong have been subjected to re-education camps, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, torture and death. They have been violated in the worst ways and are allegedly the main victims of forced organ harvesting in China. It is unthinkable and distressing.

Will the hon. Lady add another country, Nigeria, to her list? It is nothing to do with religion in this case, but there was a terrible massacre on 20 October 2020. Tukur Yusuf Buratai and Ganiyu Raji were two of the officers in charge of the shooting on civilians at a protest on that day. Would she support adding them to the sanctions list?

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I know my friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) often mentions Nigeria. I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda that a whole host of people should be added to the list. We can see how effective it has been with Russian sanctions.

Co-ordination is essential. Not doing so effectively undermines the very purpose for which the sanctions were created. Like so many colleagues, I am passionate about the protection of human rights. It is not enough to just say that we have the liberty to enjoy them here at home; if the UK wants to be seen as a world leader and an advocate for the oppressed and victimised, we have to do our part in modelling that behaviour for the rest of the world. We have the tools already. Let us use them to build something that will stand the test of time and help those who need it the most.