Foreign Lobbying

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely]

You are right, Dame Angela. Thank you very much for correcting me. I shall be a bit more obtuse about—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Obscure, maybe.

[Bob Seely]

Obtuse and obscure.

Together with lawyers, accountants, estate agents, public relations professionals and other enablers, lobbyists have formed a buffer around these people. I know that the case with Russia is clearly changing very dramatically—it has been rather forced on us by conflict—but China is another important case that concerns me. I say that as someone who knows that the Government are moving in the right direction, and who is incredibly grateful for the work that the Secretary of State for Defence and the Foreign Secretary have done in this area.

It concerns me greatly that we have not yet made the link between China and Russia. The west has economic dependency on both, be it through trade or energy. Both those countries have dictators for life, and we know that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely, so do we really think that President Xi will turn out to be better than President Putin? I would be sceptical. Both covet territory outside their control, both have aggressively rearmed and, perhaps most importantly, both propagandise their people against us and are shaping their people for war in the information and narrative space. China is more sophisticated and richer, and it arguably treats some of its people, especially its Muslim people, worse. It is a rising power, whereas Russia is a declining power, but there are too many similarities between them to claim that China is not Russia. It is a more sophisticated version and, as people such as Clive Hamilton argue, many of its covert activities are just more sophisticated versions of the same thing.

Like the Kremlin, the Chinese Communist party uses state, non-state and quasi-state actors through the United Front Work Department and “cultural and ‘friendship’ associations”. It is alleged to spend some $10 billion a year on external propaganda efforts. The Chinese state also makes use—perhaps more than Russia does—of quasi-state entities, and Huawei is a case in point. It has provided trips, sports tickets and donations to all-party parliamentary groups, and has employed a former head of GCHQ and a former UK chief information officer. It has also used several lobbying firms, and has employed a former head of Ofcom and even a former head of the Foreign Office.

In September 2019, Huawei gave £150,000 to Jesus College, Cambridge, which later produced a White Paper that was favourable to Huawei’s inclusion in the UK’s 5G network. It has done many other things; what I have mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg. What concerns me is that, while this was happening, Ministers whom I respect very much were arguing that Huawei was a private entity—a private firm. I do not expect Ministers to be geniuses, but that situation was uncomfortable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) can speak as long as he likes on this subject as far as I am concerned. I have had quite a lot of conversations with him in private. He is the House’s expert on this issue and he does us all an enormous favour in raising these issues.

I agree with him; I think we have been too naive for too long—ineptly naive, in some cases. The most striking statistic in this field that I have come across recently is that of the people sanctioned this year by the British Government in relation to the activity in Ukraine, at least 10—10 that we know of—were people who were given tier 1 visas by the British Government in the last few years. In other words, we were inviting people in, letting them sit down and purvey their view of the world in the UK, largely because we were just interested in their money. In the end, Putin has seen us be so craven about Russian bling and he has felt that we are weak and corrupted, and that has emboldened him. It is one of the things that has assisted in what has eventually happened in Ukraine.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I absolutely welcome, as my hon. Friend does, the Government’s decision to stop the golden visas scheme. Does he not think it would be incredibly helpful for the Government to publish their review into the scheme, which Parliament has been waiting for for more than a year?

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I am absolutely confident that the Minister will tell us later when it is going to be published, because the Home Secretary has repeatedly said, in answer to questions from me in the Chamber, that it will be published soon. “Soon” in ministerial language means pretty much anything the Minister feels like it means, but we are beginning to lose patience with the soon-ness, or the lack of soon-ness. The Minister is looking wry and quizzical, but I am sure she will help us out later.

I want to refer to one specific issue. On 8 March I wrote a letter to the Foreign Secretary following her appearance the previous day before the Foreign Affairs Committee. I published the letter on my Twitter feed. I wrote to her to address her allegation that I had obstructed the progress of sanctions legislation through Parliament. In the letter I quoted from various speeches made in Parliament, one of which included allegations made in 2018 against Mr Christopher Chandler. It was not my intention to repeat those allegations, which I accept have subsequently been disproved. I am happy to set the record straight today in Parliament and regret any distress caused to Mr Chandler.

[Mr Steve Baker]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for recognising that the allegations have been disproved. Will he join me in imploring all Members who engaged in making those allegations to accept that they have now been disproved?

[Chris Bryant]

I think it is a matter for individuals to make their decisions on that. I have said what I said and the hon. Gentleman knows why I said it. There is not a formal process for a Back-Bench Member to correct the record. That exists only for Ministers, although they have been notoriously poor at doing it. As the Speaker said at the beginning of this debate: if Members are able to correct the record, it is important that they do so.

I used to be a lobbyist for the BBC and I was always trying to persuade Governments to do things. In and of itself, lobbying is not a bad thing. Indeed, the word “lobby” comes from Parliament because it was the entrance to St Stephen’s Chapel, which was the lobby where people could grab hold of a Member before they went into the House.

I remember sitting on the Public Bill Committee for the Mental Health Act 2007. I was not an expert on the treatment of mental health patients, and my participation in that Bill Committee relied on lobbyists, some of them from mental health charities, some from patients groups, and some from the pharmaceutical industry. In the end I had to make astute judgments when people were trying to influence me, but of itself lobbying is not wrong, although it needs to operate under strict standards. Even foreign lobbying is okay, or we would not have a Foreign Office. Of course, it was Sir Henry Wotton, a Member of Parliament from 1614 to 1625, who, when he was a British diplomat in Augsburg, said:

“An ambassador is an honest”

gentleman

“sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”

The Minister is nodding. I am not sure whether she is in favour of an honest gentleman or lying.

In this country, in the modern era, we have to be very careful about covert operations in the UK. I think that particularly because we are a free society, believe in the rule of law and have a democratic process that is very open, sometimes we are more vulnerable than others might be, and we have to be cautious and alert to pernicious lobbying from state actors and their proxies who do not wish this country well. That applies to not just a few countries, but quite a significant number.

I am aware, not just because of what I get myself but other Members as well, of attacks that are co-ordinated directly out of St Petersburg on individual Members of this House and the House of Lords, particularly those who have been critical of the Putin regime. The attacks are co-ordinated and are deliberately inciting. They hide behind anonymity and often they are fake accounts. It looks as though 100 people have attacked the individual Member, but that is because there are 100 fake accounts all created by the one person. We do far too little in this House to make sure that that is exposed and made clear.

I have often worried that the Government have repeatedly refused to investigate the Russian activity and determination to try to undermine the political process in this country. I note that this Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister both said that they had not seen successful attempts to undermine British democracy. I do not know what success means in their minds when they say that. It seems preposterous that they will not investigate.

As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight says, the law courts are a very useful tool for proxies of state actors overseas who want to ensure that any criticism of them is closed down. We have seen several journalists and authors dragged through the courts, at extreme expense, by people with very deep pockets. I am hopeful that the Government will address that in legislation later this year. I also point to some broadcasters, such as Russia Today. I do not think any British politician from any political party should have taken money from Russia Today. It is a scandal that many took many thousands of pounds from Russia Today. All those who did should be completely open about it, because they have effectively and knowingly been not just useful idiots but deliberate agents of a foreign state. The same would apply to other broadcasters from other states, including Iran.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight rightly mentioned advertising on Facebook. One of the ways in which Russia has sown discord and misinformation around the world is illustrated by the situation in Catalunya, which I am particularly aware of. There they put across all sorts of imagery that was later proven to be completely false. None the less, it got lots of clicks and got everyone very excited and condemning the Spanish Government, even though it was all proven to be untrue. We must take that deliberate attempt to sow discord in western societies very seriously. I have always wanted, and I still want—notwithstanding the objections—to end anonymity on social media. For some reason, people feel able to write things on social media under the cloak of anonymity that they would never think of saying to another person or writing in a letter that they had to put their name to. I think that is cowardice, but it is also disrupting the British democratic system.

I am not sure whether you, Dame Angela, are among the Members of Parliament on the Russian sanctions list. It is quite interesting that none of the Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee who wrote the “Moscow’s Gold” report a few years ago, which is deeply critical of the Russian Government, is on the sanctions list. I can only presume that we are on the hit list instead.

I wrote to the Russian ambassador to make the point that although they are alleging that all these British MPs are Russophobic, we are not Russophobic. We love Russia; we have loved the Russian people, though sometimes the television presenters do make one doubt their sincerity when saying that they love people regardless of their nationality. We are not Russophobic; it is just that we have a beef with the actions of the Russian state under President Putin. The ambassador wrote back to say that the list provided was just one of several sanctions lists that already existed, and that was one that they were now revealing. I can only presume that other people are sanctioned but we do not know about it.

Parliament is particularly vulnerable. I hope the Minister will take that away from this debate. We have hundreds of all-party parliamentary groups. The Committee on Standards, which I chair, has produced a report on this. The head of security here is very concerned, as are the two Speakers, about the vulnerability of the Parliamentary system because of the way that APPGs are funded, sometimes directly by foreign Governments and sometimes indirectly, and sometimes probably not as accountably as we would like. Some countries forbid members of their legislative body from taking any form of hospitality of any kind, let alone several thousand pounds-worth of trips abroad, from a foreign state. We should consider that.

I believe that it is important that British Members of Parliament have strong working relationships with Members of Parliaments in other countries, but we should fund that, not let it be funded on an ad hoc basis by other countries who may want to do us harm. I am one of the Members who went to Qatar. I went as a guest of the Qatari Government because I wanted to argue with them, really, about the way they intend to hold the World cup. I note that a large number of Members have been taken to Qatar at great expense by the Qatari Government over the past year. Is that appropriate? In the end, I wish I had not gone on that trip. I suspect we need to address that issue. Incidentally, the director of security in Parliament told us that the biggest anxiety was that these groups are not necessarily funded directly by the Governments, but by their proxies, through third, fourth or fifth parties. We need to tackle that.

In the US, Congress has to produce an annual report on the lobbying of Congress by foreign actors. Why do we not do that here? One of the House’s Committees should produce an annual report to Government, perhaps with the assistance of Government, on foreign states’ actions in lobbying Parliament.

I also think we ought to have a new offence of aiding and abetting a foreign state as a Member of Parliament or as a peer. I am not quite sure how I am going to word this—I hope somebody is going to help me with it; the Clerks are normally very good—but I think that there should be an amendment to clause 3 of the National Security Bill to address that.

My argument is that lobbying must always be in the open. Transparency is how we ensure that there is nothing pernicious, vicious or inappropriate going on. Ministers should reveal all significant attempts to lobby them in a timely fashion. The Standards Committee has produced a report today stating that we must end the current exemption whereby, if two Members of Parliament go to the same event that is paid for by a foreign Government or by anyone else, a Minister does not have to declare it for months and months and does not have to say how much it cost, but a Back-Bench or Opposition Front-Bench Member has to declare it within 28 days. Surely all Members should be treated equally.

That is why it is important that Ministers should reveal all significant attempts to lobby them, including via hospitality, tickets, dinners, accommodation, holidays, travel and individual meetings. For instance, it is an absolute mystery to me why the UK took so long to sanction Deripaska. Greg Barker—who is, I think, no longer a Member of the House of Lords—was effectively acting as an agent of Deripaska, who is now sanctioned because of his corrupt involvement in the Russian state. However, we did nothing about it. Why was that? I want to know.

What about Abramovich? Why did that take so long? There was even a moment when the Prime Minister though that Abramovich had been sanctioned, but it turned out he had not. I suspect that that was because the Home Office was saying, way back in 2018 and 2019, that Abramovich was a person of interest; in other words, he was dodgy and it did not want him coming to the UK, and therefore it was not going to allow his tier 1 visa to be renewed. However, the Foreign Office refused to sanction him. Was that because of the direct engagement of Abramovich with individual Ministers? I ask the question because we need to know the answer.

Finally, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight is absolutely right about the need for a proper register of lobbyists working on behalf of foreign agents. I do not think someone should be able to simply say that they have lots of clients in this House; they should have to list all clients in both Houses. For my money, I would also say that Arron Banks should have been on that list. Of course, when anybody is on that registered list, there should be a ban on Members of either House engaging with them financially or in any other manner.

We have been naive for far too long. We need to tackle all these issues, especially as they apply to state actors from Russia and China. Otherwise, we will lose the precious democracy that we believe in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

My hon. Friend has come to the kernel. He has put his point on the record, and I am sure the people in the Home Office will have heard his plea.

It is welcome that Parliament is paying close attention to this topic. I congratulate the Committee on Standards on its recent report on APPGs, mentioned today, which notes that improper influence and lobbying by hostile states is a key threat facing APPGs today. I welcome that report but, of course, it is a matter for the House to decide on the rules governing APPGs. The Government welcome any approaches that mitigate the risks.

I also want to confirm, with regard to foreign lobbying, that a business or organisation undertaking consultant lobbying on behalf of a Government outside the UK or an international organisation would be required to register and declare that Government or organisation as a client. To answer the right hon. Member for Rhondda—

[Chris Bryant]

No, honourable.

[Mrs Wheeler]

Well, it is only a matter of time, I am sure. Regarding the Home Office report, I can confirm that the Home Secretary will provide an update imminently, in due course.

[Chris Bryant]

Which is it?

[Mrs Wheeler]

It is both.

Members have taken so much interest in the debate, and I appreciate the level and depth of information that they have brought to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

Indeed. That is a very fair point, and I am sure the Home Office will have heard it. To conclude—

[Chris Bryant]

Before the Minister concludes, will she give way?

[Mrs Wheeler]

Of course.

[Chris Bryant]

We have a few minutes, so we might as well take them up. I will intervene twice, if the Minister lets me. The Committee on Standards has said that at the moment some Members chair an awful lot of APPGs for foreign territories. We have wondered whether we should not have a limit so that a Member is allowed to chair, say, only six or 10—certainly not 28. Perhaps it would be a good idea if Members were not able to receive any financial support from foreign Governments. Would the Government support those two measures?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am afraid I will take that under advisement.

[Chris Bryant]

I shall try another one. The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) made a really important point, which is that most hon. Members have no understanding of whether somebody who comes through the door is operating on behalf of a foreign state. Of course it is up to us to make our own judgment calls, but there probably ought to be a means for a Member to ascertain confidentially whether the person they are dealing with is a person of concern to the Government. The Minister will not be able to answer that today, but will she take away the serious point that the hon. Gentleman makes?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I will take that away and reflect on it. That is a perfectly reasonable question.

Sue Gray Report

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman asks me to answer, and I will. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), which is why we will get on with the job.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

What a load of baloney. Excuse after excuse after excuse, and it simply does not wash with the British public, who are sick and tired of being taken for fools. The truth is that the Prime Minister encouraged the gatherings, he attended the gatherings, he poured the drinks at the gatherings and he even raised a toast at the gatherings, so he knew perfectly well that these gatherings had taken place. The most despicable thing of all is that Sue Gray says she saw

“multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff.”

They knew what the rules meant, even if nobody else did. Does the Prime Minister show no contrition, no sense of shame, that Downing Street, under him, has been a cesspit full of arrogant, entitled narcissists?

[The Prime Minister]

As I have already said to the House, it is absolutely disgraceful, in any circumstances, to be rude to the people who help us—the staff and custodians. It is intolerable, and I will make sure that those who are guilty of it apologise or are otherwise disciplined.

Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly commend the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for the speech he just gave. He did so with great courage and honesty and, frankly, with the integrity that a lot of us have seen him show in his chairmanship of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. This House knows that serving on and chairing Select Committees is not always easy, because quite often people come to Select Committee meetings with fixed views. They are not all that interested in the evidence that is presented to them and resolutely hold the same view after the meeting that they held at its beginning, even though everything has been proved to be quite the opposite of what they thought. I know from those who serve on the hon. Gentleman’s Committee that he listens to the evidence, and he is a very good parliamentarian as Chair of the Committee.

It all got a bit religious earlier and I felt like I was back at theological college. Being, I think, the only person in the House who can actually pronounce absolution on anybody, I thought I was suddenly going to get a new job!

I also warmly commend the work that the Chief Whip has done this week, because he has got us into a much better place today than the House would have been in if he had not made the decisions that, doubtless advised by others, he has made today.

I had not expected to speak in this debate. I will be very straight with the House—if you see what I mean—in saying that it is sometimes difficult being the Chair of the Committee on Standards and of the Privileges Committee, because one is asked to comment on literally every single Member of the House at some point. I am absolutely scrupulous in making sure that I never comment, in public or in private, on anything that might possibly come to either of the Committees. I did not think this matter would come to the Privileges Committee, which is why I commented on it. Consequently, it is quite right that I recuse myself: I will not take part in the deliberations of the Committee on this matter if this motion is passed in any shape or form. I think I could have done it fairly—I chaired the Standards Committee when we had the Prime Minister before us in respect of a different matter and we disagreed with the Commissioner for Standards and found in the Prime Minister’s favour—but I understand that the House needs to know, absolutely for certain, that the process will be fair. In a strange way, that means that I can actually say something today.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Chris Bryant]

Oh, all right.

[Joanna Cherry]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his speech and thorough sense of decency. Does he think the same principle should apply to other members of the Privileges Committee?

[Chris Bryant]

I will say something about the Privileges Committee later but, having recused myself, I do not think it is really for me to tell its members what to do or how to behave.

One thing I am very keen on is this: I passionately care about Parliament. I believe in Parliament. I believe in democracy. The only way that I can get change for my constituents is through the democratic process. Anything that undermines trust and confidence in Parliament damages my opportunity to do anything useful in my life at all. That is why I always want to urge the House to be extremely careful in these matters of standards and privileges. Each generation of MPs has a responsibility to burnish, not tarnish, the reputation of this House, because we hand democracy on to a future generation, and if we have undermined it, it may not last.

I draw to the House’s attention the fact that in this Parliament, two MPs have been found guilty of serious offences in a court of law, and another two are awaiting trial; four MPs have been suspended for one day; a Minister was suspended for seven days; seven MPs have been required to apologise to the House for breaches of the code of conduct; three MPs have resigned their seats in the face of convictions; and the Independent Expert Panel has suspended a Member for six weeks for sexual harassment, made another apologise for bullying staff, and found another guilty of such terrible sexual harassment that he resigned his seat before he was sanctioned. All that is without any consideration of whether any right hon. or hon. Member has lied to the House. And it is not yet six months since the Owen Paterson saga, which I do not think covered the House in glory.

In a very short period of time, two of our colleagues have been murdered, and others are wearing stab vests. We have to take the reputation of the House extremely seriously. We have to burnish it, not tarnish it.

I have heard Ministers argue, quite rightly, that there must be due process. I say to the House that this is the due process. It always has been the due process. When there has been a claim that a member of the public or a Member of the House might have committed a contempt of Parliament by lying to the House, breaching the confidentiality around a Select Committee report or whatever, the standard process is that it is sent to the Committee of Privileges—or, as it used to be, the Standards and Privileges Committee, and before that the Committee of Privileges—so this is the due process.

I have absolute confidence in the other members of the Committee and that they will do a good job. They will think very carefully about, as the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said, making sure that there is a fair hearing. The court of public opinion is not very good at providing a fair hearing, I find; the House should do a great deal better than the court of public opinion. We try to uphold the rule of law—that is one of the duties for all MPs—so it is particularly important that we make sure that there is a fair process. I am sure that the other Committee members will do that.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Steve Baker]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I am not sure where that came from. I give way to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker).

[Mr Baker]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful and important contribution. This mostly relates to Members of Parliament, but he will know that occasionally somebody feels it necessary to use parliamentary privilege to say in the House things over which those outside the House might otherwise sue for defamation. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that he will consider whether the public ought to have a right to reply, so that if we use privilege, they have some chance to put their side of the story?

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Member makes a good point. We have had some discussions about that issue outside the Chamber. The difficulty is that I am not sure that is a matter for the Standards Committee or the Privileges Committee; I think it is a matter for the Committee on Procedure. There is a good argument for putting something in place so that there is a right of reply. I cannot go further, for reasons of which the hon. Gentleman may be aware—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not want to open up that area of debate. I know exactly what is going on—we can leave that part of it there.

[Chris Bryant]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

My second point about fair process is that it is actually quite a high bar that the Privileges Committee will have to consider. As the Leader of the Opposition said earlier, I do not think it is debated that the House was misled. I think even the Prime Minister admits, in effect, that the House was misled. It was said that rules were not broken and it is self-evident that rules were broken, so the House was misled—it got a false impression. The question is whether that was intentional. The Committee will have to devise ways to investigate whether there was an intention.

[Hannah Bardell]

rose—

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I think I ought to give way to the hon. Lady first.

[Hannah Bardell]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent and poignant speech. Does he not find it strange and deeply worrying that we seem to be in a position in which the Prime Minister seemed unable or incapable of following his own rules and his own laws, yet he is using the rules and processes of this place to frustrate the course of, as the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said, natural justice?

[Chris Bryant]

I would normally agree with the hon. Lady on these kinds of things, and I sort of would have agreed with her last night, but I think we are getting to a better place now. In a sense, sometimes the Back Benchers persuade the Front Benchers of a better course of action—I am looking intently at the Government Chief Whip at the moment.

As the Clerk advised in the case of whether Stephen Byers had misled the House on a single occasion in 2001:

“In order to find that Mr Byers committed a contempt in the evidence session of 14 November 2001, the Committee will need to satisfy itself not only that he misled the Sub-Committee, but that he did so knowingly or deliberately.”

As I said, that is quite a high bar, but it is for the Privileges Committee to decide that.

[Sir William Cash]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because what he just said is what I was going to raise with him. The “Ministerial Code” says that it is open to a Minister to correct

“any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister”.

The question rests on “knowingly”, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point clear.

[Chris Bryant]

I think the hon. Gentleman is agreeing with me, so—

[Mr Speaker]

We will leave it at that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

The only difference I have with the hon. Gentleman is that he was talking about the “Ministerial Code”. The “Ministerial Code” is for the Prime Minister. This House adjudicates on its rules, its code of conduct and contempts of Parliament, so they are different matters. This is about upholding a simple principle around making sure that Ministers speak honestly.

I will say one other thing about the Committee: it is very important that the six members of the Committee are not pressurised by anybody. Members may not be aware of this, but the Attorney General and the Solicitor General can attend those meetings and take part in the deliberations, but they are not allowed to move amendments or to vote. It is very important that the Committee is able to do its business without being leaned on by anyone.

My final point is why I think all of this is important. I care far more about what is happening in Ukraine and on the cost of living crisis than about this—far more. I have constituents who are in tears about their finances at the moment. They have absolutely no idea how they will pay their bills, how they will pay the rent, and how they will be able to provide school uniforms and things such as that. They are in tears. All of us have seen the horror in Ukraine. In 2014, I said that if we did not take Putin far more seriously and if we did not impose far stricter sanctions, he would end up coming for the rest of Ukraine. I care far more about those things than I do about this motion today, but they are not alternatives. I would argue that, in the coming months, the Prime Minister may have to come to this House and say that we will have to change our strategy on Russia. We may have to consider offensive weaponry. We may have to consider British troops being put in a place of danger. Similarly, the Prime Minister may have to come to this House and say, “I have to ask the British people to make further sacrifices because the economy is in a very difficult place, and the public finances are in a very difficult place.” At a moment of national and international crisis, we need a leader of completely and utterly unimpeachable moral authority. We do not have that at the moment, not by a long chalk, but that is why these two things are intimately connected and not separate. It is why I believe that this must be referred to the Committee of Privileges.

Easter Recess: Government Update

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, of course. Those 200 contractors for the British Council should, I believe, automatically be eligible and certainly should be able to come under the scheme we have put in place, but I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets the meeting he wants.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Russia, I found it difficult this Easter to have any faith, seeing the barbarity meted out to the people of Ukraine: women tortured and raped, their children tortured and raped, and their menfolk, in many cases, with hands tied and then shot in the back of the head. All those things we know to be war crimes, but many of the worst atrocities are being committed by sociopaths working as mercenaries—paid for by the Russian Government and the Russian state, but none the less working as mercenaries. The UK still is not a signatory to the convention on mercenaries. Is it not time we put a stop to this terrible barbarity, not just in Ukraine, but in other places in the world where mercenaries from the Wagner Group operate with sociopathic intent?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much. I will study his proposal on mercenaries. He has been right for a long time on Russia, and he has been vindicated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)]

My hon. Friend is, of course, a serving magistrate and speaks with great authority on these matters. As he knows, the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, which contains key parts of those powers, has not yet received Royal Assent. On my hon. Friend’s other point, I can confirm that the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill recently received Royal Assent. The Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022 raises the statutory mandatory retirement age to 75. As my hon. Friend says, that is an important measure to ensure that we maximise the number of people in our judicial labour force.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Does not Mariupol alone demand that we go even further on sanctions in relation to Russia? Could we not sanction all the Russian banks, rather than just 60% of them? Should we not be taking action against the oil and gas companies? Should we not be removing tier 1 visas from people in the UK who have them and have not yet condemned the war in Ukraine? Should we not be putting more pressure on companies—such as Infosys in India—that have big investments in Russia? Should we not make sure that all the family members and apparatchiks are also sanctioned?

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we should continually challenge ourselves. The most important thing, though, is that we are focused on and targeted at those either with direct links into the Kremlin or who fund or indirectly fund, to put the squeeze on Putin’s war machine.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to all the work that my right hon. and learned Friend did in his tenure as Justice Secretary. He and I have looked at various things in this House together over many years, and the one thing we have always agreed on is the primacy of free speech. It is not entirely unqualified—libel laws are there for a reason—but he is absolutely right that the quintessential British liberty that guards all the others is freedom of speech and expression. However troubling it may be for politicians to have the journalistic scrutiny, rigour and all that, we understand in our hearts that it is critical to a healthy, vigorous democratic society, and I will certainly look at any other examples that he may wish to raise where we see this kind of legalised bullying through the courts and our jurisdiction.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

This is all really good stuff, and I am delighted that we are moving in the right direction. I always want the Justice Secretary to go faster; he can be very slow in delivering what he knows I want him to deliver. The real trouble we have had in this country is that the people of Britain have never known the truth about Russian money, because journalists, broadcasters, sometimes politicians and Governments have been too frightened to go to court because they know that the pockets on the other side are so deep, and they are terrified they will lose their home or their business, or the Government will lose millions of pounds on behalf of the British taxpayer. Can I ask him about the seizure of goods? We will need to seize assets. Take Chelsea football club—we will not be able to sell it on until we have seized it. Will we not need legislation for that, as well, and will he ensure that there is a proper tender for the sale of that, so that it does not go to somebody who is equally dodgy?

[Dominic Raab]

Forgive me if I do not get drawn into Chelsea football club, which is outside the scope of what we are discussing in this statement. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman. Since doing BackBench Business debates on Magnitsky in 2012, he and I have always, whatever else we may differ on, made common cause on the need for robust sanctions. He has been one of the leading lights in relation to SLAPPs, and I will certainly look carefully at the important specific points he has made.

Legal Aid

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this very important point. In 2020, the gender balance at the point of entry among specialist criminal barristers was roughly 50:50, but at the senior level there is a much higher imbalance, with a ratio of 70:30 men to women. What are we doing about that? Our fees changes, for example in relation to duty solicitors, will particularly support younger lawyers. They will disproportionately help women with caring responsibilities.

We are also looking at further diversification through the roles and the rights that CILEX members can acquire. CILEX has allowed non-graduate routes into the profession, and I think 76% of its members are women. More generally, breaking down glass ceilings and barriers to entry into the profession is important. Beyond fees, the consultation will allow us to consult and to understand what more we can do systemically to attract a broader diversity of practitioners into the profession and then, critically, allow them to flourish.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is right to say that we need to deliver swifter justice for victims, but if you will allow me a slight detour, Madam Deputy Speaker, do we not also need to deliver swifter justice to victims of war crimes in Ukraine? What is the Government’s attitude now towards the International Criminal Court? I think he would agree that attacking a nuclear power station or civilians is a war crime, but will he ensure that it is a war crime to initiate a war of aggression?

[Dominic Raab]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this subject and it is a timely, if circuitous, question, because I was in The Hague yesterday, where I met the ICC chief prosecutor and the president of the court; as he Gentleman knows, the ICC is independent and it is for it to determine those issues. I think I was the first Justice Minister to go there, and I was clear that we will provide a package of support, including financial and technical assistance, to enable the office of the prosecutor to do its job. We will be co-ordinating with our allies and our key partners so that is a concerted effort. The message needs to go out to Putin and to every commander on the ground in Ukraine that if they follow illegal orders they will end up in the dock of a court in The Hague and potentially in prison.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

Opposition parties are struggling a bit with this idea of democracy, are they not? Taking back control was to have control by the people and for the people, and offering the people an early general election so that they could choose an effective Government when a Parliament was logjammed, hopeless and not prepared to govern with clarity and passion was the right thing to do. I just cannot understand why Labour and the SNP are still queuing up to defend the indefensible, and to say that because they may well be faced again with a situation in which they do not dare face the electors, they need some kind of legal rigmarole and manipulation of votes in a balanced or damaged Parliament to thwart the popular will yet again. “Never let the people make the decision,” they say: it must be contained within Parliament, even when a Parliament has obviously failed, as it did when it could not implement the wishes of the British people over the great Brexit referendum.

I want assurances from the Minister that this new policy will protect the Crown—the Queen—from the difficult business of politics. I think the Minister’s version of it is better than the version from the other place. Of course, it must keep the courts out. There is nothing more political than the decision about when we go to an election and when we give the people their power back and the right to make that fundamental choice. It is a choice that now can mean something, because we do not have to keep on accepting a whole load of European laws that we have no great role in making. Again, we need that absolute guarantee that we will have this freedom so that that can happen.

Those who say that they do not want the Prime Minister to have this much power have surely been in the House long enough to know that, while the Prime Minister has considerable power from his or her office, they are also buffeted and challenged every day by a whole series of pressures in this place and outside. If a leader of a party with a majority wanted an early election that their supporters did not want, I suspect that that would get sorted out without an early election. So we are only talking about what happens when a Government have lost their majority and the Prime Minister is doing his or her best to govern as a minority. We get the extraordinary position we got when the whole Opposition wanted to gang up to thwart the public making a choice, but did not want to govern. That was totally unacceptable, and the Opposition should hear the message from the doorsteps in the 2019 election. The public wanted a Parliament with a Government who could govern, so they decided to choose one. Those who sought to block it made themselves more unpopular, and they showed that they do not understand the fundamental point of democracy that, when Parliament lets the people down, the people must be able to choose a new and more effective Parliament.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I apologise to the House that, because I have been in Committee Room 10 launching the call for evidence on setting up a national strategy for acquired brain injury, I am afraid I was not able to hear the wonderful speeches that doubtless came from those on the Front Bench—well, on the Opposition side anyway.

I completely agree with what the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) has just said. Yes, I think the people of this country are crying out for a Government who can actually govern. They still were after the general election, and they certainly are at the moment. Yes, of course, the Prime Minister is buffeted, and I think the Prime Minister should be buffeted a bit more, to be honest.

What I do not understand is that this is the tiniest, most minimalist check on government that one could imagine. It simply means that a Government, which by definition already has a majority of Members of the House of Commons, should be required to come to the House of Commons to get a vote through to have a general election. It is absolutely minimal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Is it equally the case that including this vote in the Bill would not mitigate people not being good chaps? If a Prime Minister has a majority and they could get that vote through—who knows what their reasons are—when they see things coming over the horizon that might give them some advantage, it makes it difficult for the monarch to say “no” under the Bill. Is it better to preserve what was best about our constitution before 2010, which relies on the Prime Minister and the monarch being responsible, and the good behaviour that should follow?

[Chris Bryant]

I think the danger is precisely the opposite. The arrangements that the hon. Lady would like us to have are ones that put the monarch in a regular position of making a decision, and brings them closely into not only party politics, but sometimes into partisan politics within a political party. It is perfectly possible that a Prime Minister might have lost, or be about to lose, the confidence of their political party, but that political party might still want to govern and carry on under a different leader. In other words, there may be within the House an alternative Government who would be better for the nation.

My other problem is that there seems to be a very high theological understanding of the role of the Executive. I think the former Leader of the House set that going with his rather Stuart early-17th-century understanding of the constitution, which is that basically, as long as the Prime Minister has the confidence of the House of Commons, he or she should be allowed to do pretty much anything and, frankly, parliamentary democracy is a little bit of an irritant. It is worth always bearing in mind that the Executive today is the only body who can ensure that business and legislation are considered, and the only body who decide when Parliament sits, when it will go into recess, and how long it will go into recess for. If we had the same rules today as we had in 1939, nobody would have been able to table an amendment to the recess debate that led to the big row before the beginning of the second world war. Today we have an Executive who are more powerful than they have been at any stage since the early 17th century, and it is time, occasionally, that the House of Commons said, “You know what? We’re a parliamentary democracy. Let’s take just a tiny bit of power into our own hands.”

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I will be brief as I gather I have only a few minutes to speak. The Lords amendment would require the House of Commons to give prior approval to a dissolution of Parliament, and that would be done by simple majority rather than the two-thirds majority required by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011. On the face of it, that would be an improvement to the existing position, but it is still something of a half-way house that causes confusion. In the event that a Government lose their ability to command a majority in the House of Commons, it does not automatically follow that the House would vote to approve an election.

For example, it may suit Opposition parties to keep a lame-duck Government in place, so that they can inflict parliamentary defeat after parliamentary defeat, as a means of further undermining confidence in the Government. But in whose interests would that be? Certainly not the interests of the country. As hon. Members have said, we very much saw that in the “zombie” Parliament of 2017-19, when Parliament initially refused to allow an election to take place. The country became ungovernable, and contempt for Parliament rose dramatically—I speak as somebody who was outside Parliament at that time, and who shared in that contempt. I submit that that is not in anyone’s best interests.

We recently heard some confused interventions on this matter from the other place. For example, a Liberal Democrat peer asked:

“But why should a Prime Minister who cannot get a majority of the House of Commons for an election be entitled to a Dissolution?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 February 2022; Vol. 818, c. 1590.]

I am still not sure whether that was a rhetorical question or whether the Lord in question was trying to figure it out for himself. Either way, it is non-sequitur reasoning because in the example he gave, a Government would not seek to dissolve Parliament unless they found it impossible to gain simple majorities in the first place. In my opinion, a rather better, and frankly rather more honest question would be: why would Parliament want to avoid an election, unless it feared that the result would go against its own wishes? That is the real question that those who support the Lords amendment must ask themselves.

There is concern in certain quarters that going to the electorate to seek a new mandate would allow an opportunistic Government to call an election at a convenient time to increase their majority. It is true that the power to call an election gives an advantage to a sitting Government, but that ability is a double-edged sword and can seriously backfire against a Prime Minister seeking to exploit a perceived opportunity. Post-war history is replete with examples of an incumbent Government misreading the political situation, and calling an election that fails to deliver the result they wished for. Harold Wilson’s Labour Government in 1970 and Ted Heath’s Conservative Government in February 1974 are obvious examples of that. Similarly, a failure to call an election can damage an incumbent Government. The obvious recent example would be from 2007 when Gordon Brown publicly flirted with calling an election, only to back off at the last moment and cause irreparable damage to his public image as a result. The power to call an election—or not—does not automatically confer an insuperable advantage on the incumbent Government. The Lords amendment is therefore completely unnecessary, and I will continue to support the Bill as it stands.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Law firms in this country are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. They were reminded on 23 February of the need to comply with sanctions regulations and legislation, and there are regular checks to ensure that they are doing so. They have responsibilities under that regime to safeguard the UK and to protect the reputation of the United Kingdom legal services industry. Clearly they will face sanctions if they fail to do so.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Q8. Putin is the only enemy, but I do feel ashamed. The United Kingdom signed the Budapest accord in 1994, guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Twenty-three men who once sat on these Benches gave their lives for plucky little Belgium, and they have shields on the wall down at that end of the Chamber. Twenty-two did the same for Poland, and they have shields down at this end. We are not guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine. I do not want war—no one wants war—but we are not yet even sanctioning Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defence Minister, nor Igor Osipov, the commander of the Black sea fleet, nor Usmanov, Sechin, Peskov, Abramovich, Roldugin or the Members of the Russian Duma who voted for this war. Why do we not use parliamentary privilege to get this out there, so that the lawyers cannot attack the sanctions that we must surely bring rapidly today?

Sanctions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

The instruments before us were laid under the powers provided by the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018—also known as the sanctions Act. These instruments came into effect at midnight last night.

As stated by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, we have announced the largest and the most severe package of punitive economic and trade sanctions that Russia has ever seen in response to Putin’s pre-meditated, pre-planned and barbaric invasion. We will continue to ratchet up the pressure, working in concert with our allies around the world. We have already imposed sanctions on Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, five Russian banks, 120 businesses and a long list of Russian oligarchs. Taken together, this targets assets worth hundreds of billions of pounds. Throughout, we have worked with our allies, including to agree to remove selected Russian banks from the SWIFT system and we have agreed to target the Russian central bank, but we will go further. I want to say to this House that we will continue to stand with the Ukrainian people in their heroic efforts to face up to unbridled aggression and that nothing is off the table.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Let me take the right hon. and learned Gentleman back to what he said about the number of individuals who have been sanctioned, as I do not think it is hundreds since this situation in Ukraine—it is eight. It is hundreds since 2014, and that conflation is unhelpful. As I understand it, the Government are finding it difficult to get all their ducks in a row in relation to these individual oligarchs, and the European Union is doing this much quicker. I hope he heard what I said earlier, because I think that that is because the legislative measure used in the EU is more effective in providing legal certainty for the sanctioning body. Why do we not put names of people on our sanctions? There is not a single name on the measure before us. We do this in a very legalistic way and the danger is that Mr Abramovich will have sold everything by the time we get round to sanctioning him.

[Michael Ellis]

I note what the hon. Gentleman says, but it is not often that people refer to the mechanisms of the EU as speedy. If he says that they are speedier than ours, clearly that is something for the system to look at. But we have a system that we are using at the moment, that has applied and that is what we have to go through. We are acting faster than ever before and we are leading the way in this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister said earlier that all these measures come into force immediately. Why on earth does the Government measure allow VTB Bank, the second-largest Russian bank, 30 days for clients to be able to remove their assets? I do not even know what the metaphor is in terms of horses and bolts and having already escaped, but this seems preposterous.

[Michael Ellis]

I do not think the individuals involved will consider it a weak measure; on the contrary, I think they will consider it a draconian measure, which is exactly what it is.