Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lloyd Hatton and Shabana Mahmood

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I will happily write to the right hon. Gentleman with details on the specific case that he raises. He is right to say that we have international agreements and arrangements with other jurisdictions to ensure that offenders can be brought back to face justice in this country. I am sure that those arrangements are being applied appropriately, but I will make sure that he gets a fuller answer on the case that he has raised.

[Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)]

T7. Today we learned not only that Yevgeny Prigozhin, a sanctioned warlord, used frozen funds to make legal threats to silence a British journalist, but that the enablers of this textbook example of lawfare have since gone unpunished, with the Solicitors Regulation Authority ruling that Prigozhin’s lawyers “broke no rules”. That inaction, in the face of such clear-cut wrongdoing, shows that our current framework is inadequate. Can the Minister outline what steps the Government are taking to create a tough deterrent against harmful lawfare tactics, particularly when they are deployed by insidious individuals like Prigozhin?