Political Prisoners

Rachel Blake Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the detention of Jimmy Lai and other political prisoners internationally.

It is a real honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I speak today on behalf of my constituent Jimmy Lai, who has been detained abroad since December 2020. Mr Lai was on trial for alleged offences against national security and alleged sedition through his work as a newspaper publisher. The offence has been ruled unlawful and arbitrary by the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention. I called for this debate to draw attention to what Mr Lai has suffered over the course of his detention and to bring together parliamentarians from across the House to speak with one voice on the matter of his detention and the detention of other political prisoners abroad.

Mr Lai is a much-loved father and grandfather, and a British citizen. He is 77 years of age, and is being held in solitary confinement in the blistering Hong Kong heat. This will be his fourth summer suffering temperatures that regularly reach 40°.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I make this intervention with your indulgence, Mr Western, because I am engaged in another debate in the main Chamber, and I apologise to the hon. Lady because my intervention deals with another individual, although I fully support her and congratulate her on raising the Jimmy Lai case, which I have argued many times. I hope she makes her case, and I am sure she will—it is a terrible thing.

However, there are other cases, and the person I want to mention, who is often forgotten, is Ryan Cornelius. He has been incarcerated for 17 years in the United Arab Emirates. The UN has said exactly the same: this is an illegal incarceration for which there is no legal basis. He has often been in solitary confinement. The British Government—not this one, necessarily, but all Governments—have too often failed to raise his case in the way they should. I mention the case because the Foreign Office needs to do its duty in raising it, regardless of the business deals that it wants to make.

[Rachel Blake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his support for our task today and for raising that important case.

Despite Mr Lai’s being told that his trial would last only 80 days, today marks the 1,630th day of his detention. Every day that he is detained, his health deteriorates further and his family rightly worry about his chances of survival in prison. The detention of Mr Lai is a human tragedy that undermines the very principles of democracy, freedom and the rule of law on which our international order relies. The idea that a British citizen can be detained by a foreign Government for standing up and expressing the British values of democracy and freedom of speech is an affront to all of us in this House, and across the country, who hold those principles dear.

Mr Lai’s son Sebastien has campaigned tirelessly and admirably for his father’s release; I know that many hon. Members here have had the honour of hearing directly from him and Mr Lai’s legal counsel. At this very moment, Sebastien is addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and recently he has been in the United States and Canada to meet senior officials and lawmakers in both countries. Next week, he travels to Brussels to meet European parliamentarians and the European External Action Service.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She has just mentioned Canada; I understand that the Canadians are considering granting honorary citizenship to Jimmy Lai, as a small but significant contribution to demonstrating their commitment to him. Does she agree that that is something that the British Government could consider?

[Rachel Blake]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention; later in my remarks, I will come on to using all possible levers to secure Mr Lai’s freedom.

When Sebastien is at home, he is my constituent—a man deeply concerned about his father’s welfare. That is the position in which I speak to the Chamber today: as a Member of Parliament standing up for my constituents in the face of unbelievable, state-sanctioned cruelty.

I am grateful for the work of this Government and Members across the House to secure Mr Lai’s freedom. Already, Sebastien has met people across Government, and it has been encouraging to see the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister call for Mr Lai’s immediate and unconditional release. We cannot stay silent while Mr Lai remains detained. The Government calls for his release are welcome, but I want to see those included urgently in any trade negotiations and international meetings that Ministers of all Departments conduct with their Chinese counterparts.

I also support the calls for the Prime Minister to meet Sebastien to discuss his father’s case. We must use every lever at our disposal to make the case for Mr Lai’s safe return. The attention and time of our most senior politicians represent a clear signal from our Government that we will not let the international spotlight shift from Mr Lai’s arbitrary and illegal detention.

Mr Lai is not the only British person to be detained politically overseas. He was not the first and he will not be the last, and this debate is about the wider issue of unlawful detention. We cannot forget Craig and Lindsay Foreman or Alaa Abd el-Fattah, British citizens who remain imprisoned in Iran and Egypt, respectively. The events of the past few weeks, months and years have shown that inter-state relations have significant potential to get more tense, not less, and with that comes the potential for more political imprisonment of British nationals. We need to ensure that all British citizens imprisoned overseas have the same support and advocacy that Jimmy Lai has had.

Every day that my constituent Mr Lai remains in detention abroad is a day that the life and health of a British citizen is put at risk by a foreign state, and another day when democracy is undermined across the world. We must bring him home and we must bring him home now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Blake]

I thank all the participants in the debate: the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for raising the case that he did; the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman) for highlighting the injustice; my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister) for raising the case of Jagtar Singh Johal; the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for talking about religious freedom; my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for talking about his great work on the APPG; my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) for talking about the diaspora; my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) for highlighting, too, the cause of Jagtar Singh Johal; my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) for setting out the impact of detention on families; the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) for talking about detained people and Alaa Abd el-Fattah; and the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) for setting out the Opposition’s determination on the release of Jimmy Lai.

Jimmy Lai, Jagtar Singh Johal and others have all suffered grievous injustice against their human rights. That matters because it could be any one of us; it could be our mums, our dads, our sons or our daughters. It matters for democracy and for freedom of the press. I am really heartened by the Minister’s remarks. I am also heartened that, when I raised Jimmy Lai’s case with the Foreign Secretary, he referred to a “massive” international coalition to tackle it, and that the Chancellor raised it when she visited China. I will continue to fight for the freedom of my constituent, Jimmy Lai, in order to honour his family’s campaigning work and his own human rights.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the detention of Jimmy Lai and other political prisoners internationally.

Overseas Territories: Tax Transparency

Rachel Blake Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) for securing this debate. I have joked in previous debates that I could be known as the Member of Parliament for frozen assets; nothing could be truer today, as that is the topic at hand.

At least £5.9 billion in suspect funds has entered the UK property market via shell companies registered in the overseas territories. Over half of that money can be found in my constituency of Cities of London and Westminster. These forces blight our communities, driving out residents and local businesses and replacing them with empty shells of buildings owned by empty shells of companies.

Over the past few months, key pillars of the City and Westminster communities have been at risk of closure, including the Jubilee Hall gym and the Prince Charles cinema. Most notably, the central London YMCA, the oldest YMCA in the world, will close its doors this week. These institutions have always had to compete against the great and the good of London’s residential and business community, but they are increasingly being crowded out. They are bidding in a rental market against shadowy owners with nigh unlimited funds.

Individuals who have frequently made their wealth from corruption and the abuse of power, by skimming money from state procurement contracts or directly acquiring assets, are funnelling the proceeds of this ill-gotten wealth into our property market. They include Alexander Zakharov, the creator of the deadly Lancet drone being used to terrorise the people of Ukraine, whose family own a £1.5 million flat overlooking Big Ben; Daim Zainuddin, a former Malaysian Minister of Finance accused of extraordinary misappropriation of public funds, who owns a £28.6 million office in the City of London; and Mikhail Gutseriev, a major backer of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, whose son Said owns a £160 million portfolio of properties across the Cities of London and Westminster. The immense level of money laundering in London corrodes our communities, damages democracy around the world and blocks the growth prospects of our capital’s economy.

We have already heard why it is so important for the overseas territories, particularly the British Virgin Islands, to implement public registers of beneficial owners. Knowledge about property ownership is a vital tool for protecting our country from kleptocrats. Stonewalling by the authorities in the BVI leaves those who work tirelessly to expose cases of corruption fighting with one hand tied behind their back. Currently, only those in law enforcement can access information about beneficial ownership, and they have to apply for it on a case-by-case basis. The move to fully public registers of beneficial owners is sorely needed and long overdue. Public registers were first meant to be implemented by the end of 2020, which was 1,497 days ago, or 30 Liz Truss premierships.

The BVI has now, finally, suggested an approach, but it is simply not good enough. It will require applicants to identify the beneficial owner when requesting corporate data; essentially, it asks them to know the precise information that they are after. Under the draft policy, applicants could get hold of company ownership information only if they were involved in regulatory or legal proceedings about financial crime or a criminal case in which a court has determined that the data could help to solve the investigation. Most alarmingly, the BVI registrar would be required to tip off beneficial owners within five days of an application being made, allowing beneficial owners to liquidate or move assets.

At this stage, we really need to ask whose side are the BVI authorities on. Do they stand with local communities like mine, with Parliament and with my constituents in the fight against corruption, or do they stand with the kleptocrats who are using the property market as a rainy-day fund? I am pleased to see that this is a priority for our Government and our relations with the overseas territories. This Government are pushing for greater transparency from them. I wholeheartedly support the Government in those efforts. I look forward to further updates and further opportunities to speak about the issue.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Frozen Russian Assets: Ukraine

Rachel Blake Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing this debate. I speak today as the constituency Member of Parliament for many of the assets we are discussing. It is easy to throw around the many billions of Russian-owned wealth across the country; for that reason, when referencing the luxurious wealth of Putin’s cronies, all of my calculations today are going to be in the unit of Storm Shadow missiles, each of which costs £800,000. These are the weapons of war that we talk about when we discuss funding the conflict in Ukraine.

In total, 28,375 Storm Shadows’ worth of Russian wealth is sanctioned, with profits from that wealth used to repay the extraordinary revenue acceleration funding the UK’s support of Ukraine. To put that in perspective, the UK’s total stock of Storm Shadows was estimated in 2023 to sit between 700 and 1,000. In Westminster alone, according to research by Transparency International, 537 Storm Shadows’ worth of property is owned by Russians accused of corruption or with links to the Kremlin, property that stretches from Belgravia to St James’s and St John’s Wood. Indeed, the most valuable home in the UK, Hanover Lodge, was sold last year for 141 Storm Shadows by Andrey Goncharenko, a former Gazprom executive with ties to the Kremlin. A great deal of that property is owned by or connected to sanctioned individuals, including former Deputy Prime Ministers Igor Shuvalov and Vladimir Potanin.

The existence of this property is not just an economic issue; its impact also reaches into the very hearts of our communities. Our buildings and neighbourhoods are weakened when they are used for profit rather than purpose. A strong community is one in which neighbours can be the ones who look after your kids when you have a job interview. It is those communities that are undermined when we let towers of vacant investment properties propagate and turn a blind eye to foreign wealth emptying out British homes. Most recently, these communities have opened their arms to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing from Putin’s illegal invasion. I am the constituency Member for a number of those refugees, and it is thinking of them that gives the overwhelming majority of us in this House the resolve to use every tool at our disposal.

That brings us to today’s topic: the seizure of sanctioned assets. As we heard earlier, the significance of this step and the precedent it would set should not escape us as legislators. The first ever permanent seizure of frozen assets occurred only last year, when the National Crime Agency confiscated the assets of Petr Aven for suspected evasion of sanctions. To set out an intentional policy of seizing those assets would be a bold step, and one that would doubtless lead to legal challenge. However, it must be worth us considering every option available for sanctioned assets, particularly when there is a clear argument that it would be justified to use them in supporting the Ukrainian people.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is in complete contravention of international law and violates the sovereignty and self-determination of the Ukrainian people. Furthermore, as has been confirmed by the UN’s independent international commission of inquiry on Ukraine, it has enabled a string of other war crimes, including indiscriminate attacks, violations of personal integrity, including executions, torture and ill treatment, and sexual and gender-based violence. As was made clear during the application of the original sanctions, the sanctioned individuals are playing a direct part in this war. They range from propagandists spreading disinformation about the conflict to garner public support, domestically and across the globe, to industrialists manufacturing the chemicals used in Russian weapons, and military and security personnel directly contributing to the invasion.

When the war in Ukraine is over, questions will remain about what we do with the 28,000 Storm Shadows of sanctioned wealth belonging to those who funded, championed, and even fought in Putin’s illegal invasion. We must take this opportunity to consider what sort of country we want to be when it comes to that dirty money, and to ensure that we do not let our economy be complicit in the forces that fund evil across the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rachel Blake Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Hamish Falconer]

We considered this question at exhaustive length yesterday. I repeat that the shadow Attorney General has written on the question of which elements of international law are most properly followed in this case, and the Attorney General is set to respond, although we suspect that this case would go to the courts in the usual way.

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent, the British citizen Jimmy Lai, is in failing health, and I thank the Foreign Secretary and his Department for all their work to uphold his rights under international law. Can the Foreign Secretary share his assessment of the scale of international support for Jimmy Lai’s release?

[Mr Lammy]

“Massive” is probably the word I would use. His case is being raised in America and across the European Union, and we are raising it too. His trial has begun, and he is now well into his 70s, which is why I have made the case to the Chinese that he should be released. This is becoming cruel and unusual punishment, frankly.