Appointment of Lord Lebedev

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

I have the feeling it will be a very long time before the Labour party is in a position to do that from the Government Benches.

The broader point is that the privacy rights of individuals need to be protected. The information shared to facilitate the vetting process is and must be handled carefully. It would be unwelcome for this House to set a precedent that such information is released, because, as I have said, to do so could deter individuals from putting themselves forward for such positions. I urge the House to reflect on whether the motion before us accords with the principle of restraint that Parliament has characteristically applied to the use of its powers. The passing of the motion would risk compromising the ability of an independent body to perform its role and, constitutionally, would impede the role of the Prime Minister in advising the sovereign on appointments. The process is necessarily confidential and the Government think it is unwise for the House to call for such information.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson, Brendan O’Hara.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Obviously this debate is very well subscribed. I would prefer not to put a time limit on, and if colleagues could speak for around six minutes, we might get everybody in.

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[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is talking about party political donations. When Unite, for example, donates £1 million to the Labour party and Labour Members of Parliament, or when many other trade unions make donations, what influence does that buy those trade unions? Do they write the manifesto, for example?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Sorry, I think there is a bit of confusion: I thought the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) was taking an intervention.

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[Clive Efford]

I absolutely do. We need to shine the light of accountability on what has been going on. That is what the motion calls for. It calls for the evidence to be published—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. It is important that references are not made to Members of the House of Lords who are outside the scope of this motion; I say that just so that Mr Cunningham is clear.

[Clive Efford]

I am grateful for that clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was concerned; I was worried. I will finish off, before you criticise me for going on too long.

The motion calls for the evidence to be published—simple as that. That is why there has been a collapse in the number of Tory Back Benchers in the Chamber, and why the Government are not voting against the motion—because their Back Benchers will not vote against it; it is a perfectly reasonable motion, calling for accountability from a Prime Minister who has behaved disgracefully and could have compromised the security of this country. That is what the motion is about. It is a disgrace that the Conservatives are not voting for it and not holding the Prime Minister to account.

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[Jonathan Gullis]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the dangers, apparently, of this Conservative Government, but I am terrified by the fact that, at the last general election, the then Leader of the Opposition was someone who had been friends with the IRA not long after the Brighton bombing and laid wreaths for Black September. Those are the scandalous things that are dangers—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has to be very careful if he has not notified somebody when he intends to make allegations about them, and he should know that.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has not noticed that the Labour party has changed, but certainly people in the country have, and I would say to him that I hope the Whip on the Treasury Bench is paying due attention, because he did read out some of the points on page 4 of the Conservative party brief.

The Government claim that Lord Lebedev was nominated in recognition of his contribution to the UK and his charitable ventures. If that is the case, let us see the formal information concerning the appointment of Lord Lebedev. If there is nothing untoward, there is no reason not to publish the advice.

The urgency of this request cannot be overstated. As we debate here in this Chamber, Vladimir Putin is wreaking destruction on the people of Ukraine. His forces are murdering people in their thousands, and displacing millions more. We speak with one voice in this House of Commons and this British Parliament when it comes to the disgraceful actions of Putin in Ukraine.

For over a decade, however, Putin’s money has been allowed to flood into our democracy. Nearly £2 million of Kremlin cash has found its way either to the Tory party or into constituency association coffers since this Prime Minister took office. That should be a profound mark of shame for Conservative Members. In that context, Labour Members are requesting this vital information. We, and the people we represent, need to know whether the Prime Minister puts the national security of this country ahead of personal relationships. This is about a basic prerequisite for the job.

I have no doubt that most Conservative colleagues will abstain from voting, and therefore this humble address will pass. I hope, and sincerely expect, that the Government will follow the letter of the humble address, and release the information forthwith. However, I urge colleagues to think carefully about the message that their actions send out of this place, and I urge them to do more than abstain and to vote with Labour Members. Let us send a strong message that Putin’s cronies will not be tolerated in British democracy, and that we in this House uphold the highest standards of integrity and transparency. Release the Security Service’s advice to the Prime Minister, so that we all know what he was told and the actions that followed.

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[Mr Holden]

The real insult the hon. Gentleman should be thinking about is the insult to the dead people killed on the streets of Britain when the leader he supported asked the Kremlin to check whether it was their poison that had killed them or not. Does he not reflect on the fact that Britain was the first country in the world to provide military training and defensive weapons in support of the Ukrainian people, or that it was his party, under Ed Miliband, that did everything possible to stop our support for the Syrian opposition at that time? [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. First of all, the hon. Gentleman knows that he should not refer to another Member by name; he needs to refer to their constituency. Secondly, it is important that we stick to the motion in front of us. There is a bit of a tendency to wander off into different subjects that are perhaps leading us slightly astray from the matter in hand, which is the process we are discussing with regard to peerages and so on. It was said at the beginning that we should try to keep our language moderate and calm. I think we need to return to that and I am sure Mr Tarry will now do so.

[Sam Tarry]

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was merely thinking about the wanderings of the defence procurement Minister, which ended up at Russian arms fairs.

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s comments, the irony is that if people had listened to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who for years and years has been calling for sanctions and actions against Russia, then perhaps those guys on the Government Benches would not have been—[Interruption.] I was just trying to answer the question. If only they had listened to the advice of Labour Members who were saying how dangerous it was that relationships with the Russians and our Government were far too cosy.

The Prime Minister’s continual failure to act makes a mockery of our democracy, and highlights the cesspool of cronyism and corruption at the heart of this Government. I am saying that this is a moment to reflect. The unwillingness to share that information and to shine a light of truth—a light of truth—into what many people across the country are wondering, led me to reflect on something I once read. Professor Richard Sakwa said in his seminal book “Russian Politics and Society”:

“Under late communism, nepotism and patron client relations undermined the political criteria of elite recruitment in the nomenklatura system. The political elite began to degenerate into a social class, perhaps one of the most economically useless in history…the Party fostered a class that grew at its expense and began to transform itself into a traditional oligarchy.”

That is a description of the collapsing Soviet Union, yet it could be used to describe the regime of the Conservative party.

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[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The United Kingdom has long been a defender of freedom, democracy and human rights, and our country has proudly stood firm against crime and corruption at every opportunity. It is, therefore, frankly astonishing that, at a time when Vladimir Putin is committing war crimes in Europe, a UK Government Minister has been dragged to the Dispatch Box to defend his own Prime Minister’s murky and deep links to Russian oligarchs.

It tells us all we need to know about this Government that, in his previous role as Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister chose to party with the family of an ex-KGB agent, just weeks after the attempted assassination of British citizens by Russian state agents on our own soil.

It is utterly outrageous that the Prime Minister would nominate to the House of Lords someone who has promoted some of the very worst conspiracy theories in defence of the Putin regime. We are used to the Prime Minister putting his own interests before the interests of the British people, but on this occasion he has gone further by putting his personal friendship with the son and business partner of an ex-KGB agent before the safety and security of the British people. He has put his friendship with Lebedev ahead of his primary duty to the British public: to keep our country and our people safe and secure.

That is why Labour is today calling for the Government to publish the full security guidance on Mr Lebedev’s peerage, by which we mean the version before it might have been mysteriously airbrushed or sanitised, so that the British public can really understand the severity of the Prime Minister’s miscalculations and misjudgments. This is in the national interest, and it must happen immediately.

We also know that the Prime Minister flew to Italy to attend a party hosted by the Lebedevs just two days after attending a high-level NATO summit focusing on Russia in the wake of the Salisbury poisonings, without any officials present and without his security detail. We know that he met the former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev at that party. We need to know what was discussed at that party and why the Prime Minister thought it was a priority to go to that party to meet influential members of the Russian elite at that time.

This blasé attitude to national security is not just a one-off; it is part of a pattern of behaviour that dates back several years. There are countless examples of the Government playing fast and loose with our national security. Just look at the Conservative party’s ongoing reliance on donations from individuals with close links to the Kremlin. The most concerning is the £2 million of donations from Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Putin’s former deputy Finance Minister. She moved in Conservative inner circles, even playing tennis with the Prime Minister. We may never quite know just how much influence that money bought for Putin’s allies.

In connection to this, I am deeply concerned by the Conservative party’s use of lawfare to bat away the questions I have asked about potential national security threats that predate the issues we are discussing today. In February 2019, I wrote to the then chair of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), asking him to investigate donations by Ehud “Udi” Sheleg, who had been reported in the media as having strong connections to Russia and as probably not being able to afford the £1.8 million of donations that may or may not be connected to his being appointed treasurer of the Conservative party—I would not wish to speculate.

The reply I received from the right hon. Gentleman made it clear that Mr Sheleg should not need to reveal the source of his wealth. It also threatened me with libel action, with the right hon. Gentleman, who is now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, using the same tactics that Russian oligarchs have been using to silence criticism and block investigations.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I need to make sure that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the matter in hand, which is Lord Lebedev and the appointment process.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What I am trying to do is set out clearly the worrying pattern of behaviour, but I take your feedback and I will move on.

That brings us to the issue of the Russia report, the delay in publishing it and the failure to implement the vast majority of its recommendations until after Vladimir Putin clearly felt he could invade Ukraine with impunity. This is part of the challenge we face in standing up to the bullying and intimidation from authoritarian rulers around the world. The delays in implementing that report’s recommendations are deeply troubling. Why was this action delayed? We have repeatedly asked that in this House. Perhaps it was because on this Government’s watch we have seen the City of London become a laundromat for the dirty money of kleptocrats and because the Conservative party has been all too reliant on those highly questionable donations we are discussing today. We have also seen serious issues associated with the underfunding of our armed forces, which has left us with Putin being able to go on the march from Georgia to Crimea and authoritarian regimes having grown in confidence over the past decade because of the weakness of western leaders, because of the conflict of interests that undermines their authority. We are exposing that conflict of interests in this debate. It is time for us to shore up our national defences. That needs to be done through legislation such as the Bill that became the National Security and Investment Act 2021. Disappointingly, we have not seen a clear enough position on that, with the Government watering down definitions of critical national infrastructure in that Bill, which makes it harder for the Secretary of State to call in investments suspected of being a danger to our national security. Our legislation on foreign takeovers and investment is far weaker than the equivalent legislation of our allies in all the other Five Eyes countries.

Let me end my saying this: national security is the first duty of any Government, but Conservative Ministers have been putting roubles before resilience, and investment before integrity. We need to see what was in this security advice and we need to know on which date the Prime Minister received the security services’ concerns with regard to Lord Lebedev’s appointment. We also need to know why that was watered down. Appointments to the House of Lords should be on the basis of loyal public service to our country, not friendship with the Prime Minister. Yet the Prime Minister continues to dismiss vital advice time and again, even when Britain's national security is at stake, to serve his own personal interests. I therefore encourage Conservative Members to join us today in standing up for Britain’s national security.