Extracts from Commons
debate on sanctions
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General ():...Russian businesses listed
in London have a combined market capitalisation of more than £450
billion, or nearly half a trillion pounds. That is the money we
are talking about. It includes some of Russia’s largest
state-owned enterprises, and the Kremlin is hugely reliant on
those tax revenues. Banning them from raising debt in London will
further increase—massively so, I submit—the burden on the Russian
state. Global giants such as Gazprom will
no longer be able to issue debt or equity in London. In the past
seven years, Russian companies have raised £8 billion on UK
markets. That ends today...
(Haltemprice and Howden)
(Con):...Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary said that this
legislation would immediately be applied to Sberbank, VEB,
Sovcombank and Otkritie. These measures will undoubtedly inflict
damage on the Russian economy and punish the Russian state, but
we must go further. It may be that I have not completely
comprehended the Minister’s intentions, but why are we applying
this immediate legislation only to those specific banks? The hon.
Member for Rhondda () made a good point on this.
Why not immediately apply it to VTB, Gazprombank
or Alfa-Bank—Russia’s second, third and fourth biggest banks?
(Stirling) (SNP):...We would
like to see equivalent sanctions imposed on the Belarusian
economy as have been on Russia, because they are a joint
enterprise. Belarus is a client state of the Kremlin, and has
demonstrated that it is every bit as culpable in this as Russia
itself. We want to see sanctions on all oil, gas and extracted
mineral imports to the UK, including delisting Rosneft from the
London Stock Exchange. We want to ban payments from UK customers
and registered companies to Gazprom in
particular and other state-owned energy corporations. We want to
see the sanctions imposed remain in place—this is the point that
I made earlier about the time limit on them—until every
centimetre of Ukrainian territory is back in Ukrainian hands.
This needs to be a long-term commitment, as has been said by
others, that cannot just be allowed to wither within a few
months...
(Isle of Wight) (Con):...The
hon. Lady brings me to a point about how oligarchs work. To go
back to Ukraine, somebody such as Dmitry Firtash, who is now
wanted by the Americans, was set up by Gazprom and
Putin. He was given sweetheart deals to import vast amounts of
cheap energy into Ukraine. The vast profits that he garnered from
those sweetheart deals gave him a good life but, more
importantly, he funnelled that money into buying up chunks of
east Ukrainian industry, effectively as a front for the FSB, the
former KGB. Critically, he also used it to purchase politicians
and to fund the pro-Russian political parties in eastern
Ukraine...
: This is not my main
point, but I just point out that it is not just Britain; after
all, the chairman of Gazprom and
the former German Chancellor is another such example...
For context, CLICK HERE
Extracts from report
stage (Lords) of the Health and Care Bill
(CB):...In
respect of the security and humanitarian consequences, yesterday,
the Government welcomed Shell’s decision to
sever its relationship with Gazprom
yet Ministers may have seen an important story in the Health
Service Journal suggesting that, over the last two years, at
least 17 NHS trusts have continued to rely on gas sourced
from Gazprom
which has confirmed today that it continues to get its gas
supplies through Ukraine. Decarbonising the health sector will
take pound notes out of the hands of dictatorial regimes that are
engaged in acts of aggression. For all these reasons, the clarity
that these government amendments provide, putting on a sound
statutory basis the ability to take fundamental action across the
NHS, is most welcome...
For context, CLICK HERE
