Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)

My Lords, I too welcome this SI, as far as it goes—in particular, the expansion of the sanctions regime against ships that are used to facilitate Russian oil exports, the so-called shadow tankers to which the noble Lord referred. Could the Minister perhaps explain in a bit more detail what actual real-world impact that this will have on the number of shadow tankers that Russia uses and the amount of oil that Russia is currently able to export? I am slightly dubious as to how much real difference this will make, so I would be interested to know how it will work in reality. In particular, will this have any impact on the very dangerous ship-to-ship transfers that seem to be taking place off the coast of Greece, which are obviously an environmental disaster waiting to happen? The size of the shadow fleet is continuing to grow. I gather it is 70% bigger this year than it was last year. What other actions are we taking to deal with this problem? There would not actually be a problem with the shadow tankers, if there were not countries ready and willing to take the Russian oil. That brings me to another loophole that Russia is using to keep its oil exports running and under which this country is still importing oil products that originate in Russia. The loophole is that, if Russian oil is refined in another country, it is no longer considered to have originated in Russia. As a result, third countries—in particular, China, India and Turkey—are buying large quantities of Russian crude, processing it and selling it on. India is now importing 13 times as much crude from Russia as it was before the war started. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, direct imports of Russian oil into the UK have fallen from about £4.5 billion a year to pretty much zero, which is a good result. But UK imports of refined oil products from India, China and Turkey have all risen quite significantly, to around £2.2 billion in 2023. A significant proportion of those will have originated in Russia. There is an estimate of 5.2 million barrels of Russian-originated oil having been imported into the UK in 2023, mostly for the aviation industry. Apparently, about one in 20 UK flights has used Russian-originated oil. This laundering of oil through China, India and Turkey means that the UK is continuing to contribute, albeit indirectly, to Russia’s war coffers. Does the Minister recognise those figures and this problem? If he does not recognise those figures, how many Russian-originated oil products does he believe the UK is currently importing? What plans do the Government have to close the loophole? Given that a very big chunk of this comes through India, is this matter being taken into account in the trade agreement discussions with India?