Chris Bryant

I am as committed to remaining within the European convention on human rights as I ever was, as are the UK Government. It would be a derogation of our international standing around the world if we departed from it. That is one of the many reasons that I oppose not only the Conservative party, which seems to have gone doolally in recent years, but those Members who were elected as Conservatives and have now joined another political party. I want to make it absolutely clear to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East and to others who have referred to these issues that Kashmiri Britons are of course listened to. The kind of stories that we have heard concern us. The hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) pushed in the other direction on Brexit, but he made a good point with which I completely agree. I might slightly disagree with him about the precise amount of harm that Brexit has done to our trade opportunities in the UK, but I note that a very large number of UK businesses no longer export to the European Union, and that is a massive failure for the UK. That is why we are keen to secure a better deal with the European Union, and that is what we are working on. He talked about sanctions and Russia. I am appearing before the Select Committee on which he sits, so he gets many bites of the cherry. I say to the Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), that when I come to talk about trade sanctions in the next few weeks, I will be happy to go into the specific details that he has raised on Russia. I gently say to the hon. Member for Witney that I get a bit irritated when I hear Lib Dems talking about Russia, because I remember being in this House in 2014 when Russia first invaded Crimea. I know he was not in the House, but the Liberal Democrats were part of the Government. It was not just that Government but many other Governments who essentially allowed Putin to take Crimea with impunity, which has left us with some of the problems we have today. I completely agree with him that we need to debilitate the Russian system as much as possible. We have introduced sanctions on entities, including India’s Nayara Energy Ltd, to ensure that we disrupt Russia’s energy revenues. We are undermining the shadow fleet wherever possible. We have announced a further 500 sanctions.