Bobby Dean

Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I join the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House in thanking you and all the staff for playing a role in organising the remembrance events of the past week? I, too, would like to focus on Ukraine this week. Russia’s war is rumbling on and we are about to enter a long and cold winter, in which it looks like temperatures will drop below minus 20°C. We hear that Vladimir Putin has a vicious plot to attack the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, threatening the heat supply to the very homes in which families are trying to survive. As Russia makes advances, it feels like Britain and its allies have reached a bit of a stalling point. We are standing around worrying whether it is legitimate to seize Russian assets, and we are worried about potential future legal claims by the Russian state. All the while, Putin is pouring petrol into his war machine. I feel that the time for deliberation is surely over. Several legal routes have been proposed, and it is now time to act. In the meantime, one of the weapons that we have in our armoury is the sanctions regime against Russia. It is important not only to impose these sanctions, but to enforce them. It was quite shocking to learn this week that the Government were unable to explain why over £30 million-worth of Russian planes were imported into the UK. I note that the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation is much smaller than its equivalents in the US and the EU. In the debate that we may have about Ukraine before the end of the year, I wonder whether we could focus on the role of OFSI and determine whether it is adequate, and whether it has the resources to properly deal with the scale and importance of the UK sanctions regime.