Speeches by Maynard.

“We are still taking fertiliser from Russia because we need its fertiliser.”

“Metals? Fertilisers?”

“I would be more confident if we did not have a pipeline with 80% of Russia’s oil exports coming out of it that two days ago was still not on that list—that is a big, chunky thing. Is that by far the biggest asset, or are there other assets of that size that have still not been sanctioned by the UK?”

“Do we have to, on something like that?”

“Fair enough, but what about publishing a set of principles for why you are not sanctioning things? Clearly, you have known about things like this pipeline for a long time, so that is not an oversight. You have made the decision not to sanction it—perhaps that was right—but there a whole load of other things that you ar…”

“Is it possible to get a list of what is still not sanctioned?”

“Why not lead?”

“If I may, I do not think Cayman was on that list. Cayman is one of the big three, along with the BVI and Bermuda. To give a flavour, you might have seen The Guardian today. This matters; we have $8 billion going through British island territories in, essentially, dodgy Russian stuff. We have $4.4 billion going through …”

“The Clerks can correct me if I wrong, but as per the information that we received, if a property is owned directly by a trust, there is no searchable register of trust beneficiaries recorded through the TRS. Where available, it can be requested by interested parties, subject to a legitimate interest test, and we really…”

“Moving to beneficial ownership, at the moment we have an improved situation in the UK, but it is pretty sub-satisfactory. I particularly want to ask you about property owned by a UK company that is controlled by a trust, or property owned directly by a trust, with a view to that information on beneficial ownership bein…”

“I have one small point—though, ultimately, it is not small. Yes, a ceasefire has been declared, but more than 600 people have been killed in Gaza since. This is far from a ceasefire, in practice.”

“Minister, given what you have just said, which I happen to completely agree with, about your view of the occupied territories and the illegality of those settlements, it does not sit well that we are not then acting on exactly what your sentiments are—and they are not just sentiments; they are facts—and putting that ba…”

“Okay, so all the more reason to be sanctioning it. We should be setting an example to our European allies to say, “We are sanctioning it. Get on with it.””

“If goods are identified as mislabelled, what steps are being taken to verify the origin of the goods?”

“I am resisting pulling up a four-year oil price chart right now, but we could do that. The oil price has moved around a lot in that period. I find it very weird that we are choosing to continue to not sanction a massive pipeline coming out of Russia with oil in it on account of markets. I do not think that that is what…”

“The Committee has looked into this, and we are very worried about the loopholes for products being produced in the occupied territories and coming on to British shores. We can focus on the goods, but we also really want to focus on the services, because that is every bit as big—if not a lot bigger. With the Chair’s per…”

“Yes. First of all, it is a weird euphemistic term, which I did not understand. Somebody described it to me today as “shakedowns”; I am not over the shoulder on that one, but essentially somebody says, “I’ve made a technical error,” and you say, “Yes, you have, and we’ll have some money for that, please.” They hand over…”

“I want to go there, because I am worried that we have a massive gap in enforcement and bad actors probably know that. If we are serious about sanctions enforcement, we need to close that gap really fast. I do not know what the answers are, and I am not expecting you to have them all, but let’s get the facts open so tha…”

“Whichever way, we have a really big problem.”

“Because if it is anything like that, obviously we have a really big problem. There are an awful lot more bad actors than that. That means HMG has not been doing what it should have been.”