Speeches by Bryant.

“I completely agree. We are taking that action, and it will happen very swiftly. I am always slightly hesitant about timetables because, in my 25 years in Parliament, I have never known a Minister manage to deliver a timetable for putting legislation on the statute books that they thought they could deliver. I do not kn…”

“We could talk about the broader policy on Israel and Gaza at some length, though that is not my particular area of responsibility. Having looked a bit at what Ireland and Spain are trying to do—I think they are really the frontrunners in this—I would say that they are struggling to create legislation that they think wi…”

“Just to explain, HMRC has responsibility for any goods that cross in or out of the border, hence why HMRC is here. OFSI is also Treasury, OTSI is us in DBT, and sanctions policy lies with the Foreign Office.”

“It is sort of the equivalent of the diversion that we are trying to tackle, where we sell something from the UK to a third country and it then goes into Russia—there is another version, just as is there is with oil; that is why we are taking action on crude oil that is refined in other countries, which will similarly b…”

“We are not—we have removed 99.6% of all imports. I can try to find out what the 0.4% is, if you want, but we have been about as comprehensive as possible. I have heard the comments made in previous debates about us relying on Russian oil and gas, but that is simply not the case.”

“Pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs.”

“Because it is effectively declaring our impotence in some regard, and it would also imply that we think we should sanction in this area but are choosing not to. I think it is an odd request, if I am honest.”

“I am not going to produce a list of things that we are not sanctioning—I think that would be a complete own goal.”

“No—99.6% of all imports from Russia to the UK have been stopped. Sanctioning is different from preventing imports.”

“We have two ears and one mouth.”

“I think that is for the Foreign Office.”

“I do not know the answer to that question. Again, it will be difficult to produce an argument for why we are not sanctioning something without effectively recommending people to use it and, for that matter, producing a list of things that we might be thinking of sanctioning in the future. The bigger point I would make …”

“No, and it would be a very bad idea for us to publish such a thing, because we obviously want to reserve our right to be able to take further action wherever we can spot it. Sometimes the fact that we have spotted it is something that we do not want to make public until we take the sanctions measure.”

“I completely agree. It is one of the things that I have been committed to for a very long time. When I was a Minister in the Foreign Office, I suspended the Turks and Caicos Government because of allegations of corruption there. Oddly enough, I appointed Rob Rinder as the lawyer to deal with it. We, as a Government, ar…”

“It is better when we do take our European colleagues with us; it is just more effective. Similarly, we added 175 entities that are part of the illicit two rivers trading network yesterday. I could read your comments as welcoming the fact that we announced that yesterday, but I take the point about working at pace. I me…”

“Well, it is better.”

“We have taken a leadership role where we can, but the truth of the matter is that we have not always been able to take all of our European colleagues with us.”

“No, it is not into the UK.”

“If I can very briefly defend the previous Government, back in 2022—for all sorts of reasons that were discussed in the Foreign Affairs Committee—it was unclear to some members of the Government whether the UK was creating a new sanctions-developing policy of its own after Brexit or not. Sometimes we proceed alongside o…”

“Yes. I want to do it as soon as possible.”