Speeches by Bryant.

“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.”

“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.”

“You mean in this Session? I do not know the answer to that. That is normally for the Chief Whip and the Leader of the House to decide.”

“Completely, because you will have to apply for a licence for any of those. Obviously, the precise legislation is still to be laid, but we intend to do so as soon as we can.”

“If you are knowingly evading sanctions, then you are breaking the law on sanctions and that is a criminal offence.”

“At the moment, you would talk to us; when the legislation comes in, you will have to seek a licence and be able to prove where it is going to go and where it is going to stay. I can give another ECJU example: say you were producing protective vests and you were selling them to the police force in another country. You w…”

“If you are knowingly expecting it to go to Russia, then you would be breaking the law. That is an offence.”

““Safe in the knowledge” is quite an interesting phrase to use there. If you are knowingly and/or, I think, recklessly—or should it be “knowingly and recklessly”?”

“First of all, as you just said, we have a good knowledge of the people who would be engaged in making such things, and the list that I was about to talk about starts with Armenia and includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Türkiye, Thailand, Serbia, India, the UAE, Vietnam, China and Malaysia. In each of those cou…”

“Actually, would it be useful for me to say which are the jurisdictions where we recommend extra due diligence?”

“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…”

“I will do it whenever you want.”

“I think we need to take concrete steps—obviously in accordance with international law, which is one of the things we have to bear in mind—to counter settlement expansion. The Minister for the Middle East and I are considering how we can best effect that. I do not know whether the Foreign Office wants to say anything mo…”

“Yes.”

“If you look at some of the common high priority list—I have got it here; it is quite extensive, and I will obviously not go through all of it—it includes photosensitive semiconductor devices, transistors other than photosensitive ones, and diodes. It is a fairly specific list. Some of that is produced in the UK, and we…”

“No, because I am not sure where you are going with this.”

“Yes.”

“We do not have a ban on the import of goods from settlement areas. I know there is an argument for us to have such a ban, and it is one of the things we obviously keep under constant review.”

“First, the world changes, and we note different versions of diversion or evasion of sanctions, so we want to make sure that we tackle that. That is particularly in relation to the Russian shadow fleet. It is not just that we wanted to tackle the fleet ships themselves, but one of the things we spotted more recently was…”