Perhaps no one in this House has done more than the hon. Gentleman to expose the hybrid warfare and divide-and-rule tactics of Russia, but we are wide open to them, not least because a person can
give unlimited amounts of money to political parties if they are laundered through the bank account of a UK citizen. Call it, if you will, the Sheleg manoeuvre.
Ehud Sheleg, no doubt an honourable man, has given £3.3 million to the Conservative party, yet The New York Times revealed that a suspicious activity report from Barclays flagged that £2.5 million moved to Mr Sheleg from his father-in-law in Russia wound up in a UK account that then shifted £450,000 to the Conservative party. The New York Times reported that Barclays flagged the SAR with this statement:
“We are able to trace a clear line back from this donation to its ultimate source… Kopytov”—
the father-in-law—
“can be stated with considerable certainty to have been the true source of the donation.”
Along with a number of other hon. and right hon. Members, I flagged this to the National Crime Agency. A day or two later—the NCA did not spend an awful lot of time looking at this—a letter came back from Steve Rodhouse, its director of operations, which stated:
“As you will be aware, provided a donation comes from a permissible source, and was the decision of the donor themselves, it is permitted under PPERA. This remains the case even if the donor’s funds derived from a gift from an overseas individual.”
That is utter nonsense. It is completely ridiculous. No doubt Mr Sheleg is an honourable man, but the Sheleg manoeuvre could be exploited by all kinds of bad actors.
Finally, we in this House have defended a number of extremely brave journalists and former colleagues, such as Catherine Belton, Tom Burgis, Arabella Pike and Charlotte Leslie, who have all risked everything to raise a red flag about bad actors and threats of foreign influence, yet their thanks have been to be hounded in court by oligarchs who seek to rack up hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal bills to deter such people from telling the truth. If we are to defend whistleblowers, and I am pleased to see that provision in the Bill, surely this is the moment for the House to unite in refining, if not legislating for, a defence for people who make arguments that need such a defence.
We are in new times, and the return of great power competition is upon us. We need new defences, and this Bill is a chance to make good some of those defences now.