My Lords, I believe that on balance it is necessary to renew the order, simply because not to renew it would send the wrong message,
but I agree with many of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I spoke on this issue back in 2018—I will not repeat the whole of that speech, as that would be to test the patience of the Committee. I used that opportunity to pay tribute to Marina Litvinenko, who fought so hard against the Home Secretary of the day for the public inquiry that should have come almost automatically but did not. The reality is that, because of the many delays, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun had years in which to move out any assets that they had in the UK or within the scope of the UK. From the moment that the order was established, it was unlikely that it would have any personal impact on them, but at least it sent some sort of message.
At the time, I asked the Minister of the day to be sure that all assets were encompassed by the various definitions, including crypto-assets, and I received an assurance that they were. Is there an ongoing mechanism to make sure that, as new financial mechanisms develop, they are covered and automatically caught by the order? That would be a useful discipline to have in these instances.
I was also concerned to know to what extent these two individuals would be able to make use of Crown dependencies and overseas territories, many of which do not have a public register that would enable any civil society person to identify whether they were making use of financial services capabilities in those locations. Without that, the UK or the enforcement arm, presumably the Metropolitan Police, would need to initiate an investigation into assets in the names of the two individuals and into any shell companies that they might be involved in or any other kind of entities that were making use of those Crown dependencies and overseas territories. I am not sure how active that process is and whether we are serious about making sure that these two individuals are at least excluded from UK-related financial capacity.
I also asked about property ownership. As the Minister will be aware, we have public registers of beneficial owners, but not yet in the case of property, although I believe that that process is in train. I very much hope that he can assure me that the necessary monitoring is in place to ensure that neither of those individuals, or the shell companies that they use, has managed to get around the system by using the loophole of the absence of beneficial ownership.