My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, reminded us, this is an emergency Bill. Your Lordships’ House has expedited it swiftly. In that regard, we should be pleased with how much scrutiny we have been able to pack into such a short time. The fact that there were 62 government amendments and two other amendments on Report indicates that quite a lot of work has been done, not necessarily all by us. I commend everybody who has participated in this, on Opposition Benches and the Benches opposite, towards a process where—I hope—Ministers believe that this is a better Bill than the one we received.
Looking forward, much hope is vested in the subsequent Bill. It is clear that the Government should expect that, when it comes, the level of scrutiny will be much higher and normal service will be resumed in the amount of time we expect to be available to give a quality look at it. In the meantime, we await the statutory instruments needed to drive this Bill and look forward to the six-week review on how commencement is moving forward.
I join the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in thanking the Ministers—the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the noble Lords, Lord Ahmad and Lord Callanan—and their various Whips who have been here at different times. I particularly commend the Bill team. It is quite clear they must have lost an awful lot of sleep and weekends to get where we did; now all they have are a couple of dozen statutory instruments to sort out—so no pressure. I thank them very much for their hard work and thank the private offices of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, and others.
I also thank the Opposition Front Bench—the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and her able sub the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. Of course, I give particular props to the home team of my noble friends Lady Kramer, Lord Thomas and
Lord Clement-Jones, and of course Sarah Pughe, our legislation adviser, without whom everything would be incoherent.
In sending the Bill back to the Commons, we should remember that it is not an anti-Russian Bill. It is an anti-oligarch Bill and an anti-kleptocrat Bill. Of course, some of those criminals come from Russia. We should also turn the fire of this legislation on kleptocrats from Belarus and other such places and, in due course, on criminals from all around the world. This is against not the people of Russia but the criminals who have robbed the people of Russia, and we should remind ourselves of that. We look forward to the next phases of legislation in this area.
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