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Government accused of allowing Russian oligarchs to offload UK properties in ‘fire sale’
The shadow levelling-up secretary has accused the government of allowing Russian oligarchs with links to the Kremlin to sell off millions of pounds in UK property to help “sustain the Putin regime”.
Speaking during Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) questions in the House of Commons yesterday, Labour MP Lisa Nandy accused the government of letting oligarchs with connections to Russian president Vladimir Putin off the hook under the current sanctions regime.
She asked housing secretary Michael Gove whether he felt ashamed as a result.
“How can you sit back as the housing secretary without any sense of shame? While just down the road, we’ve got Russian oligarchs linked to the Kremlin, who were offloading millions of pounds from the UK property market in a fire sale. This is the dark money that sustains the Putin regime,” she said.
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Ms Nandy said that Mr Gove could “set this right” later in the day by passing amendments to the Economic Crime Bill that aim “to put an end to the shameful situation that his party had presided over for too long”.
In response, Mr Gove said that Ms Nandy’s concerns will be addressed in the legislation the government is bringing forward, but insisted that “we have the strongest sanctions regime in the world”.
The Economic Crime Bill, which passed through the House of Commons later in the afternoon, contains several measures that include forcing foreign owners of UK companies to declare and verify their identities, with prison sentences of up to five years for those who fail to do so.
The bill will now go to the House of Lords and is expected to become law later this month.
During the DLUHC questions yesterday Sarah Owen, shadow minister for homelessness, rough sleeping and faith, questioned whether the government would consider “seizing the mansions of Russian oligarchs” if it failed on its promise to end rough sleeping by 2024, in a move she said would put “those empty bedrooms to good use once and for all”.
She also criticised the government’s method for collecting data on rough sleeping, which she described as “flawed”.
Rough sleeping minister Eddie Hughes did not respond directly to the question of seizing property but did respond to Ms Owen’s comments about the government’s rough sleeping data.
He said: “To a degree I understand part of the point the honourable lady is making. It is very difficult clearly to capture that information, which is why we trust local councils and local charities to do it, and we have the biggest validated by Homeless Link.
“And the honourable lady may have missed the fact that we’re publishing more data so that it will be available on a monthly basis. We’re working with local councils to make sure that that data is used appropriately to reduce the number of rough sleepers.”
The comments come weeks after the government’s latest rough sleeping count was released, which estimated that the number of people sleeping rough on a single night in England fell by 9% between 2020 and 2021.
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