The House of Commons recently had the second reading of the Financial Support for Ukraine Bill, which makes provision for loans or other financial assistance to be provided to the government of Ukraine. In his role as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Richard opened and closed the debate on behalf of His Majesty's Opposition.
Richard Fuller MP said:
The Conservative Party fully supports the government on this Bill. I did however have a number of questions for the Minister:
1. Under the G7 agreement to provide Ukraine with approximately $50 billion from the extraordinary revenue acceleration (ERA) loan between Dec 1st 2024 and December 31st 2027, the UK's share is £2.26 billion. I questioned what discussions the Minister has had with the Secretary of State for Defence about the timings and scale of those distributions?
2. I asked the Minister to update the House on the total value of Russian assets seized by the G7, and on the total assets seized by UK jurisdictions? The last estimates we had were in March 2023, when the amounts were £48 billion, and £18 billion respectively. I also asked for a breakdown of the type of assets seized.
3. I asked about the use of anticipated income streams from Russian assets to repay the loans and in particular:
a) Has there been any modelling of the future flows of anticipated income from seized Russian assets that will be used to repay the loans?
b) Has the Treasury made an assessment of the expected period for their repayment? c) Is there a forecast or estimate for the anticipated revenues available in the planned 6-monthly repayment tranches?
4. What priority will the repayment of these loans have compared with other loans made to Ukraine?
5. Finally, I asked the Minister to confirm whether it is still Labour policy to increase defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP, when that might be reached and whether the commitments contained in this Bill will be included in such estimates?
Richard's contribution can be watched at https://youtu.be/w1S_ZEFXJiU?si=csTAuIANI0Ghb6Zs
