Government agrees to Committee’s recommendation for Central Asia 5 + UK diplomatic meeting
25 January 2024
The Foreign Affairs Committee publishes the Government’s response to its report, Countries at crossroads: UK engagement in Central Asia.
- Read the Government response (HTML)
- Read the Government response (PDF 408KB)
- Inquiry: The UK’s engagement in Central Asia
- Foreign Affairs Committee
The Committee’s report called for the Government to engage consistently and at a high level with Central Asian countries, while ensuring that UK financial services and the City of London could not continue to be used to shelter illicit finance from the region.
In its response, the Government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation to hold a diplomatic meeting in 2024 between the UK and the “Central Asia 5”: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and says it is exploring the best format for a meeting.
The Government also agrees with the Committee on the value of senior Ministerial engagements with the region.
It cites visits conducted since the Committee launched its inquiry, including: the then-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly’s visit to Kazakhstan in March 2023, the first visit by a British Foreign Secretary in two decades, as well as visits by the Minister for Europe Leo Docherty and Minister for Industry and Economic Security Nus Ghani. There have also been a number of “firsts” in terms of bilateral visits from senior ministers visiting the UK from the region.
However, it does not spell out its plans for Ministerial engagements and does not pledge to deliver a visit to Central Asia by the Prime Minister or a Secretary of State, as the Committee had recommended.
Discussing illicit finance, the Government response states that the proceeds of corruption “are not welcome in the UK”. The Committee’s report criticised the Government for under-enforcing prosecutions for financial crime, which it said helped to facilitate kleptocratic autocracies in Central Asia.
Today’s response says that the Government is providing £400m to fund economic crime enforcement over the next three years, including an additional 475 financial crime investigators and an expansion of the National Crime Agency’s Combatting Kleptocracy Cell.
However, the Government does not respond to the Committee’s recommendation to close off opportunities for Russian sanctions evasion in the City of London, a key form of illicit finance coming from Central Asia.
Chair's comment
Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Alicia Kearns MP, said:
“It is promising that the Government has agreed to pursue a “Central Asia 5 + UK” meeting in 2024. Central Asia lies along a fault line between two of the most significant disruptors of the international world order: Russia and China.
“Diplomatic engagement in the region is vital and we are pleased to see that the Government is finally treating Central Asia with the seriousness it deserves.
“It is encouraging that the Government is putting fresh funds into the National Crime Agency and creating new posts. But it remains to be seen whether these actions will be enough to stem the flow of illicit finance from Central Asia through the City of London.
“There remains an enormous mismatch between the resources of state investigators and those they investigate. Unless the Government steps up, UK institutions will continue to enable money and reputation laundering for kleptocrats. We are asking for the Government’s actions to be reviewed in a year or two, to judge if it has made progress.
“When it comes to corruption, it’s the people of Central Asia who suffer the most. It’s not acceptable to let Central Asian money enter the UK without question. In the face of Russia’s ongoing attempts to exert influence through the region, the UK needs to be a more visible player.”
Further information
Image: UK Parliament/Tyler Allicock