The Ukraine Effect (European Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the Foreign Secretary said in his recent Statement on Ukraine marking 1,000 days since Russia invaded:

“Ukraine’s cause is a just one. … We need Ukraine to stay strong, and … they need us to stay strong by their side”.


In that respect, I salute the yellow and blue outfit of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which sends that very signal—she is always a sharp dresser, but particularly today—and I also welcome her excellent speech.

David Lammy also said in his Statement this week, quite rightly:

“This war matters greatly for Britain and the global order … When we support Ukraine, we are not just aiding its fight for freedom; we are also contributing to our fight for our freedom”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/24; cols. 162-63.]


Arguably, it is even more than that. While it is a welcome decision by President Biden, followed by Britain and France, to grant the Ukrainians the discretion that they have long pleaded for to use the long-range weapons supplied by allies to strike targets inside Russia, let us not underestimate the peril which not just Ukraine but we in the West are in.

I am delighted that this debate has benefited from the valedictory speech from the noble Lord, Lord Levene. I was never in the Ministry of Defence, but I was an EU adviser to Lloyd’s of London, albeit a long time before his chairmanship.

Edward Luce, the Financial Times’ chief US commentator, has written in the FT this week regarding President-elect Trump’s nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence to oversee the 18 US intelligence agencies that:

“Given Gabbard’s close affinity to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, she would be unlikely to get a low-level security clearance in normal times. Now she will be custodian to America’s most classified secrets. Should Gabbard be confirmed as director of national intelligence, America’s allies will surely re-evaluate the wisdom of sharing secrets”.


That was pretty up front as a statement, but it shows how the debate we are having today about the report from our European Affairs Committee, so ably led by the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, is even more pertinent and urgent that when the report was published 10 months ago.

With uncertainty and trepidation hanging over our expectations from Washington, it is even more important that the European end of the transatlantic partnership gets its act together on both security and defence, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said. My noble friend Lord Teverson spoke of how much EU-NATO complementarity has progressed, although deeper co-operative structures are needed, and that is what I mainly want to speak about.

I believe that neither the UK nor the EU can afford to be too precious in the search for the ties that bind when it comes to political, diplomatic, security and defence co-operation. I am not being so unrealistic as to ignore Brexit—if only I could—but we need to push for solutions which, while respecting some rules and limits, are hard-headed in keeping in view the tough reality of what challenges we jointly face and the substance of the goal we must reach.

We have reason to feel encouraged, because in its recent general election manifesto the Labour Party pledged to seek

“an improved and ambitious relationship with our European partners”,

and that, as part of that, a Labour Government would seek

“a new security agreement with the EU”.

We already have the promise of regular EU-UK summits, and the Foreign Secretary has participated in the Foreign Affairs Council. He has argued that:

“UK security is indivisible from European Security”,


and he has agreed with the EU high representative to establish a six-monthly strategic dialogue, with the first meeting early next year.

Let us not forget that Norway is ahead of us, having signed a security and defence partnership with the EU in May of this year. According to the EU press release,

“It covers existing areas of cooperation such as our common continued support to Ukraine, Norway’s participation in EU CSDP missions and operations, and its involvement in EU defence initiatives”.


Can the Minister confirm whether the UK Government are looking closely at this model? Of course, the difference is that Norway is an EEA, and therefore single market, member—that is perhaps a hint of what advantages such membership carries.

As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said, ideas for European defence co-operation are nothing new. Efforts to put some kind of order into the NATO-EU overlap and to fortify the European pillar have been going on for decades. In the 1950s, there was an attempt to set up a European defence community, but it was killed off by a vote in the French Assemblée Nationale just over 70 years ago, such that Europe then left security to NATO while it focused on economics. That knowledgeable and astute commentator Timothy Garton Ash recalled in an article earlier this year, just after our report was published, that the then French Prime Minister, Pierre Mendès France, explained the reasons his Parliament rejected the European defence community as

“too much integration and too little England”.

Mr Garton Ash mused:

“Might there also be a lesson there?”


He pointed out:

“Today, a European defence project would not be a single, clear, unified institution of the EU. That was the road not taken 70 years ago. Rather, it would be a European defence community with a lowercase d and c, connecting European, bilateral and national capabilities to the existing military operational core in Nato”.


So, the good news is that there is no longer any need to have these theological arguments.

During the NATO summit in Washington in July, our new Defence Secretary suggested that the UK could join EU defence initiatives even before a more formal pact is agreed. Can the Minister decipher this for us? Has the EU indicated any flexibility on this score?

Other speakers have covered the issue of sanctions, and I do not have the time to do that. They pointed out that the major challenge seems to be one of enforcement. There is a worrying story today about how some parts produced in the UK have somehow ended up in Russian drones. Both the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, and my noble friend Lady Suttie also spoke about the involvement of companies in British Overseas Territories in sanctions busting. This is a matter my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed has been taking up. So, obviously, we need to know a bit more about what is being done on that.

The Labour manifesto in July committed to working with allies to enable the

“seizure and repurposing of frozen Russian state assets to support Ukraine”.

That meant seizing the principal—the $300 billion—not just using the interest under the G7 initiative. Our report noted that the last Foreign Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, had suggested to us that there is a legal route to achieve that. Can the Minister tell us what this Labour Government are doing to implement their manifesto pledge to overcome the claimed legal obstacle, including any discussions they have had with the EU and other partners?

I am grateful to the wife of the noble Lord, Lord Banner, for the article, which I will read when I have tracked it down. There are suspicions that these frozen assets are being stored up to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations. I was not sure whether this is what the former Estonian Prime Minister and future EU High Representative Kaja Kallas meant when she told the Financial Times in February that:

“This is economic pressure we can place on the Russian economy to hasten the breaking point of this war”.


That was slightly ambivalent language; I hope I do not cause offence when I say that, but I was not clear. Finally, do the Government agree that the best idea is to let Ukraine use those assets now? Can they perhaps pitch to President-elect Trump that Ukraine would likely use perhaps half of the $300 billion to buy arms from US defence manufacturers, which is perhaps a temptation?