Ukraine

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, particularly in her suggestion that it is not too early to start thinking about the long term. She is quite right.

I say to my noble friend Lord Soames, who is no longer in his place, how much I admired his contribution to our discussion. I know we will have many more quality contributions of that kind from him, and it is a great pleasure to have him in our House.

A lot of wise things have already been said in this debate. We have reached the point in our discussion where much of the important ground has been covered one way or another by previous speakers. I intend to be brief.

I think there is widespread understanding that we are at something of a turning point in this war. The bravery and resilience of the Ukrainian people and their leadership was exemplified by President Zelensky in his remarkable performance yesterday, crucially underpinned by the military assistance given by the allies. That has led to a level of Ukrainian success in the field that has come as a fairly nasty shock to the Russians; the situation on the ground is not one that they either wanted or expected. However, when they gear up for the next offensive, they are not likely to make precisely the same mistakes. It seems to me that they will be better organised and their attempt at combined-force operations will be much more effective. General Gerasimov, who is no fool and whose prestige is now directly engaged, and for that matter Putin, even though his position is not necessarily in danger, must be conscious of the damage done to their reputation for competence. There is not a lot more that they have to claim in that regard. All those factors mean that we shall see a different quality of military performance when fighting really resumes. Economy is not going to be the Russians’ main consideration; I think they are going to throw everything they have at it, so the challenge to the Ukrainian forces could be formidable.

HMG have given real leadership in supporting Ukraine’s military capability. I commend the Government on the absolutely consistent and strong role that they have played, frequently being the catalyst for action by allies that might not otherwise have occurred, or certainly not have occurred in sufficiently good or timely a way as has been the case as a result of the actions of our Government. Perhaps we are at another of those turning points in the equipment debate, now that the UK has undertaken to train pilots. This is against the background of the rather curious charade which has been played out over previous weapons decisions—I take tanks as an example—whereby the allies start out by saying that a given weapon or munition is either too escalatory to risk in the theatre, too sophisticated for the Ukrainians to master, or insufficient in supply or inappropriate. There were all those things and you could not tell, frankly, whether they were real reasons or excuses but they then vanished at the 11th hour.

This game of red lines being put in place, defended and then lifted at a late hour is a rather odd way of going on. I hope that we can, as an alliance, do less of this in future. There is clearly an important decision to be taken about air power and I hope that the Minister, when he speaks, will be able to respond to the question of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup: where does the UK place its action in offering training for jet aircraft? Is it going to be followed by supply and do we reckon that it is part of a short or immediate response to military need, or is it actually related to a much longer view of the kind of armament that Ukraine will need? It sure is going to have to be an armed country when the war comes to an end.

Turning to the post war for a moment, one has only to think about the consequences of not helping Ukrainians to defend themselves successfully to realise how important that task is. There will be no acceptable basis for ending the fighting if Russian forces have not been driven from Ukrainian territory and are still occupying it. If there is no end to the fighting, there is no basis for negotiation—and no negotiation means no legal basis for security in Europe. I take issue slightly with my former colleague the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, when he says that it is all about Ukraine. A great deal of it is about Ukraine but it is also about European security, and that is why its fight is our fight. It is about European security and the whole of our continent. Clearly, we therefore have to be in a position not only to secure the future of Ukraine as a free and democratic country but to secure a continent in which we can live in reasonable stability.

I want to use the word “peace” but I have a very unhappy feeling that the Europe we will inherit after the end of this war is not going to be quite as peaceable or relaxed, if I put it that way, as the political climate that we have enjoyed since the fall of the wall and German unification. It seems that we are going to be in a more militarised continent, one where our defence spending will be at a higher level on a sustained basis. That will be so for not just this country but the whole of the alliance. We will be coping with an aftermath of decisions and difficulties. This poses the question: are we moving towards an attempt—with success, I hope—at once again resuming co-operative security in Europe, or will we be dealing with a Russia that is contained and where the objective of the exercise is to prevent more damage rather than to return to any kind of active or positive relationship? These seem to be some of the choices that we are going to have to confront.

There are questions of what happens to sanctions, over what period they can be lifted and how we balance the need to demonstrate that there is a cost of war to regimes like Russia’s against the issue of the long-term future of the Russian people—who are also victims of the actions of their leadership. These are going to be very difficult issues. It will behove us to start thinking about how we handle some of them and laying out some of the options for ourselves, because we may have to make very difficult choices and we need to be united about them. There would be nothing worse than the West falling apart when it comes to trying to deal with the consequences and the aftermath of war.

To conclude, I agree very strongly with those who say that the Ukrainians’ fight is our fight because their security is part of ours. While they make the sacrifice with their lives, the least we can do is offer our maximum support to help them towards their success.

Ukraine

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I was in Germany when the wall fell. It was a marvellous moment to have the whole of our continent back instead of being faced by a line through the middle of Germany—just a few hundred miles from us, after all. That was, for practical purposes, as far east as one could go in those days. I never thought that I would have the pleasure of seeing all that reversed in my lifetime, but it was. Now we travel backwards as Russia occupies Ukraine.

It is pretty clear, I think, that Putin intends to oust President Zelensky and his Government and imprison him if he can, if not worse. A puppet regime will be installed, and the country will be ruled with an iron fist to counter what I think will be the inevitable insurgency.

I have to say, I have some doubts about the thesis that Putin really fears democracy, certainly in any normal sense of the word. I think he has a profound contempt for it, which is why there is some trust in the thesis that he has almost certainly taken on more than he thinks and understands in trying to hang on to a Ukraine that has learned about different ways of running society. I hope that will prove to be the case.

Sadly, as the speeches in this House have already indicated, we should not imagine that this situation is going to be rapidly reversed by economic sanctions: we are talking about years at best, provided sanctions are maintained. What the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, said about China in that respect is well taken. That is an area where we will have to do some work.

In addition to the kleptocracy unit, the Government and the Prime Minister are going to need a large and well-funded—properly funded—unit to chase sanctions evasion. It is certainly going to happen, particularly in a country as well practised in criminality as Russia. On the other hand, effective enforcement may well have some beneficial political effects in that it will undermine the deal that Putin made with the oligarchs that they could make and use their money freely provided that they kept out of politics. Their political neutrality will have been for nothing, so, potentially, some destabilisation of the regime may begin.

As a signatory to the Budapest memorandum, this country has a special obligation to continue to help Ukraine. We cannot, must not, just leave Ukraine to its fate. We should certainly continue to give Ukraine the aid we can, including military aid, though we must be careful not to pursue policies which merely aggravate its suffering.

As other noble Lords have said, there will be an early need for humanitarian aid, and there are going to be refugees. This country will not be on the front line in terms of numbers, but I trust that in the case of those who want to come to the UK, there will not be prolonged arguments as to whether they qualify to do so or whether they can be allowed to work here.

What has happened has much wider significance, of course, than the events in Ukraine, serious and extensive as these are. As other noble Lords have noted, the story of Putin tearing up the paper on which the post-war European order has rested started in 2008 in Georgia, well before the annexation of Crimea in 2014. During that time, he had considerable evidence that the political price to be paid for illegal activity would be low. We have been very slow off the mark in countering Putin’s agenda. Sanctions and reinforcing the borders of NATO to prevent any further land grabs by him are a very important but belated start in reversing the price to Putin of his aggressive policies, but we have to make that price still steeper. The Government need to put more resource and effort behind their correct contention that the security of the Euro-Atlantic area is the UK’s main focus. The peace dividend is long over.

If our aim is to bring about an isolated pariah state, not only must Europe end energy dependence on Russia; we must also increase our political resilience, rendering ineffective Russian malign interference in democracy, Putin’s manipulation of our political processes, and the daily misinformation and disinformation activities of his agencies—in sum, the hybrid warfare of which Russia is such a successful exponent. Other noble Lords have mentioned this, and it is an important part of our broadening policy.

Yesterday, in the other place, the Prime Minister implied that tackling online issues could await the online safety Bill, but that is some way off. We are admittedly in for the long haul, but we cannot wait years to get going on what is a Europe-wide issue, in respect of which some countries are much more vulnerable than the UK.

So, success requires close daily co-ordination across our continent. Ad hoc UK co-operation with the rest of Europe in pursuit of our wider security goals will not be adequate to achieve our aims. We need daily, close, structured co-operation with both the Governments and the institutions of the rest of Europe.

National Security Situation

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, who has just laid out some of the issues that we face over Syria, which are very difficult. I also welcome the tough-minded clarity that my noble friend the Minister showed in his remarks on the threat posed by Russia.

I do not envy the task faced by the modern policymaker on national security. As others have said, we face a fast-shifting scene in which there are few obvious anchorages for a country such as ours. The international scene has greatly changed since Madeleine Albright’s short-lived “unipolar moment”—do noble Lords remember that? It has moved in a direction which is to the significant disadvantage of the West—which I think is still a useful and valid term—and in ways which I think are increasingly downright hostile to some of our fundamental interests. I very much fear that movement in that direction has still further to go. The picture is sombre and dangerous.

International terrorism is with us for the foreseeable future. As the right reverend Prelate just pointed out, the Middle East is in turmoil and heading in directions which are both dangerous for it and capable of sparking much wider conflagration. We should not forget how tense and fragile that area is. Europe in particular faces immediate and increasing aggressive activity on the part of Russia, as has been well said, which has spent its national capital on developing hybrid military capability and nuclear capabilities which, in the absence of much else, it shows an alarming tendency to want to use and exploit. It intends to do us harm inside our societies as well as externally. We should not forget that national security these days has to do with the integrity of our political systems as well as our safety. Declining powers—and Russia is a declining power—can do a lot of damage on their way down.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, mentioned China, and I want to say a little something about that. It is the other major autocracy, but the challenge it poses is much more complex, long-term and, frankly, important, even than Russia. If we do not meet it, we will not only fundamentally change, or allow the change of, the current international power balance but undo the western-originated framework of international laws and institutions that have been built up, essentially by the West, since the Second World War and under whose umbrella we shelter today. This is, as has been well said, the international law-abiding framework that we have at the moment. I will come back to that.

In deciding how the UK should respond to the challenges that it faces, we cannot escape a fundamental question about our own behaviour as a nation: do we want to be an active player, or do we basically want to opt out? I am not really getting at Brexit with this, much as I think there are elements of it that weaken our hand, but for me two events spell out the worry that I have. The UK suffered, as we know, an unprovoked, lawless and highly dangerous attack from Russia on our domestic soil—not in some far-off place but here, in Salisbury. We received from our allies very considerable backing and a display of solidarity, which has greatly strengthened our hand in dealing with the aftermath—and aftermath there will be; we are far from finished with this story.

In this context, I wish that the National Cyber Security Centre had not waited until now to make known to a wider audience its concerns about Russian penetration of our networks, with the implicit threat of a forthcoming cyberattack on our critical national infrastructure. Cocooning people from the risks that they face until they become imminent does no service. People who live in ignorance will harbour a false sense of security, are likely to be less resilient to attack than they could and should be and will undervalue the help that they receive from others.

This is my point: the polling on the UK’s military participation in upholding the international ban on the use of chemical weapons in Syria shows uncomfortably lukewarm popular support for UK participation. I know that some people will say that that had to do with the question of consulting Parliament; that is true, but only up to a point. There are elements to it and it betokens a lack of trust in government—I am not talking about this Government, but government generally—for some time on the part of the public. It needs to be fixed by much more frank discussion than we get about the issues we face.

My worry about the polling is that it tells us that the public do not seem to see that, if the UK opts out of joining its allies in defending principles it has authored and indeed upheld in the past, it will get less in return. Solidarity is reciprocal. Mr Trump may not be the nation’s favourite President but, as has just been said, the United States’ commitment to European security upholds our freedoms and the Prime Minister is quite right to seek to get on with him. There are some fundamentals here that we should not forget, because nobody ever influenced anybody by holding their nose.

Far from opting out, this country needs to give real substance to the slogan “global Britain”. Perceptions of weakness increase the dangers we face. Being global is not primarily about new trade ties or reviving Commonwealth links, welcome as these are; it is about facing up to the real security challenges. We have done well in combating the terrorist threat and successive Governments deserve credit, though there is still much to be done on the integration front. I also endorse what has been said about the importance of policing in this context. It is not enough simply to ring-fence the counterterrorism capability in this area. We are active in helping defend the security of the NATO area against Russian provocations and harassment. Those two important contributions bear directly on our own security. But on the other hand, the UK has not been in the forefront on Ukraine, which, among other things, is about the rule of law on our own continent, and rather important. We have yet to have our cyberdefences truly tested, although I acknowledge and support the fact that serious work has been done in this area. However, we do not yet know how successful we have been.

Our growing defence relationship with France has helped us with the defence of our own shorelines and skies, but we should listen to the increasingly urgent calls of our senior officers for more money for defence. The Government tell us that it is their first duty, and my goodness, they need to make good on that. Frankly, it is hard to know where to start, but for my money I would certainly like to see a significant regrowth in the size and capability of the Royal Navy. That is because some of the greater challenges we face lie in the Far East—I come back to China. The main burden undoubtedly falls on the Americans, but there is reciprocity in all of that, and if we do not make a contribution as European allies—and we are rich enough to do so—we cannot expect the same degree of support we have had hitherto in Europe. We also need to develop our relations with countries like Japan and South Korea.

Let us be clear about what is at stake. China is a politico-military-economic challenge. Most Europeans, the UK included, have focused on China as a marketplace—import and export. But China is making an undisguised effort to become the greatest technological power in the world. The one belt, one road initiative brings a Chinese investment strategy, which includes converting debt into equity stakes in the economies of the countries along the route—with the attendant political influence that will bring—right to the borders of Europe.

Part of maintaining our autonomy is to develop our own technological capabilities, and we are well placed to compete in several areas, provided we get on with and implement an industrial strategy worthy of the name. We have to participate in the fourth industrial revolution with every sinew we have available. It is crucial in the end to our capacity to build our national security. That agenda and national prosperity are closely related.

What we should not do, however, is fail to be hard-headed about the ownership of valuable intellectual property, the handing over of which the Chinese have made a condition of entry into their market. We have to resist this, and we should focus not just on the protection of technologies with military or dual-use capabilities but on ones with transformative economic significance. The underpinning of future power is economic, as I said, and in short, we need a strategy. Do we, as allies, talk to each other about management of relations with China? I do not think so. I grant that it is not easy, given the Trump style, although some of the measures he is taking may well yield results. Long term, however, we need a western strategy, and I do not see it. That is one of the challenges to our future strength.

What I have just been talking about is not national security in the narrower politico-military sense in which it is often used, but it is about the future organisation of the world that our offspring will inherit. The West has had it good for nigh on 70 years, with our rules and our way of life being the winning model. We cannot now take that for granted. We need to defend and promote it actively, and the UK should be there, doing its bit.

Iraq Inquiry

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, this is a definitive and exceptionally valuable report, even if it has been a long time in gestation. It has not changed the overall view I had already come to about the Iraq war, but I did not expect it to, and I doubt that I am alone in that. What it does so excellently is to tell the factual narrative in compelling detail and draw conclusions which are well supported by the text. It is the very fairness of the judgments made that renders them so cogent. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, rightly remarked, their tone contrasts markedly with the tone of some current comments, which are beneath those who make them.

I cannot claim to have read all 12 volumes, but I have read a couple. Volume 4, which relates to the use of intelligence, is a telling narrative and I want to focus on it for a moment. It tells a sad story of professional error, exaggeration and political manipulation of information which has left a damaging legacy of suspicion and mistrust of the agencies and of government generally which we see played out in many contexts, even more than a decade later. For instance, I see expressions of it in our current debate about the investigatory powers legislation.

The initial intelligence error arose from what the report terms the “ingrained belief” that Saddam Hussein still possessed weapons of mass destruction and was still pursuing the goal of obtaining them. Such fragile assumptions—which, as other noble Lords have rightly remarked, were widely, in fact I think universally, shared in the intelligence community—were the starting point for a disastrous chain of events. That demonstrates that even if everybody believes something, it is not necessarily right.

The manipulation occurred as the result of the desire to find intelligence to support policy and to use it to make the public case for intervention. JIC material was embedded in a political document. Moreover, in the search to demonstrate that Iraq represented a direct threat to UK security, unassessed and entirely false intelligence was brought into play. The JIC assessment then became the political benchmark against which Saddam Hussein’s response was judged. An intelligence assessment became a policy document. Saddam Hussein was on to a hiding to nothing because if, as he repeatedly did, he denied possessing weapons of mass destruction, he was seen as being guilty of hiding them. On the other hand, had he acknowledged possession, he would have made the case for military action.

When one reads the story of this episode, one has the feeling that the way intelligence was used did not really matter to many, although not all, of those who were using it because the view was that even if it was subsequently criticised, that criticism would be overwhelmed by the discovery of the hidden WMD stocks: ends justifying means.

So what are the lessons? In the intelligence field, changes have been made in the way intelligence is assessed and in presentation to make clearer to Ministers the level of confidence in any given judgement. Ministers have shown they understand the perils of intelligence misuse in public. The House will recall that during the coalition Government, when it came to whether there should be a military response to Assad’s possession and use of chemical weapons, the Government released an unadorned JIC assessment. It did not make the Government’s case, and if somebody thought it would, they should not have expected it to do so.

We already know that the use of intelligence in court is fraught with difficulty and, although the problems are different, they exist with the use of intelligence in the wider public arena. I reckon it should be the exception. However, in a world of hybrid and cyber warfare, such sources may be uniquely valuable and central to a public understanding of what is happening, so we cannot not rule out the use of intelligence in public entirely. The policy for which they provide evidence has to carry conviction in its own right.

The events recounted in volume 4 of the report would have been much less likely if the centre of Mr Blair’s Government had been operating properly. At this point, I come to the issue of sofa government. The disregard for the conventional institution and processes of government had set in before the intervention in Iraq loomed, but it was greatly accelerated by that intervention. Special advisers must never again be allowed line authority over civil servants or be able to interfere in professional intelligence assessment. Circumstances must not arise in which intelligence from untested sources is handed to Ministers unassessed. Above all, Cabinet government and collective responsibility must function if trust in government is to be maintained.

When I advised David Cameron to set up a national security council, I had in mind three main considerations. The first was the need, for which the then Cabinet committee system did not adequately provide, to bring foreign policy and domestic security together in one place for decision and to increase the Government’s ability to operate across the piece. Secondly, in an era of the increasing importance of intelligence to policy-making, it made sense to create a forum for direct discussion between the agency heads and senior Ministers. The National Security Council now provides this.

My third and overriding consideration was indeed to try to prevent sofa government and instead to provide regular and inescapable time for consideration of the complex threats and challenges to the security of this country that the weekly Cabinet meeting agenda does not in reality provide. I recall my time as Deputy Cabinet Secretary. Foreign affairs came right at the end and tended to be squeezed. No system can be proof against perversion nor, as others have said, against operating on wrong information. I hope that some of the changes that have been made, and to which the Minister has alluded, will prove to have made sofa government less tempting and less likely.

Another part of the design was the proposal to create a fully fledged parliamentary committee to oversee the intelligence agencies. The heads of the agencies, to their credit, supported the need for much more credible accountability. It is certainly arguable that, had the current arrangements existed during Mr Blair’s Administration, some of what we witnessed might not have taken place and the Government as a whole might have been more resilient to American pressure.

However, there is the other side of this issue. It is a point made in the current edition of the Economist, and by a noble Lord earlier, and it is important. We must not allow this episode in our history, or the conclusions we draw from it, to prevent, deter or discourage us from continuing to play an active role in international politics.