Ukraine: Negotiations

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point about the need for air defences and their crucial nature. The UK, with our friends and our allies, including the Americans, who have just provided Patriot missiles as well, is seeking to ensure that we do everything we can to maintain the ability of Ukraine to defend itself. The noble Lord makes a really important point. While we were negotiating—while the Alaskan talks and other negotiations were going on—we saw an increase in the attacks on Kyiv by the Russians using those missiles. We will certainly do all we can to ensure that Ukraine can defend itself.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, as ever, children are paying a terrible price in this conflict. We know about the forcible deportation of some 20,000 children from Ukraine to Russia—it is probably a lot more than that—and deliberate attempts to erase their identity. Most recently, we have heard press reports of an adoption database featuring Ukrainian children categorised by their hair and eye colour, described by an NGO as a

“slave catalogue of Ukrainian children to adopt”.

What assurances can the Minister give that the UK Government will use every means possible with their international partners, including the USA, to ensure that the fate of those children will be a red line in any peace deal?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Is it not unbelievable that, in a war in Europe, a nation is using children to further its objectives? How deplorable is that? Sometimes, words fail us. In this awful situation, we are doing everything that we can. We have made monetary provision to support the agencies working to bring the children back; we have provided millions of pounds for that. We continue to raise this at the United Nations. In all the various other international bodies on which we are represented, we continually raise this issue; we will continue to do so. It is barbaric; it is an outrage. We should all do everything that we can to protect those children and bring them back.