Defence Policy: Deterrence

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for initiating this debate, and I hope that the Hansard is sent to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. Of course, deterrence must remain a cornerstone of our defence policy, otherwise there is no reason to have one at all. But it is also important to realise that other countries have a very good grasp of our defence capacity. I do not know whether other noble Lords watched the American series, “Corridors of Power”, a PBS production, from which you could see that the Americans had a much clearer grasp of the limitations of European power than we appear to have.

We need to define much more clearly what we wish to do, then we need to find the resources to do it. I am not terribly impressed with the 2.5% or 3% argument. What we need to look at is what we need and a pathway for achieving it. I was struck last Friday in our debate when the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, pointed out that we had given Ukraine £172 million-worth of equipment, but that it would cost £2.7 billion to replace it. That shows how out of date it was, but it also shows how much money we need to spend to bring our forces up to a level where they can do their job. That is far more important than percentages.

We need to define clearly what our role is in defence. First, it is clearly to defend the home territory. Secondly, I suggest that we need to keep our garrison in the Falklands. Thirdly, we need to keep our bases in Cyprus, which are quite valuable for operations in the Gulf. Finally, we need to pull our resources together with our Baltic allies to look at both the High North, referred to by my noble friend Lord Harlech, and the Baltics, which are within Europe but certainly threatened by Russia. Only by getting together Finland, Sweden and all the countries around the Baltic, including Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, are we going to be able to put forward a credible defence. We have to work together and exercise together; we have to have joint exercises and revive the Arctic Council as a viable organisation to talk to the Russians, but also to protect the High North.

Finally, cables and electronic warfare are part of the future, but I often feel that they are seen as an add-on rather than as a key part of our defence capacity, as they should be.

Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, to the House. I have known him for a long time. When I was in a different party, we used to go to the London Labour Party conference, where he would stride up to the platform and announce, “John Spellar, EETPU”, at which point there was sustained booing before he had said a single word. I am sure that the noble Lord will contribute vigorously to this House.

I am not part of the consensus here, as noble Lords might realise by now. We need to stop this war and start talking, preferably from our present position which is one of moderate strength. We do not want to talk in the aftermath of a downturn in American support when Putin thinks, quite rightly, that the whole game is over in his favour.

As for Storm Shadow, all it will do is prolong the war. They will be able to hit further into Russian territory, and the Russians will retaliate. As many Members will know, I have quite a few Russian friends. I had one here to tea yesterday. She tells me that morale in Russia is very high and the war economy is actually going very well. One of her relatives has taken advantage of the IKEA company withdrawing from Moscow to set up an IKEA lookalike in their city. So do not let us be under the impression that the Russians are going to collapse—they are not.

I draw attention to this week’s meeting in Kazan. The reason why the leaders of India, South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were in Kazan, not Samoa, is that Kazan matters to them and, frankly, Samoa does not. It is as simple as that. One of the most significant developments in Kazan is the bringing forward of the new international payments system that has been devised by a number of the BRICS countries. That could fundamentally shift the balance of power in the financial West, and one of the reasons is that if we want to freeze their assets and give away their money, then they are not going to put any more here. It is as simple as that. When countries like Abu Dhabi are willing to set up a banking system to challenge us with a lot of support, that is what will happen.

Something that has hardly been mentioned in this debate is the rest of Europe. There are severe reservations in Germany as to where this effort is going to lead and whether it is worth it; there is an election there next year, and that is going to be a major issue. The French are not that far on board, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy is most certainly looking for a way out.

So let us get real. I shall give one example. A few days ago, Cardinal Zuppi, the Vatican representative to the conflict, met Sergei Lavrov in Moscow and they discussed the conflict. The Vatican position is that there should be negotiations and that Russia must be included. A Ukrainian peace plan that does not include Russia is, frankly, not worth anything at all. Cardinal Parolin, the Secretary of State in the Vatican, has made it very clear that he is willing to act as a good envoy between the two sides.

We should be looking at things like that, because we are not going to win; Napoleon found that out, and Hitler found that out. I am sorry to say to those people who think we are that the Russian people are behind Putin, as are many in the third world, who see this as our little fight. I say to our Front Bench: try to get peace talks going. That is what is needed, because there is no such thing as victory in this case. What is victory? We do not know, because there is no such thing.

Strategic Defence Review

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for initiating this debate. I had a conversation with him before Christmas and suggested that this might be a good idea.

I would first like to look at the threat picture. We know roughly what it is, but the biggest threat picture is of the division of the world into two very heavily armed camps, with one, the Russians, getting increasingly close to the Chinese. We are in danger of ending up with Chinese bases in the Arctic if we cannot manage to get some sort of peace talks going—read the recent report of this House. Then we will be in even more difficulty.

The defence review says that we take as granted our membership of NATO, so why do we not start off with that? The war in Ukraine is in a non-NATO country. It is undoubtedly illegal, but it was not unprovoked. Noble Lords can shake their heads, but while this war carries on and until we can manage to get it under control, we are not going to get anything that resembles a peaceful solution in Europe. Our first aim should be to secure the defence of our NATO allies. In particular, that means to look at how we can work with the new NATO partners to guarantee the security of the Baltic states. They have a right to expect us to help with their security, and that should be our number one priority.

Beyond that, we can debate and discuss, but we have to realise that we are dealing with a number of countries that are fundamentally unstable and have internal conflicts which, by definition, rule them out of being members of NATO. I would hope that we can concentrate on the Baltics and make it possible for the Baltic states to feel more comfortable than they clearly do; that we will look at how we police effectively the Suwałki Gap; and look at how we relate to the countries that are already in NATO.

Looking at another of these headings, I note the point about our support and the need for proper and efficient defence forces. I really hope that this review will look at the outsourcing of recruitment. I have what is supposedly an Army recruiting office at the top of the road in which I live. Most of the time it is closed; I have never actually seen anyone in it. I wonder whether this scheme is delivering any value for money. Overall, philosophically, I am opposed to outsourcing. It is generally done for the wrong reasons—to try to save money—and not for the reasons of promoting better efficiency and the like. I hope that we will look at that and at the way in which we can get people into the Armed Forces.

I live in the city of Cambridge: we have a very large Russian and Ukrainian population there. They get on very well together. They are basically the sons of the rich of those two countries who have all managed to get out, thanks to daddy’s money. They have got themselves to Cambridge where they have set up both a Russian society—the secretary lives a few doors up from me—and a Ukrainian society. The interesting thing is that the two societies get on very well together. We are becoming a sort of base. It is rather like when I was at university: we were flooded with Americans who were dodging the Vietnam War. Now Cambridge has plenty of Russians and Ukrainians who are, let us say, making themselves scarce, so we have a challenge in that direction.

I know that I have made my final point before and that it is not popular, but Russia is a European country and we somehow have to work out how to bring it back. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, that the Russians and the Indians are getting closer and closer together. Far from India coming our way, Russia is building up a dependence on its energy within India. The energy is starting to go south instead of west. Mr Modi is playing a very clever game in many ways, but he is not playing a game of being particularly friendly to us, because he sees the advantage to India in being friendly to Russia and getting closer to the stans and the former southern Soviet republics. We need to remember that.

Politics, after all, is about self-interest. People often tell me that the United States is our great ally and that we are its favourite child. They never say that in Washington; this is a myth that we pursue. Countries have foreign policies to better their own self-interests. I hope that this review will look at how we can better the self-interests of this country, rather than pretending that we are doing it for other people.

King’s Speech

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I do not think there will be any different response to my ideas from the new Front Bench than there was from the last Front Bench, but I keep trying because I believe they are right.

I shall talk mainly about NATO. I am pleased that my friend—I am not sure whether I am allowed to call him that—the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is here. We have to remember that Article 5 of the NATO treaty, of which we often quote the first part, says that an attack on one is an attack on all. It then goes on to say nothing about what should be done. As a senior member of a southern European navy pointed out to me, as far as his country was concerned, nothing should be done, under Article 5, if there were an attack in eastern Europe. But, of course, Ukraine is not in NATO, and the first thing I would advise is that

“Ukraine’s irreversible path to full NATO membership”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/7/24; col. 369.]

to quote the Prime Minister, is exactly the wrong direction in which to proceed. The one thing we do not need is a lot of squabbling states carrying out their hatreds on NATO’s base. There is already far too much going on in eastern Europe with NATO members, but that can be contained. If we extend NATO membership to Ukraine, we will essentially extend it into a frozen conflict zone, because the next reality is that Russia is not going to leave Ukraine, either militarily or otherwise. The best you can hope for is a stalemate, and the only way out of a stalemate is a negotiation. You cannot bomb your way out of it.

I counsel the Government to look to a European initiative. Trump might be right: it may be about time that we looked after our own defence. In so doing, we would cease to be doing Washington’s demands all the time, because that is at the basis of this.

I note that we have said we will give £3 billion a year—pounds, not euros; I am too used to another Parliament—to Ukraine. I know politics is the language of priorities, and £3 billion is exactly the sum of money which is needed to end the two-child benefit lock, but the priorities of this Government are not children’s poverty; they are arming Ukraine and sending it lots of weapons that it can use to smash up other countries. This is not sensible, particularly if you are not going to win. The Russian Federation and its riparian states have got to learn to solve their problems and live together. You can rewrite your history and—my goodness—I have been there many times and seen how they have rewritten it to a ridiculous extent, but you cannot rewrite your geography. At the end of the day, these countries are next to each other and somehow they have to live together. If we cannot come to an agreement with the Russian Federation, we are in for a lot of trouble.

Talk of preparing for war in three years brings me on to my final point, which echoes the point made at the beginning of this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Capitalism has failed the young: many of them are unemployed, they cannot buy houses and now we are promising body bags. That is the reality of it. We will not be fighting this war; young people—our grandchildren—will be fighting this war, and they will be dying for an unwinnable cause. So I ask the new Government to think a bit more carefully than the last Government and somehow extricate us from this mess.

Defence Spending

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, in introducing the Statement, the Defence Secretary said:

“we will remove 72,000 civil servants from the system, not because we do not think they are good people—fortunately, with low unemployment we know they will be gainfully employed elsewhere”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/24; col. 944.]

Can the Minister tell me whether there were any negotiations with the trade unions? Are we to believe that there are 72,000 civil servants doing nothing? If that is not the case, can the Minister tell us what services will be reduced, curtailed or ended altogether? I would like an assurance that there will be negotiations with the trade unions in the implementation of this policy. I do not oppose the policy, but I wonder about that bit of it.

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, the 72,000 figure comes from the Chancellor’s desire to move the size of the Civil Service back to the situation in 2019, before the Covid virus struck. The Civil Service was required to grow quite considerably to cope with that situation, which has now passed. It seems logical that we start to move, through a period of natural attrition—there is no suggestion of mass requirements—back to a position where the Civil Service is fit for service, lean and nimble.

Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, we seem to have hit the realistic point here. I start by agreeing completely with the previous speaker that there will be a reckoning. I made several visits to Ukraine between 2000 and 2016, the time at which it basically started to fall to pieces.

We forget; we talk about Ukraine as though it were an historic country, but the borders have changed three times in the past 100 years. They changed after Versailles, when part of Ukraine which was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire came out of it when Poland was created and the borders were set. They changed again in 1945 when, as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, the Russians took part of Poland into Russian territory. At the end of the war, Churchill did a deal with Stalin not to give it back, so the western borders of Ukraine embraced what was part of Poland. To compensate, Churchill agreed that Poland would get some of Germany. The eastern part of Germany was therefore taken into Poland, and the dispute over what we call the Oder-Neisse line carried on until the days of Willy Brandt. Even today, within the AfD—the extreme right-wing party—there is still talk about the lost territories.

Let us not pretend that the boundaries have been very stable, because of course finally Crimea became part of Ukraine only when Khrushchev, the ex-secretary-general of the Ukrainian Communist Party before he became leader of the USSR, gave Crimea to Ukraine as a present. All this was done because no one could see that there would ever be an end to the USSR: Stalin did not and Khrushchev did not. This is what we are up against.

When I first went to Ukraine, someone I christened “Authoritarian Grandpa” was in charge, Leonid Kuchma. He had a pretty good idea about how to run Ukraine: it was to keep it on a pretty short lead, restrict the freedoms overall, and give just enough play for the west and the east to live together. That carried on through the first 10 or 12 years of this century but then, after 2004 and the so-called revolution, the United States in particular and the EU spent years destabilising Ukraine. There is no doubt about it whatever, and if the papers are ever released it will be seen that that was what was going on. By 2014, Putin lost his temper. He also lost his sense of judgment, incidentally, because the way he took Crimea was absolutely illegal and wrong, but none the less he did it.

Between then and the outbreak of the war, there was constant tension between Russia and Ukraine and, frankly, we did little to help. We had the Minsk accords; we had France and Germany supposedly trying to broker a deal, but it was never adhered to and there was never much attempt to make it happen. Part of the reason for the whole problem in Ukraine was, first, the way we reacted. The end of Ukraine really came when Viktor Yanukovych was chased out after the second revolution. From then on, there was really no hope, because Yanukovych represented the east. He was based in Donetsk. I met his party members in Donetsk: they thought that he was their great god. He was not. But in the west, he had no support whatever. There, it was Tymoshenko and the rest of the elite who were in charge, so the country was really breaking up before one’s eyes. Indeed, I decided not to go back after witnessing a local election in Dnipro that was so badly run that I thought, “This country is beyond help”.

Anyway, that is where we are and that is how we ended up in the position today. There is no doubt whatever that Putin committed an illegal act; there is no doubt that he should not have invaded Ukraine; there is also no doubt that he felt at his wits’ end, but he made an amazing misjudgment. God knows what his secret service told him, but it is quite clear that he totally misjudged the strength of Ukraine.

We are now, let us remind ourselves, in a proxy war. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, reminded us of how the Russians left Afghanistan. He could have reminded us of how the Americans left Afghanistan. It might be worth remembering that we are fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. The United States is contributing probably 80%, certainly 70%, of all the help being given; meanwhile, Europe squabbles. We have given some assistance—Britain has given more than anyone else in Europe—but I heard this morning on my Brussels newscast that Warsaw has decided to end military aid to Ukraine because of the dispute over grain. Hungary is very chary of doing anything useful, because there is still a Hungarian minority there. When Ukraine had a Government, they spent the years between 2017 and 2020 trying to eliminate the teaching of Hungarian in the school system of Ukraine’s Hungarian region. That does not endear you to the country you are living in. There has been a lot of tension ever since.

Where do we go from here? The noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, made the very good point that we must look beyond where we are. Our priority should be the defence of those countries that are in NATO. To do that, we have an end to the war in Ukraine, because we have to get the Russians back to the table and a Helsinki-type agreement on how far they can go. If we do not and end up in a stalemate, they will next start threatening the Baltics, which are NATO countries. I would not have gone quite as far with the expansion of NATO or the EU, but we have done it, and that is where we owe our first responsibility. We should be looking at and talking to those countries—looking at how we strengthen the NATO presence in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, give support along the long Finnish border and make them feel that they are a secure part of our family.

The last thing we should be thinking of is bringing Ukraine, Georgia or anyone else into NATO. We should be thinking about how we get a ceasefire, how we get the Russians to the table and how we defend the NATO countries that we are already committed to.

Armed Forces

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I too begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for initiating this debate. It is a pleasure to have him among us, and we are very lucky that he has come from the other place to join us. I am sure that his contribution will be widely appreciated over the years to come.

Two themes have come through very clearly: that we are not spending enough and that the Army and the military forces, including the Navy, are just not big enough for what we are trying to do. Those points have been made by several people. I want to concentrate on what I call the need for realism, because our attitude in defence is often pretty unreal. On its own, the UK cannot really do very much at all; we have to work in an alliance and in alliances with other like-minded countries. That is point one.

The second point is that we are a most important part of NATO, but we are not important enough to get the General Secretaryship, it seems. We have to realise that, even within NATO, we are beginning to be overshadowed by Germany. Within NATO, we need to concentrate more on interoperability. I was the first leader of the European Parliament delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in around 1989. At that time, we were talking about the need for interoperability. The fact of the matter was that you could not send a tank through Denmark without the permission of the Danish parliament—and the fact of the matter is that interoperability is still a challenge for NATO and one that we need to look at.

The other challenge is that we need to be more realistic about Article 5. We are fond of saying, “Oh, it’s an Article 5 commitment”, but all that Article 5 says is that an attack on one is an attack on all. It does not say what we should do if Russia decided to intervene in Estonia. It does not give Lisbon any guidance as to what it should do, apart from saying, “Oh dear, Russia has intervened in Estonia. What shall we do?” As far as I can tell, we are not obliged under Article 5 to do anything at all, other than to note that an attack is an attack on us all. That needs looking at.

The point has been made on more than one occasion that the United States is yet again blowing hot and cold on its commitment in Europe. This has been the pattern for many years now. We must bear in mind that, in the end, Europe will have to defend itself. We cannot outsource defence for ever. In fact, we cannot outsource it for very much longer.

We hear lots of strong words about Ukraine, but we also need some realism. One day the fighting will stop—we do not know when, but it will. When it stops, Russia will still be in the same place geographically, it will be the same size and it will present the same challenges, and we have to come to terms with those challenges. We go on about Russian money rebuilding Ukraine, but the truth of the matter is that it is not going to happen. It has never happened—one country has never rebuilt another. It might be said that we rebuilt parts of Germany after the Second World War, but Germany did not rebuild anyone outside its borders for many years until it was rich again. We have got to be realistic: when the fighting stops, Ukraine will need a lot of help from the countries of the West that are now behind it.

As Ben Wallace said, the world is now more unstable and insecure, but I am not sure that that is not a predictable thing. What I would say is that we need to be tolerant and we need to look at building a new Helsinki and coming to terms with the reality of being a small but important nation contributing to the defence of our common home.

Estonia: UK Troop Levels

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware that the attitude of NATO, and of the United Kingdom and our allies, is to invite Russia to de-escalate this rhetoric. Frankly, it will be destabilising and unhelpful if it continues to be intensified. The noble Lord will also be aware that, in connection with our overall commitments to NATO and the contribution we make not just to the enhanced forward presence but to equipment and personnel support, we will ensure that our troops are equipped appropriately for whatever task might confront them.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom has a long-standing relationship in defence in that region, particularly with Norway. Will we co-operate with our Nordic and Baltic partners to make it quite clear to Russia that any incursion in any of the Baltic states is unacceptable, and that part of that must be to keep a substantial military presence in the Baltic states, which of course include Estonia, where we have a particular interest?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I reassure my noble friend that we work closely with our friends in the Baltics, not least in Norway and Sweden and with our other presence in that area. He will be aware that, with our NATO commitments, we are very much committed to having a mobile and enhanced lethality in the area. As I said to the noble Lord on the Liberal Democrat Benches, that is designed to ensure that, whatever threat confronts us, we are able to play our part in seeing it off.

Ukraine: UK and NATO Military Commitment

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, who, as he knows, I admire hugely, I disagree with his analysis. With the biggest investment since the end of the Cold War, the Army will reorganise; it will re-equip to become more integrated, active and lethal as a high-tech force fit for the threats of the future, not the battles of the past. As people increasingly recognise, what we do with the Army and how we do it in the future is not based simply on boots on the ground, but on a much wider understanding of how we are smarter and cleverer—finding better equipment and using technology. In that respect, we can operate in a much more agile and resilient fashion.

I say to the noble Lord that the nature of the conflict in Ukraine is certainly arduous and worrying; I think everyone accepts that it will be of long duration. But I would also say to him that the UK has been a singular contributor in leading the charge to help Ukraine defend itself, and we welcome those within and outwith NATO supporting that endeavour. The NATO summit on 28 June will be an important occasion because NATO will agree the new strategic concept and set the direction of the alliance for the next decade. Much of that will be informed by what has happened with this barbarous and illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall use three quotes from yesterday’s debate. First, Tobias Ellwood, who put down the Question, said:

“But Russia is not losing and Ukraine is not winning”. ––[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/22; col. 556.]


Secondly, the new head of the Armed Forces said that we must be

“fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle”.

Thirdly, the Secretary-General of NATO said that this could take years. I should like to ask the Minister: where are we actually going? Last week in the Duma, there was discussion about the Suwałki Gap, the strip of land running between Lithuania and Poland that links Kaliningrad to Belarus. What happens if the Russians decide to force the Suwałki Gap? They would not be fighting Ukraine, but the Lithuanians are very anxious to implement all the sanctions and Kaliningrad is becoming more or less isolated. I should like to think that our forward planning stretches beyond Boris Johnson and the end of next week, and that we are looking seriously at ways in which this conflict could be gradually edged-up in a way that it would be very difficult for NATO to respond to with unity.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I do not agree with my noble friend’s somewhat dismissive commentary on how the UK has responded to this. I think, by universal assent, the UK has played a pivotal role in coming to the aid of and supporting Ukraine, which knows that it has in us a solid and reliable friend. I say to my noble friend that within the whole Baltic area there has been a bolstering of the enhanced forward presence, to which the UK has been an important contributor. That has been a necessary response. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, what we are witnessing is quite simply an illegal and barbarous invasion by President Putin of an innocent sovereign state.

It is interesting that, within the Baltic area, Sweden and Finland now seek to join NATO. I assume they are motivated by the sense of comfort and reassurance that the alliance will bring them if they are able to become members. That is a matter for hope and optimism.

Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I extend my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Sedwill, who I am sure will read this in Hansard.

I had a letter last week from Mishcon de Reya. I thought that anyone who could afford that level of lawyer did not need me, so I deleted it unread.

I would like to correct or clarify one point. A number of people have referred to Nord Stream 2. The Germans have not cancelled it; they have interrupted its approval procedure, which is quite different. If they cancelled it they would be liable for a very large sum of money, so at the moment it is just paused.

Many of us were dismayed by what happened yesterday, particularly as in endless meetings I and others have been assured that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine. The Russian ambassador said that to me in very clear words. As I said yesterday, either his Government did not trust him enough to tell him what they were doing or he did not know what they were doing anyway. That is not a very good start for an ambassador, is it?

We should not underestimate Putin. He was very careful: he made sure from Macron, Scholz and Biden that there would be no military intervention in support of Ukraine. He is not a fool, although sometimes we think he is; on a good day he is quite shrewd. He knew that if he invaded Ukraine we would do nothing—and we have not let him down, have we? All we are doing is having debates.

There are two countries next to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, that are very different daughters; they remind me of “King Lear”. Belarus is the dutiful daughter that represses its population, denies democracy and is the subject of much angst; it is not even a member of the Council of Europe. However, I am sorry to say that Ukraine has constantly pinpricked Russia by trying to cancel the base in Crimea, trying to mandate that only Ukrainian can be spoken—which is pretty daft if you consider the number of Russian speakers there—and all sorts of other annoyances. There has been a constant pattern of difficulty between Ukraine and Russia. I saw it playing out every time I went to the Council of Europe: the Russians sat there, pretty dumb and not doing much, while Ukraine never lost an opportunity to have a go at them. I am not surprised that Russia got pretty fed up with it.

We now move on to the field of sanctions. I do not wish to rain on the parade, but sanctions do not have a very good record. If we are going to make them work then we have to study quite hard what we want to do. The only sanctions that I know of that worked were the CoCom sanctions, and that is because the US held a very close grip on the export of technologies beyond trusted friends. So I say to the Minister that we need to look carefully at how we perform the sanctions regime, because clearly the sanctions that we appear to have announced so far will not bring anyone down in a month of Sundays. They are tokenism. Until we get to grips with Russian influence and money in London, we will not get very far. It is worth remembering that there is also quite a lot of Ukrainian billionaire money in London.

I say to the Minister that we need to start from the point where we are now. The most important thing for us to do is to get a common position on the NATO members in the east, because they are different. We have to defend them. We have to assure the Baltics, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania that they are part of the family, and we defend the family. That is what our priority should be now, not only chasing the Russians but making sure that we can reassure our other friends.