Ukraine

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his experience of these issues; we would all do well to heed him. He is right: a peace negotiated without Ukraine at the table will not endure and be sustained. He is also right to refer to a security guarantee, which has been part of the issue in negotiations. The important thing is that everybody strives for peace. It is clear that there are different ways and different views on how that can be achieved. The two crucial points that the noble Lord mentioned—Ukraine at the table and a security guarantee—are the only way to have something that will endure.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the Prime Minister’s comments on President Putin’s appetite for chaos. I assume that the Government believe that he should not be rewarded for that. I should like to ask the Leader two questions. First, there are other countries in the near neighbourhood of Russia which are very anxious because the UK has been a critical supporter in resilience to the interference of Russia, whether it is in Moldova or the Baltics. That has been under UK’s ODA. Can the Leader ensure that the UK’s ODA support, which is up to £500 million under the integrated security fund, will be protected from the cuts to ODA that are proposed to fund defence expenditure?

Secondly, on the assets that we are seeking to use the interest of, I am assuming that the Government believe that Russia and the Kremlin’s apparatchiks should not have that money back. In that case, we should be receiving, as my noble friend Lord Newby said, the capital interest, with the capital itself going towards funding the Ukrainian recovery.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an important point. The security of the Baltics and Moldova is extremely important, which is why the Prime Minister has had long conversations with those countries recently. He has also spoken to them about how they can be better engaged and we can ensure that we have wider engagement when we talk about Europe as a whole. That will be very important. He has assured them in these conversations that we will look again at the configuration of meetings with those states and other allies to ensure that they are properly represented and their views can be heard, particularly because of their vulnerable position.

The noble Lord will understand that I will not make commitments on particular areas of ODA. My noble friend Lady Chapman talked today about how important the ongoing work is; it is not just a case of pulling the rug out from under people—there has to be a proper discussion and we must look at the impact. It will take some time to work this through carefully. I will draw his comments to her attention.

On Russian assets, we are using the interest now and there are ongoing discussions about that. If it were easy, it would have been done already. It is not through reluctance that it is not being done. It is being actively pursued.