Defence Policy (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Friday 30th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who chaired with great distinction the committee before I joined it. Although I joined it only this year, I fully endorse what she said and what it says, and I congratulate it on its perception and insight. Like others, I am sure, I regret that it has taken so long to get to a debate on the important analysis provided by the committee.

The committee rightly made a very important point in its conclusions:

“The strategic assumptions that underpinned the Integrated Review and the Defence Command Paper have changed. In particular, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally changed the European security environment”.


I emphasise “fundamentally changed” because that is now a self-evident truth, but a truth with enormous implications. Indeed, the Government’s response to the committee went further and was even blunter. They said that

“we misjudged the pace of change and the range and severity of the threats we would face. As a result, we can no longer tolerate some of the risks we felt able to bear at the time, and we need to ensure that our capabilities and their supporting enablers are credible for the challenges both of this decade and the next”.

So, here is my question for today: given the huge importance to our country and its people of what is acknowledged to be a fundamental change in the security environment we live in, why have we had so little time allocated to debate these issues? This is only the second debate in this House on the war in Ukraine and its enormous implications since the invasion took place 16 months ago—and this debate is not even actually about Ukraine. There have of course been a number of Statements, and they are welcome, but they simply involve a Q&A session with the Minister concerned, not a full House debate.

This is the Parliament of our country, and it seems obvious to me and to many others that we should be debating, discussing, challenging and deliberating on that “fundamental change” and the Government’s acknowledged misjudgment of the risks we face. The people of this country, in my view, are being short-changed by the Government denying Parliament the ventilation of the crisis, which is what a debate here and in the Commons would represent, because—this is the second issue I wish to raise in this very short and very rare debate—we need to recognise the gravity of the stakes at play in Ukraine today.

This war is not just about saving Ukraine as a sovereign, independent nation state and the survival of its people, important and life-saving as those are. It is about our safety and security as well. Make no mistake at all: if Vladimir Putin prevails in this bloody, unprovoked attempted conquest, the resulting world will be a very different place—and not a very comfortable one. There will be a new rules-based order, that is for sure, but it will be written by the Chinese and a subordinate Russia. It will have the acquiescence of what we have come to know as the Global South—those countries such as India, South Africa and Brazil which are, almost unbelievably, sitting on the fence but edging towards Russia, ignoring as they do the stark fact that, if the principle of nuclear blackmail and of borders changed by force prevails, it will devastate them as much as us in Europe. That new world order assuredly will not enshrine the values and principles we have adopted throughout my life.

Authoritarians do not believe in the rule of law, free speech, a free press, free elections or private property. That is amply on display today in Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. We neglect at our peril the present manoeuvrings of those authoritarians—for example, meddling in the Middle East. As the report says, and the refresh underlines, in this region that is almost ignored by the integrated review, meddling is now on vivid display.

Who here would have imagined the day when China would be the midwife to the rencontre between Saudi Arabia and Iran? Just look at the western Balkans; I know the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, will speak on this authoritatively later on. Neglected as it has been by the West, this area, which we did so much to settle and save, is being used today by Russia and China as an adventure playground for their deadly mischief. I ask noble Lords to imagine for a bleak moment what these two areas will be like if Putin succeeds in Ukraine.

What about the Arctic, the subject of the committee’s present investigation? Russia has long protected and projected its strategic and resource role in the region, but now, as Russia has become the little brother, China has become an Arctic nation—avariciously watching the opening northern sea route and the data-rich domination at the very top of the world.

Eastern Ukraine is on our TV screens every night that something dreadful happens, but its plight and its umbilical connection to this country’s safety and security are amazingly absent from the serious deliberations of our Parliament. That should be unacceptable to all of us. I believe that the Government’s support for Ukraine is justified and praiseworthy. A debate in Parliament would emphasise that point and produce a signal to Putin, in the cracked glasshouse he now inhabits, that our collective resolution is strong, unanimous and durable. When he knows that, even his fevered mind might change. He cannot, and must not, succeed.