Ministry of Defence: Expenditure
Debate between Lord Swire and Lord Coaker(4 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, the Minister does his job extremely well. Can he clarify whether the Government are still fully behind the Storm Shadow missile programme? Will he use this opportunity to clarify whether those Storm Shadow missiles will be deployable within Russia?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
We are of course committed to the Storm Shadow programme. As the Prime Minister has made clear, under Article 51 of the UN charter Ukraine has a clear right of self-defence against Russia’s illegal attacks. That does not preclude striking military targets inside Russia, provided strikes comply with the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law. As the Prime Minister said, it would be inappropriate to go into the operational detail of how Ukraine uses UK-provided systems. I should say to the noble Lord that that is exactly the same policy that the previous Government pursued.