Ukraine

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Ben Wallace

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

On the latter question, I would definitely support NATO and NATO members going out and about and supporting not only the values we stand for, but my point about the right to choose, even if the choice is not NATO. I think we have forgotten about what we have often argued for. We have taken for granted our values and the cost of freedom around the world. We must never stop arguing for that and making the case. Too often over the decades, it has been too easy to stop making that case, or indeed to trade it off against an economic issue. That is why Nord Stream 2 is important. It is important that we recognise that, if it is a success, it will not be a success for Europe, but it will increase friction and division. We should press our German friends to do more, should Russia invade Ukraine.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and the support across the House for the Ukrainian people. It is quite true that a free people choose freedom, and the Ukrainian people are trying to do just that. Would my right hon. Friend care to mention other failures of the Putin strategy, such as turning former friends and allies of Russia against it? Is this not an extraordinarily sad day for the Russian people, who have been so abused by this tyrannical dictatorship under Putin? Even countries that have had such strong relations with them, including the Ukrainian people, are now seeking assistance from us to ensure that their homes are not violated by Russian troops?

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If the aim of President Putin is to de-escalate, or push back NATO from his borders, he should reflect on why so many people have wanted to join NATO. It is predominantly a consequence of his actions, whether that is in Georgia or Crimea, or the sub-threshold actions that are putting real fear into countries such as Sweden and Finland. It is no coincidence that, in the Finnish and Swedish Parliaments, a sense of being closer to NATO than they have been in the past is growing. That is not because of NATO—there is no secret plot—but because of the actions of the President of Russia.

Data Breach: ARAP Applicants in Afghanistan

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Ben Wallace

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his series of questions. First, the investigation will be carried out by Admiral Sir Ben Key, the commander of joint operations at PJHQ—permanent joint headquarters—who also led the planning and the evacuation from Kabul.

On data leaks, the hon. Member is right that these are a concern. The previous leak obviously involved a senior official who deliberately broke the regulation, in so far as he took something out the Department. If the regulation had been followed, that would not have been the case. However, although I cannot say too much, I have instigated changes to improve information security within the Department, and I am happy to brief the hon. Member on that.

The “Manual of Protective Security”, the modern rules that govern information security, is, I believe, fit for purpose; it is really the training and the adherence to it that must be improved. I am graduate of something called the classified documents handling course from the early ’90s—I think I am the only saddo who actually knows what type of lock should be on what type of cabinet that links to different types of security classifications. Nevertheless, information security is not something that western Governments are good at, which is why our adversaries seem to be. We have to improve it, and we have to stand by it.

The Taliban, or obviously any Government that control a country, have control of the telephone network. I cannot say too much about what they can and cannot do; suffice it to say that the method we used to communicate with those people is a way of minimising that risk. One of the reasons we involve emails rather than telephone calls is to try to do that, which is important.

On resource, right from the beginning of this process, way back in August, or in July, I was very clear with my senior military commanders and civil servants that they would have whatever resource they needed to process emails and carry people out, for example. We will fly these people back from third countries out of the MOD budget. It is my view that we should continue to stand by them, including using married quarters, for example, in military establishments to look after them if they cannot get places elsewhere. There has not been a resource problem; the challenge is whether people have been asking for the resource within the system to do this.

The individual concerned was a member of the Ministry of Defence, but I am very keen that it is not just the poor person who drafts the email who is held to account, but the chain upwards, to ensure that this does not happen again.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am delighted to hear from my right hon. Friend just now that Admiral Key has got a knighthood. There has not been one earned by anyone better for many years.

The challenge of this event is not the accident, the mistake, that we can see happened. I think we all sympathise with the Ministry of Defence and indeed the Secretary of State; accidents do happen. The challenge is that there are people still there and that the co-ordination for getting people out is still complicated. Will my right hon. Friend commit to working to get a single point of contact for all those in Afghanistan who are seeking to leave? The system whereby some have to apply to the MOD, and others to the Foreign Office or through the Home Office, is excessively complicated and is leading to obstacles, including on at least four different occasions that I can speak of. People are stuck in Lashkar Gah, Kabul or Mazar-e-Sharif, trying to get out, but they are still not getting the smooth transfer that we need.

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a really important point. I would ask colleagues to have some understanding of this. The MOD, which is of course charged with defending the nation, has in very short order had to turn part of itself over to processing visas and doing the job that traditionally we would have done in the Home Office. We have taken that on ourselves because of the pace, urgency and, in the earlier time, danger.

As I have said, 68,000 emails arrived, many of which are speculative, concerning refugee status, so not even for the Foreign Office. It is a very big enterprise to take on, which is why I was determined to give all that resource. However, I would ask colleagues to remember that, at the same time, we are doing that in an Afghanistan that we have no control over. We are doing it in what for many is a dangerous environment, with the Taliban clearly in some cases actively seeking out people that they wish to deal with—murder, or whatever they are up to. At the same time, we are dealing with an ever-moving situation on the ground, and not everyone who comes out communicates back.

When I look at the spread of where people have gone to third countries, we find people in Australia, people who got on the next flight, people in other parts of Europe and people in the United States. The United States brought some people back to Germany who immediately claimed asylum to the United Kingdom. We find, when we contact people, that some are saying, “Thank you very much, but I am quite happy to stay where I am in sunny California or Australia or somewhere like that.” Some have been here for a very long period of time and have not engaged.

The next stage, which I commissioned today, is, quite rightly, a full and detailed survey of the people we have brought back to know even more about them. Obviously, there are data protection issues we have to cross, but it is really important that we get to the bottom of that.

Carrier Strike Group Deployment

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Ben Wallace

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman asks a valid question. Strictly speaking we could, but we do not envisage such deployments unless we are in a time of war or significant stress. At the moment, yes, we could strictly speaking, but the way we are working up each aircraft carrier means that we will not be required to do that.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con) [V]]

May I pay huge tribute to Her Majesty’s Royal Navy for getting together and preparing this carrier for sea so effectively? Does the Secretary of State look forward as I do—indeed, as does a great friend of mine, Minister Kono Taro, the current Minister for Regulatory Reform in Japan but his former opposite number in Japan—to seeing Japanese F-35s flying off the deck of the Queen Elizabeth, shortly before he works with his opposite number today to see whether Japan could possibly even join the Five Eyes community?

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Ben Wallace

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I certainly recognise that people have concerns. Some of those people were doing the job that I am doing when these things were going on, so I would venture to ask them why they did not do anything about it at the time. It is a fact that there has been abuse of this system; we all know that on both sides of the House. It is a fact that we need to do more, rather than just talk about it, for our veterans. It is really important to include measures to recognise the very unique experiences of and pressures put on the men and women of our armed forces when they go on operations hundreds of miles away.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I want to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty)—I am glad to see him wearing his Royal College of Defence Studies tie; there are quite a lot of military ties in the Chamber today—about the application of the ECHR. The derogation that we are asking for and that the Bill recommends is not new; it was included in the initial treaty when it was signed in the ’50s, and other countries have already used it. We are talking about recognising the provisions of a treaty that we signed in order to allow the military to act in a military way, because this treaty was written by people who had fought in the second world war and knew exactly what they were talking about.

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend makes a substantive point, and one reason we find ourselves facing these challenges is because there is a clear conflict between international humanitarian law in some areas, and international human rights. The encroachment and growing reach of ECHR into areas of combat has created a clash, in some sense, between things such as the Geneva convention and individual human rights. That is why when the authors wrote the ECHR, they included some of those carve-outs as a way of accommodating the international laws under which they had been operating in the mass conflict of the second world war. Indeed, when the Defence Committee was chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), it picked up on that very real clash, which is hard to resolve. In my view, some of the problems with lawfare is that people are exploiting that clash for financial gain. It is easy to hide behind a humanitarian law on one day and a human rights law on another, and we have a duty to try to make a difference.

We are not going as far as many countries under the jurisdiction of ECHR. Other countries in Europe have a statute of limitations on criminal offences. Germany and France both have a number of criminal statutes that are statutes of limitations. Other countries also do that, or have amnesties, but we are not going that far. We are trying to resolve that clash and see how we can ensure a proper threshold, so that there are no vexatious investigations and our men and women do not constantly find themselves the subject of them.

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[Tom Tugendhat]

Will my right hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Mr Wallace]

I will crack on. The House has heard the point from the Liberal Democrat spokesman. I venture that I will side with the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland on his views regarding whether this provision does or does not prevent torture. I think his judge of the law is pretty succinct, although I have not always agreed with his views. [Interruption.] I shall carry on.

In conclusion, the Bill is about doing the right thing by our troops. Our soldiers and values must uphold the highest international standards. The Bill is not an amnesty, a statute of limitation, or the decriminalisation of erroneous acts. We will continue to protect the independence of our prosecutors and our service police, and we will investigate and, if necessary, prosecute service personnel who break the law. But what we will not accept is the vexatious hounding of veterans and our armed forces by ambulance-chasing lawyers motivated not by the search for justice, but by their own crude financial enrichment.

This House should reflect on how lawfare has ranged way out of control. All too often, the victims have been the very people who risked life and limb to keep us safe. The Bill is a measured step, making provision for the unique circumstances our troops find themselves in on operations overseas. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will accept that this is an overseas operations Bill and that being on patrol in Helmand is different from bringing on guard at Buckingham Palace, and therefore the rights that troops should accept in different places under different terms should of course be different.

I have served, as have many of my colleagues in all parts of the House. Indeed, my friend and former comrade in arms the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and I served in camps in places where the electricity could best be described as ropey and would fail any civilian investigation. We served in places where to walk outside the camp was to risk everything, from loss of life or limb to very real mental damage. We served in those places because the national security and the interests of our country—decided on by people here, by the way, not soldiers—was judged to be that important.

[Mr Wallace]

I listen with interest to what my hon. Friend says and to his example of unique circumstances. The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) made the point that this Bill makes some people less or more equal before the law—that it was an unfair application—but it does not prevent anyone from being prosecuted for a crime that they have committed, nor does it introduce special defences for people, so that some of these offences allow them to have an excuse. All it does is ask a prosecutor to have exceptional regard for the circumstances that those concerned may find themselves in and also, where an investigation has already happened, to think about the level of new evidence that should be applicable.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I agree with my right hon. Friend, and the important point about the Bill is that it recognises the difference between a crime and an error. We all know that crimes should be prosecuted, and we all know that the difference between a crime and an error is a difference of understanding and, on some occasions, circumstance. It is not necessarily a crime for a missile, sadly, to go astray and kill civilians. It can be an error; it may be a terrible, regrettable error; it may be an error that we should learn from a thousand times. But it cannot always be a crime, otherwise the invasion of Normandy could never have happened, because if it was always a crime for civilians to die in combat, the troops could not have prepared that battlefield to land on those beaches.

If that was a crime, it would always be a crime to use force in situations where we cannot be absolutely certain of the outcome of that force. Of course, that is never possible, because the reality is that if we put such blocks on any use of force, what we are saying is that force can never be used.

Middle East: Security

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Ben Wallace

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman mixes the inherent right, under article 51 of the UN charter, to defend ourselves from threats against our citizens or others, and an unchallengeable sovereignty that means a country cannot take action to defend itself from a threat in part of another country. We mostly do it by getting in touch with the other country to have someone arrested or dealt with, when there is a direct threat, but that is not always an option, depending on imminence.

As I said in my statement, the number of times that US and UK coalition forces have been attacked in Iraq in the last few months, with no action being taken—indeed, an American lost their life—has been growing. There have been 14 attacks, with 32 rockets fired in the last one. In the end, it is the responsibility of any nation to make the difficult choice to balance sovereignty, intelligence and the duty to defend its citizens. Nations have to make that choice sometimes.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes a proper case for the British Government’s position, but will he go further and talk about what he is doing to make sure this does not become a cliff edge to war but is instead the low point of a tick that leads to progress? We should work with allies such as Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, perhaps, to reach out to Iran and assure it that we do not wish a conflict and that what we wish instead is change to a policy that has led to the deaths not only of far too many Brits but of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Syria and Iraq. It is for them that we are standing up, and it is for them that we want a change.

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend is right to focus on how we can broaden both the network of diplomatic pressure on Iran and, in a sense, the support for Iraq, the United States and other countries engaged in this area. If I remember rightly, Iran used to have remarkable links with Japan, for example. We are exploring all the possible levers. With my colleagues in the Foreign Office and, indeed, at No. 10, including the Prime Minister, we are working as broadly and as fast as we can to find a way, using diplomacy through people with good access to the very heart of the Iranian Government, to reach a place where we can persuade the Iranians that retaliation is not in their best interest, while offering them a way out so that we can get back to a more stable middle east.