Oral Answers to Questions

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

3. What steps her Department is taking to support Ukraine.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to support Ukraine.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

10. What steps her Department is taking to support Ukraine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

What is happening in Ukraine is simply abhorrent. Our current priority is supporting Ukraine through humanitarian aid. We are donating £220 million of humanitarian aid, which is the leading figure in the world. That will be used to save lives and protect vulnerable people. However, I will listen to my hon. Friend’s suggestion and see what we can do on that front, because we need to do all we can to address this horrendous humanitarian crisis.

[Aaron Bell]

I know that my right hon. Friend is as proud as I am that the sanctions on Russia that we have introduced to try to support Ukraine are the most powerful we have ever introduced in history. Does she agree that we may need to go further and that nothing should be off the table in terms of who or what we target? We need to do whatever it takes to cripple the Putin regime.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right: nothing is off the table. We have been and are working with G7 partners, whom we want to see go further in areas such as a complete ban on SWIFT and the complete freezing of all bank assets, and by committing to a timetable for reducing dependency on oil and gas because, fundamentally, Russia is a state propped up by the oil and gas industry and, to really tackle the funding for Putin’s war machine, we need to cut off that funding stream.