National Security and Russia

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have very clearly condemned what happened and those who perpetrated this attack.

On 14 March, the Prime Minister said:

“there are other measures we stand ready to deploy at any time should we face further Russian provocation.”—[Official Report, 14 March 2018; Vol. 637, c. 857.]

Does she consider the expulsion of 23 British diplomats and the closure of the British Council a further provocation?

In the light of the poisoning of the Skripals and the murder of Nikolai Glushkov, what advice and support are the police and security services giving to high-profile Russians living in Britain, or indeed any other Russian national living and working in this country?

What plans does the Prime Minister have to publish and table the Government’s version of Labour’s Magnitsky amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill which was blocked in February? We have been assured that that will deliver all the powers that we were demanding—including by my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor in his response to the Budget and the Finance Bill—even before the Salisbury attack, to punish Russian abusers of human rights, but we are still waiting to see it published.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The people of the United Kingdom will want to know: does the right hon. Gentleman hold the Russian Government responsible for this—yes or no?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have already made that very clear.

I am asking for a clear commitment from the Government that the Magnitsky powers will be introduced and will be supported by Conservative Members. In that spirit, I also urge the Government to look again at Labour’s proposal to target the laundering of money through secret tax havens and undisclosed assets, as practised by many of the London-based Russian oligarchs, on whom so much of Putin’s power depends.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly commend everything that the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) has just said, not least his final point that Russia only respects strength. In all honesty, I think that that could be made a bit more personal: I think that President Putin only respects strength. Indeed, when President Obama tried to press the reset button with Russia, he got absolutely nothing out of it, because President Putin simply took everything that he had and gave nothing back. Now we see that President Putin seems to be committed to some kind of arms race with the west as well. Indeed, he announced that just before what he calls a general election, although it is not really a general election in the sense that any of us would understand.

I think that we need to set this whole debate in the context of everything else that is true about Putin’s Russia now. The human rights abuses are endless. I find the murder of so many journalists in particular deeply offensive, especially when there have been absolutely no attempts to pursue those responsible. The most famous name is Anna Politkovskaya, but there are many others as well. There is also the repeated use of excessive force, whether it is in response to the Beslan siege in the school or the Moscow theatre siege, or in response to other abuses and political dissidents in Chechnya. Putin’s immediate response is excessive violence, and I think that that is what we saw on the streets of Salisbury as well. There are also the rigged elections.

[Alex Chalk]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is not just excessive violence, but excessive dishonesty? The instinctive response of the Russian regime was to lie about the invasion of Ukraine, just as it lied about MH17, and that is of particular concern.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The barbaric attack in Salisbury marks a new low in relations between our nations. That is sad, but right. Chemical weapons are vile because of the appalling suffering they cause and their indiscriminate nature. Whoever planted the nerve agent knew fine well that whoever came to the aid of those suffering was likely to be seriously injured. Completely innocent people—children going about their business—could have been affected.

The point has already been made, but we should make it crystal clear that our dispute is not with the Russian people. We mourn with them those who lost their lives in the shopping centre fire in Kemerovo. We acknowledge the courage and fortitude of the Russian people, particularly during what they call the great patriotic war, in which more than 20 million died. We pay tribute to what I believe can be described fairly as the genius of the Russian people. Russia produced Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov and so many others. We do not besmirch their reputation.

Our quarrel is with the Russian regime, which has shown itself to be unwilling or incapable of complying with the international rule of law and furthermore has demonstrated a worrying escalation in its behaviour. We know about Alexander Litvinenko and the downing of MH17, which caused appalling loss of life, especially among Dutch nationals. We know about the invasion of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and plenty more. We have heard a little about cyber-attacks in Estonia, and now we know that it is highly likely that Russia is responsible for the attack in Salisbury.

So much of that is characterised by what the Russians call “maskirovka”, or deception—political and military deception. In plain English, it is a worrying instinct to lie, dissemble, deceive and disguise. The Russian Defence Minister described information as “another type of armed forces”. Moscow TV said that a three-year-old boy had been crucified in eastern Ukraine for speaking Russian. It soon emerged that that was completely untrue, but it is an eloquent example of the weaponisation of information. When several soldiers without insignia, referred to in the west as “little green men”, marched into Crimea, Vladimir Putin called them “local self-defence units”. That was plainly false, not least because he afterwards gave medals to Russian journalists who had clearly misrepresented the evidence in Crimea.

Then, to make matters worse, we have heard that the statements on this case that have come from the Russian embassy have been laced with sarcasm, scorn and contempt; most bizarrely of all, it has suggested that somehow the British could be involved. It is that instinctive recourse to dishonesty that is so concerning.

We should respond with cool heads and firm resolve. I respectfully commend the Prime Minister for her sure-footed and calibrated response; the expulsion of 23 diplomats was absolutely right. But let me say that in responding to Russia, which shows this instinctive willingness to go beyond the international rule of law, we should not abandon our commitment to integrity in the rule of law, but instead redouble it.

When we have in our sights individuals who may—it is suggested—have been involved in money laundering, it is for an independent Serious Fraud Office or an independent Crown Prosecution Service to weigh the evidence and consider fairly whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute and whether it is in the public interest to do so. When such charges come before a court, it is for independent courts and independent juries to decide, without political interference, whether the charge has been made out. Decisions about whether things should be on our media—on our radio and on our television—should be the independent decisions of Ofcom, taken without political interference. By restating those principles, we mark ourselves out and apart from the brutal and very often dishonest Russian regime.

We should also calibrate our response on the basis of facts and not perception. Russia is of course a huge country, spanning 11 time zones, but it has always leveraged that geographical size to mask an underlying frailty. We should not forget that its economy is only about 60% of the size of the UK’s; that average life expectancy in Russia is a full 10 years less than that in the UK; that its economy has stagnated for a considerable time; and that it is only by spending more than 5% of its GDP on defence, at a great cost to health, education and social care in that country, that it can project the image of strength.

We in the UK must respond with sanctions, as we have heard, and by redoubling our efforts to go against the dirty money. We should also consider strong defence, and I invite the Government to listen carefully to suggestions that we need to increase our defence expenditure. However, in the time available, I just invite the Government to think carefully about cyber-warfare, and I say that as the Member for Cheltenham. It seems likely, does it not, that if there is to be an escalation in the future—let us hope that there will not be—it could be in the world of cyber-warfare? We need to ensure that we have the best individuals in places such as GCHQ ready to defend our country and, if necessary, to exercise our sovereign offensive capability. That does mean resourcing it and ensuring that we have the resources to attract the brightest and the best. In short, let me say that in the face of this threat, and with apologies to Theodore Roosevelt, we should speak softly, speak wisely and carry a big stick.