Salisbury Incident

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), who made a very powerful speech, as have so many speakers in this debate. I pay tribute to Members in all parts of the House for the strength of their contributions. I pay particular tribute to the Prime Minister and to the Security Minister. At all times, their response has been sure-footed, decisive, resolute, and, most importantly, proportionate. That has been the hallmark of the British response. I am delighted to commend it.

A lot of Members across the House recognise that the situation we find ourselves in today regarding the state of Anglo-Russian relations is a very sad one. Although other hon. Members have made this point, it does bear re-emphasis: the Russian regime would have us believe that there is rampant Russophobia in the UK. Literally nothing could be further from the truth. As other Members have said, we have no quarrel with the Russian people; we have enormous admiration for them. This is a country that has made such enormous contributions in science and literature. In science, they have done pioneering work on lasers and in computer science. This is the country that invented the technology behind fracking, for example. In literature, many of us will have studied Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Blok, Pasternak and so many others.

We also pay tribute to the astonishing resilience of the Russian people. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Russian history can be nothing less than in awe of the sacrifice that they showed in the second world war, or, as they would put it, the great patriotic war. There is no Russophobia and our quarrel is only with the Russian leadership. Indeed, our affection for the Russian people cannot blind us to the actions of that leadership.

Others have rehearsed this, but I will as well. This is a country that has invaded another sovereign state. It seems utterly extraordinary that we should even be saying those words at this time in global history. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough indicated, it is having the effect of normalising the outrageous. To invade a sovereign state is an extraordinary action. We have heard about the downing of MH17, with 298 people killed, but almost as shocking as that was the campaign of disinformation, which must have added immeasurably to the anguish of the families of the innocent people. The Russian state put out that MH17 was blown up by a missile intended for the Russian President’s plane and, in a suggestion of incalculable insult, that the plane was already full of dead bodies and deliberately crashed. To put out that kind of nonsense and propaganda is shocking. We have also heard about the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, the violation of international airspace and election interference.

When it came to the Skripals, again, there were palpable lies and disinformation. The Prime Minister herself was blamed and even, lest we forget, Porton Down. I welcome the fact that the British Government have been robust but also lawful and proportionate, which must always be the hallmarks of our response. Beyond that, there has been a sophisticated and capable effort to mobilise international opinion. There has been a strong united response from 28 allies, with 153 Russian intelligence agents expelled.

I want to take this opportunity to make two points. First, in my capacity as the Member of Parliament for Cheltenham, I want to thank the intelligence agencies, and in particular GCHQ. These are some of the finest public servants anywhere in our country, not just because of their sheer intellectual brilliance and the abilities that they bring to bear serving the mission and the national interest, but because of their dedication to the values that mark us out internationally. In my experience, both as a lawyer before I came into this place and as a Member of Parliament, they are scrupulous about remaining within the law, defending the values we stand for and doing so in a way that is to the credit of this country.

My second point is this. The UK now has an offensive cyber-capability. That was made clear by George Osborne when he came to GCHQ in Cheltenham in November 2015, and it has been made clear subsequently. What we as a nation need to do, consistent with the values that I have just articulated, is to be clear about how we go about using that offensive cyber-capability, if at all. What are the rules of engagement? We are very familiar, of course, with the rules of engagement for conventional weapons, but what are the circumstances in which it is appropriate to deploy our offensive cyber-capability? What is the threshold of attack on us that is to trigger a response?

I say those things for three reasons: first, because the intelligence agencies look to us for a lead and want that lead; secondly, because we owe it to them to ensure that they comply with their best instincts of remaining within the law; and, thirdly, because we always have to be mindful that, in these difficult circumstances, things can spiral out of control, and we do not want them to spiral out of control or escalate unnecessarily.

The hallmarks of our response must be consistent with the approach we have shown hitherto. We must be resolved. We must be determined. We must be clear. We must be united. This kind of behaviour is outrageous, inappropriate and will meet with a proportionate and condign response. It is easy to say that, but sometimes it is more difficult to achieve. We must turn our attentions with dispatch to ensuring that our cyber-response is calibrated, lawful and proportionate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be taking part in this important debate, in which there have been many thoughtful contributions by Members drawing on their personal interest and knowledge of Russia. In particular, I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on his speech, which reflected his extensive experience and understanding from his time working with the British Council in St Petersburg from 2005 to 2008.

This debate takes place in the week that the inquest opened into the victims, including PC Palmer, of the Westminster terrorist atrocity. The inquest and the human stories we are hearing remind us all of the human cost of terrorist activity. They remind us, as the Minister said earlier, that we should be proud of the police and everyone who keeps us safe. On behalf of Labour, I want to reaffirm that the Labour party condemns any use of chemical weapons, just as the whole House does. Chemical weapons are illegal under international law. The Labour party condemns outright the reckless, murderous attack in Salisbury and Amesbury, as the whole House does.

It is important that we go where the evidence leads and do not engage in speculation, but I also want to make it crystal clear, to use the phrase of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon, that, on the basis of the Prime Minister’s statement and the briefings I have received, I am clear that responsibility lies with Russia and that it was authorised at a very high level. There is no conceivable justification for such an attack, and it is to be condemned utterly. We look forward, if it is at all possible, to the perpetrators being brought to justice. The comments today by the Russian state are in no way helpful. We want to see real co-operation from the Russian state on this matter. We do support the actions of the Prime Minister, including the expulsions of diplomats, thus far.

Our thoughts are with the family of Dawn Sturgess, and with Charlie Rowley who is still recovering from his ordeal. We are obviously very sad at the death of Dawn and we send condolences to her partner and her family. We also send our best wishes to Sergei and Yulia Skripal for a full recovery. We are thankful for what appears to be a full recovery by Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey.

The use of military nerve agents on the streets of Britain is an outrage and beyond reckless. It is easy to imagine how even further death and suffering could have been caused, such was the recklessness of the disposal. As I have said earlier on this matter, we must on no account cease from saying that we cannot have the streets of Britain turned into a killing field for state actors. This is what Jeremy Corbyn told the House in response to the Prime Minister’s statement last week.

The investigation into the shocking events in Salisbury must reach its conclusions. We need to see all the evidence and a full account from the Russian authorities in the light of the emerging evidence. As I said, on the evidence thus far, the finger points at Russia. We need to let the investigatory authorities do their work, and we need to continue to seek a robust dialogue with Russia on all the issues and make a series of demands on them regarding disclosure. Members may think that it is naive to make such demands, but we need to follow the international rule of law and we need to follow international processes.

Government Members have gone out of their way to attack the leader of the Labour party. I understand that it is an attractive tactic for them, and it is a tactic as old as the Zinoviev letter, to question the patriotism of persons and politicians on the left. But the Leader of the Opposition has long spoken out—and repeatedly spoken out—on human rights abuses by Putin’s regime.

The notion that because someone is on the left in politics somehow their patriotism is impugned was belied by a speech by Harold Macmillan, a past Conservative Prime Minister, in the other place at the height of the miners’ strike. He referred to the members of the National Union of Mineworkers, at a time when many Government Members would have been accusing them of being the “enemy within”, as

“the best men in the world. They beat the Kaiser’s army and they beat Hitler’s army. They never gave in.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 November 1984; Vol. 457, c. 240.]

It is simply wrong to assume that people in the Labour movement, at any level, are not as patriotic as anybody else in this House. Perhaps Government Members will want to question that.

[Alex Chalk]

I am not suggesting for a second that the right hon. Lady is not patriotic, but she did say in the past:

“Every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us.”

She has not yet recanted those remarks. Will she take this opportunity to do so entirely?

[Ms Abbott]

That is taken out of context. The idea that I as shadow Home Secretary can have my commitment to British democracy and to this country impugned is, I am afraid, wrong. My parents came from an island. When the second world war was called, they heard the call and came willingly—they were not conscripts—to defend their mother country. They would not understand why Government Members assume, for reasons I can only speculate on, that somehow my commitment to British democracy and the rule of law can be challenged.

In drawing my remarks to a close, it is indeed true, as Government Members may wish to remind me, that I voted against certain counter-terrorism measures, particularly ID cards and 42-day detention without trial. But I did that walking through the same Lobby as many Conservative MPs. I was proud to have done that because I did not believe at the time that those measures made us safe.

We are a parliamentary democracy—we are not Russia—and in a parliamentary democracy the role of the legislature, including Opposition politicians, is to ask questions. For Government Members to suggest that because we ask questions we are somehow complicit with terrorism is really quite wrong.

We on this side of the House are clear that all the evidence we have to date points to Russia, and we are clear that it was authorised at the highest level. We support the Government in the action they have taken, but we will not take aspersions cast on politicians or persons on the left about their patriotism and willingness to defend their country.

The events in Salisbury were horrifying. It is only by perhaps luck that more people were not killed or made extremely ill. We congratulate the police, the security services, the NHS, the ambulance service and all the other people who came together after this terrible event. But there can be no question but that we on this side of the House are as committed to British security as any other Member. I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak in this debate.