Ukraine Recovery Conference

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

I welcome the success of the Ukraine rebuilding conference. It is what we do best in the UK: convening our global partners and bringing them together to support an ally. In particular, I welcome the fact that we have announced that no sanctions will be lifted until Russia pays compensation, but can I push the Government to go one step further and say that no funds will be unfrozen until Russia pays compensation?

In my discussions this week with global private sector leaders, they are making three clear requests as we plan for peace. One is to create that regulatory framework and the environment that allows them to go and do what they want to do to support Ukraine. The second is the importance of judicial reform to give global private sector leaders the confidence that the rule of law will underpin their investments in Ukraine. Finally, they see a transition to a cashless society as pivotal to Ukraine reaching all the opportunities available to it.

I urge my hon. Friend that, in order to help us bring peace sooner, we need to develop and establish an economic Ramstein, whether it be on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in September, the G20 or the G7. That is the way we make sure that we are supporting the military effort and strangling Putin’s financial foothold that is allowing him to continue to wage war.

[Leo Docherty]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee not only for her sustained interest and personal experience, but for her involvement in this conference and her questions today. She is absolutely right about the convening power of our country, which was on show at its absolute best yesterday, but we must deliver on the commitments made at the conference, and we will.

My hon. Friend made a pertinent suggestion about a similar approach to frozen assets, and we will take that away. She rightly outlined that the clear requirement and pre-condition for Ukrainian economic reinvention and renaissance is the improvement of the regulatory environment, the development of a truly independent judiciary and, ideally, the transition to a cashless economy. There is huge appetite across the Ukrainian Government—because they are forward-looking and tech savvy—for those sorts of developments and modernisations, which will allow investment to flow. We entirely support that kind of institutional development. The conditionality of a lot of private capital that now flows to Ukraine as a result of this conference will usefully have those conditions attached, and I entirely agree with her analysis.

My hon. Friend made a pertinent point about the notion of an economic Ramstein, as it were. Yesterday and today show that, in terms of matching our military effort, there is global will—especially among G7 major developed nations—to have a similar economic effort that can be leveraged and mobilised to ensure that while we are giving lethal aid we are also driving economic improvement, because that is what will make victory not just inevitable, but sustainable.