Ukraine

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The right hon. Gentleman has framed his point in a certain way, and I am reluctant to go down that path. When I went to Berlin with the shadow Defence Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), it was very clear that—particularly because of the key relationship that Russia had had with East Berlin—the withdrawal to which all the Germans we met were committed must of necessity be faced. I think some of language and rhetoric we are hearing is unhelpful to our German partners in this endeavour.

Putin wants to frame this confrontation as being between the west and Russia, but that hides the true nature of the divide caused by Putin’s war. It is a clash between imperialism and self-determination, between international law and the law of the jungle, between hope and fear. If a sovereign United Nations member state can be carved up with minimal consequences, all nations are threatened, and that is why growing the anti-Putin coalition is so vital. We have already had some success in that regard: 141 countries condemned Russia in the United Nations, and Russia was rightly booted off the UN Human Rights Council. I know that the Secretary of State led on that from the front.

Russia’s outright supporters are small in number—a gang of dictators with no respect for human freedom or human rights—but a much larger group have sat on the fence, abstaining on Putin’s monstrous act of aggression, and while 141 of the world’s nearly 200 countries have condemned Russia, in population terms the world is split much closer to 50:50. China has given political support to Moscow, even if it has formally abstained. However, the group of abstentions is much larger, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa and many others. Isolating Russia is a diplomatic priority. That is why it was so wrong that the Prime Minister failed even to raise the issue of India’s neutrality on Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in his recent meeting with Prime Minister Modi. As I asked her earlier, will the Foreign Secretary commit herself to doing so now?

One of the most damaging consequences of this war —the Secretary of State touched on this briefly—is the soaring price of food across the world, which risks a humanitarian catastrophe. If we are to build the widest possible coalition against this war, we must ensure that its costs do not threaten the most vulnerable countries in the world, and that means dealing with rocketing food prices. Before Putin’s illegal invasion, Ukraine was the bread basket of Europe: along with Russia, it accounted for 30% of the global wheat supply, 20% of corn, and more than 70% of sunflower oil. In fact, 12% of all calories traded in the world come from the two nations.

However, to defend themselves from Putin’s assault, Ukraine’s farmers have had to take up arms rather than pull up crops, and their tractors have towed away tanks rather than grain. The ports that they had used to ship their goods to a hungry world are under occupation or siege, and now some of their fields are littered with mines. Food prices rose to their highest ever level in March, up a third on this time last year. Maize and wheat posted month-on-month increases of nearly 20%. Meanwhile, the horn of Africa is facing a worsening drought which the UN says will put 20 million people at risk. Many countries in north Africa and the middle east are also vulnerable because they import more than 50% of their cereal crops. Lebanon is already facing huge economic difficulties and political instability.

Soaring food prices and shortages could cause a humanitarian catastrophe, but there is also the risk that countries and their publics will blame the sanctions for these price spikes rather than Putin’s bloody war, with a gradual unravelling of opposition to the invasion. That is why we need to put food security at the heart of our strategy. Does the Foreign Secretary agree with Labour that Britain should work with the UN to organise an emergency global food summit to put it at the very top of the international agenda? We need to secure commitments for action. The summit can be a focus for collaboration with major producers to increase supplies and meet growing needs. Some major agricultural producers, including India, may be in a position to produce more and to ease pressure on prices. We should be planning for the consequences of this war lasting for months and possibly years, and looking at how to manage new planting seasons for crucial crops.

We need to help the populations most at risk, and the UK and our global partners must help to meet the cost. Developing countries face a toxic cocktail of massive debts driven by the pandemic, rising interest rates and now soaring prices, in particular for food. The president of the World Bank has warned of an impending human catastrophe. Last week, the International Monetary Fund held its spring meeting in Washington and the announcements made there were welcome but they do not yet meet the scale of the challenge ahead. Can I ask the Foreign Secretary what further steps the UK will take with international partners and through institutions such the IMF and the World Bank to prepare for this economic crisis?

The Government said that they merged the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office to bring together diplomacy and development. This is a clear test of how that works in reality. The interconnections between Putin’s illegal war, soaring food prices and the vulnerability of the world’s poorest are clear, so why are the Government not yet connecting the dots? The mismanagement of the merger has so far left the combined Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office as less than the sum of its parts, leaking expertise and draining civil servants of morale, and the short-sighted cuts to aid have left the UK little room to respond to new emergencies. This contradicts the generosity shown by the British people and works against our own national interests, so when will the Conservative Government finally step up?

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that we are still awaiting the Government’s long-awaited international development strategy that is needed to deal with all these issues of food shortages and healthcare? We have still had no sight of it, yet it is an integral part of bringing these things together.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is completely right. As the world recovers from a pandemic that the global south is still in the midst of, and as the world faces rising food prices and rising inflation, it is extraordinary that we heard the Secretary of State say that we would have to wait until the spring. If one went outside, one might think it was the beginning of summer. Where is the strategy? We need to see it.

The latest figures suggest that the UK has issued 70,000 visas for those displaced and fleeing Ukraine. The Secretary of State will know—she will no doubt have got this from the emails coming into her own constituency postbag—that there are still thousands of families saying that they want to offer a home who are still waiting to be connected by her colleague the Home Secretary. The rhetoric is not meeting the ambition of the British people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

The war in Ukraine has entered its third month, with no end in sight. We all see the tragic scenes on our screens at night: innocent women and children being gunned down, targeted as they queue for bread and shelter from bombs, unable to escape Putin’s attacks; the war crimes, with, unfortunately, women and girls being raped and murdered, sometimes in front of their children; the indiscriminate attacks; Russian rockets striking railway stations; and dead bodies left in the street, people shot as they attempted to flee.

We stand with our NATO allies in providing military, economic, diplomatic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine as it defends itself from this illegal and unethical invasion, but this Conservative Government need to move faster and harder on both economic and diplomatic sanctions against Putin’s regime. Too often, we have lagged behind the EU and the US, while promised measures have yet to be implemented. We urgently need to act against those who are the proxies for sanctions—individuals and organisations.

For years, the Tories have cosied up to Russian oligarchs, allowing their dirty money to pollute our economy, our politics and our institutions. There is no excuse. Why have the Government still not acted on the recommendations of the Russia report, or fixed Companies House, which allows oligarchs to shield their ill-gotten gains? Instead of strategically seeking to fill the gap of Russian energy, our Prime Minister looks to new authoritarians from which to buy oil. This is short-termist, to say the least, and ill-judged. Fossil fuel empowers the worst sorts of dictators. We need to urgently invest in a clean energy strategy and seek to look at how we address the food shortages and escalation in food prices across the world, which a clean energy strategy can also do.

While we open our doors to millions of frightened and fleeing Ukrainian refugees, many neighbouring countries wonder if they will be next, terrified as the history books are replayed, with the tales told to them of the second world war still imprinted firmly on their memories. We must not be on the wrong side of history here. I am incredibly proud that Wales is a nation of sanctuary for refugees and a super-sponsor of those fleeing Ukraine. I am especially proud of so many of my constituents in Cardiff North who have signed up to the Homes for Ukraine scheme and are sponsoring families in desperate need of safety and stability. But I am deeply ashamed at the incompetence of this Tory Government and their Home Office in putting Ukrainian lives in danger when they are still living on the frontlines of Putin’s missiles.

[Margaret Ferrier]

I personally have had two constituents contact me in just the past two days about situations where only some members of a family have been granted a visa to come to the UK. As such, the family have found themselves stranded in an unfamiliar country without the means to support themselves. Does the hon. Member agree that the Home Office whistleblower’s concerns are disturbing and must be addressed immediately?

[Anna McMorrin]

Absolutely. It is incompetence, and I have seen the same incompetence with the lost applications of families that my constituents are sponsoring. Sarah, for example, is sponsoring a Ukrainian family with a severely disabled son. They are unable to flee to a refugee camp and outside Ukraine because of their son’s needs. They are stuck living with the daily horrors and the sirens. They are putting their lives on the line and waiting for visas that the Home Office lost. A constituent in Old St Mellons sponsored a mother and a baby, but an error meant that only the mother was granted a visa.

I speak to families desperate for help, and frankly I am furious at how difficult this Government are making it for vulnerable families, women and children to seek sanctuary when they have been forced to leave their homes, their loved ones, their brothers and their husbands—everything they know and love, they have left behind. We are facing the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war, yet the UK’s response stands in stark contrast to that of our European neighbours. We are refusing to match the EU’s decision to offer Ukrainians sanctuary and instead are offering a limited scheme that seeks to match families and individuals online like some twisted dating app. That is what I am hearing from my constituents. When I intervene to try to help those families and my constituents who have sponsored them, the response I get from Home Office officials is to email me back, asking me to stop contacting them. I am sure many of my colleagues have received that very same response.

Last week, I asked the Prime Minister if his 1,000th day would be his last. He lost his temper and told me that he was leading the way in standing up to Putin, but all I see are warm words and empty soundbites, and a Prime Minister more desperate to save his own skin than the lives of Ukrainians. As a world leader, the UK needs to be using its influence to bring about greater international support for Ukraine and set an example in welcoming refugees fleeing Putin’s heinous crimes, but the Prime Minister and his Government are at the moment failing in that task.

We are at a turning point in history—a turning point for our generation and our children. This war will touch every part of our humanity if it is not stopped and if we do not do all we can to prevent as much human suffering as possible. My constituents stand ready to support the Ukrainian people in need—why won’t this Government? Please, let us not be on the wrong side of history.