Ukraine: UK Policy

Baroness Alexander of Cleveden Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab)]

I refer noble Lords to my entry on the register of interests. Like many noble Lords who have spoken, I do not concur with the essence of the perspective of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, but I recognise the merit of free speech and debate.

In preparing my remarks for this debate, I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, was born in Manchuria in the 1930s, as indeed was my own mother. This is relevant because Manchuria in the 1930s was an epicentre of great power conflict and aggression, with some pretty uncomfortable parallels with where we find ourselves today.

My remarks on Ukraine focus on the very organisation that the British Government set up in the 1930s to counter malign great power influence. It was, of course, the British Council. In Ukraine today the British Council is supporting one in five teachers with conflict and trauma training, keeping children in school when their fathers are fighting on the front. It is teaching English to Ukrainian government officials because English proficiency is vital to building international support and to managing the complexities of any negotiations to come.

The British Council is building links between British and Ukrainian universities so that young people can continue to have a university education in Ukraine, and is supporting the protection of nationally important cultural sites, thereby safeguarding Ukraine’s heritage in the midst of war.

This wide-ranging British support has contributed materially to maintaining Ukrainian morale and resisting aggression, and all of this has cost just £2 million a year. For context, that is the cost of just one Storm Shadow missile. But the grit in the oyster is that all this vital work has been funded from overseas development assistance.

To the Government’s credit, they have already recognised the role of the British World Service as a force multiplier for the United Kingdom in these changed times. The British Council serves a similar purpose as a force multiplier because, in the future, for Ukraine and elsewhere, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, recognised, countering disinformation matters. Conflict is no longer simply about who wins the war; it is about whose story wins. So, whenever the fighting stops, the clash of values will matter. I invite the Minister in his summing up to recognise the value of the British Council’s work in Ukraine and, more broadly, in situations of conflict and conflict prevention, as well as the role of soft power in complementing hard power.