Ukraine

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the terms in which he restated this country’s position on Ukraine. I think he captured the sentiment of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Spellar, brought a very practical view to what we need to do to win this war. He is right to say that it is won partly on the machine bench, and through our ability to produce what we need to produce in order to defend ourselves and our allies.

Earlier this week, some Ukrainian councillors from Lviv were in town. I will say just a word about their visit, which revealed some of the things that the Ukrainians are undergoing. We heard a moment ago from the noble Lord, Lord Banner, about it. They also showed something of the same picture. Among other things, they showed us some photographs of young people with artificial limbs sitting in wheelchairs, reminding us that this is an aggressor who makes no distinction between combatants and civilians, and that war crimes are being committed every day of the week.

Lviv has become a national centre for the development of artificial limbs and prostheses. The councillors are looking for international partners. This country has a considerable reputation in that area, and I hope we can pursue this and increase our contribution to what they are able to do. They certainly need help in certain technical areas.

Another point the councillors made, which is directly relevant to the ability to win this war, is that Lviv Airport, a major connecting point between Ukraine and western allies, is still shut. That makes it considerably more difficult to get in the war supplies and to do the trading they need to do with the West than would otherwise be the case, so reopening the airport is a priority. They say they now have the necessary air cover. London insurers are involved so I hope that, just as our insurance companies were able to open up the Black Sea routes, which are being used for the transit of grain these days, we can bring our weight to bear and get this airport opened as quickly as possible.

The councillors made one last point during their visit that is directly linked to UK military assistance to Ukraine. They told us that the Danish and especially Norwegian Governments are successfully promoting ties between Norwegian private sector innovators and Ukrainians working on the ground who are together developing weapons using database technologies. That is obviously extremely relevant to the war, and also potentially an investment opportunity. The Ukrainians said they would like to see the UK doing the same thing. Perhaps we can take a leaf out of the Norwegian book. This issue came up when the group called on the Minister, so I hope that we can take this idea forward.

I turn briefly to the conduct of the war. Other noble Lords have remarked on the worrying introduction of North Korean soldiers into the Russian campaign. One cannot help feeling rather sorry for those wretched men from North Korea. It has been widely remarked in the media that resorting to foreign manpower shows Russian weakness. At the same time, shared aggression draws its promoters closer together, cements political blocs and increases instability and the risk of wider war. This is not a good or welcome development. Western allies worry about taking action in relation to Russia that might result in escalation of the war in Ukraine and understand the issue about Storm Shadow. I hope the FCDO is right about Russia’s increasing exhaustion, but the longer it takes to win the war and the longer it drags on, the more it offers Russia the opportunity to draw the political wheel against us. That would be a losing game, not just in Ukraine but more widely.

What we see happening in Ukraine is the expansion of the tension that exists in Europe being transmitted to other parts of the world and then being brought back to us. The way in which a link has been established between an Asian country, which has its own quarrel with South Korea and is now active on our continent, is serious. We need to be extremely concerned about the length of the war that we may have found ourselves involved in.

King’s Speech

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on their electoral success. It is in the national interest that they succeed, and I wish them well. I want to talk briefly about three subjects. The first is the transatlantic world, which is not in the best of health. Until relatively recently, we could count on stable politics in our own alliance as a secure basis on which to respond to threats, challenges and the rest of the world, but that is no longer the case. The rise of nationalist populism in the United States is a threat to the viability of the alliance, which has kept the peace since the Second World War. If the United States declines to continue to support Ukraine militarily, UK and European security generally will be at great risk. I have no faith in fashionable alternatives to the transatlantic alliance, such as sovereign Europe. It is a pipe dream, and a bad one, since it will produce division and weakness in NATO.

The UK has an especially strong interest in holding the western alliance together. Over the years we have put a lot of eggs in that basket, and a close relationship with the US, as part of the wider Atlantic community, is part of the fabric of our own polity. No longer being in the EU means we are simultaneously less influential and more vulnerable to the effects of transatlantic disagreement and breaches of trust. My conclusion is that devoting resources to diplomacy in Washington is top of the list of priorities, since failure of the alliance will not just destroy our ability to deal with all the other wider threats that we confront in the Middle East and China; we will face the likelihood of a wider war in our continent.

Secondly, I turn to China. The integrated review recognised the challenge that China poses militarily, politically and economically, and the Conservative Government made an important and constructive move in AUKUS, which helps join the Atlantic and Pacific worlds and increases the credibility of a European contribution to the political and military scene in the Asia-Pacific. I belong to those who believe that we should try to contribute to that part of the world. I hope that, in conducting the defence review, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, in whom I have great confidence, is able to build on AUKUS. There is no doubt that, to keep the Americans with us, Europeans must spend more on defence, especially on the security of our own continent. I am not suggesting that the Indo-Pacific has any real priority. We cannot credibly ask the Americans to take our security more seriously than we do.

I think it is time for the UK to respond to the changing global balance of power by giving the Royal Navy a greater role in, and a greater reach of, our defence diplomacy—more ships, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord West, particularly frigates. It is also time that we had a China strategy that joins up our political, economic and military objectives. It is something that we do not have and badly need. I do not believe in keeping countries guessing; that is dangerous. We did not keep the Russians guessing about our terms during the Cold War and we should not do so with the Chinese. We need to say what we mean to them.

My final brief point is to ask the Government, please—this is not my first time of asking—to take the opportunity of their proposed cybersecurity and resilience Bill, which I greatly welcome, to revise the outdated provisions of the Computer Misuse Act. They have the effect of discouraging cyber professionals, for fear of penalisation within its terms, from carrying out defensive research. That renders us all less secure in cyberspace than we could otherwise be. That does not make sense and is not a complicated change to make.

I conclude by expressing the hope that the Government will conduct foreign and defence policy in ways that enable them to maintain cross-party support. I have confidence in this. The beginning is good; may it continue.