Ukraine

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I stand in support of Ukraine and of our values, as the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, exhorted us to do earlier. It is perhaps a sign of the importance of this debate—and of the global situation—that there has been close to unanimity across all sides of your Lordships’ House about the gravity of the situation, the enormity of what the United Kingdom needs to do and how far we are all willing to go to achieve that.

It is a convention in this House very often to say that one is delighted to speak after the last person who spoke, but I am particularly pleased to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Owen, because his comments were so important. He also raised a point that had not been made in the previous five hours, which was about just how strong NATO under Biden can be. That is important and builds on suggestions at earlier stages across your Lordships’ House from my noble friend Lord Newby and the noble Lords, Lord Walney and Lord Cormack, about Europe speaking with one voice. One of the things that is crucial at present is that Europe responds as one, the West responds as one, and—as far as possible—the international community responds as one. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, suggested that perhaps we needed to talk to former Soviet satellites, countries that might suddenly realise how vulnerable they are going to be if Putin really is looking to rebuild a Soviet empire. As many others have suggested, including international historians like Margaret MacMillan and Niall Ferguson, perhaps he is not looking so much to the Soviet Union as to the former Russian Empire.

Very clearly, we need the strongest possible sanctions. For days, these Benches have been calling for the Government to do more and saying that we do not think they have done enough. Obviously more sanctions were announced yesterday. They were important, but do they go as far as the noble Lord, Lord Sedwill, called for in his maiden speech? We have heard much about his maiden speech, which was indeed important. Are the sanctions really going to be ratcheted up sufficiently to make a difference to Putin? We agreed the statutory instrument yesterday and the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary then talked about further sanctions, so one of the questions I would like the Minister to focus on is: what other legislation needs to be introduced and what other matters need to be legislated on? Does the Minister have a list? Can he tell us when that is coming forward? Can he take back to the Prime Minister that your Lordships’ House, I believe, and the other place would be willing to sit longer, later, more days and closer to Easter to get through all the legislation we need to? Pushing this back beyond Easter is not appropriate, because these sanctions need to be in place as soon as possible.

We have heard much about Russian money in this country. When we were looking for European sanctions at the time of the Crimea crisis in 2014, one of the issues was that the French were perhaps a little reluctant to stop arms sales to Russia, Germany was a little reluctant to stop Nord Stream 2, and the United Kingdom was perhaps too reluctant to stop Russian money in the City of London. As my noble friend Lady Kramer pointed out, we are seen as the London laundromat. Can that stop immediately? How quickly can this be done? We cannot let these sanctions drag on and worry about whether certain individuals might have deep pockets for lawyers. We need to make sure that assets are frozen as soon as possible, so what are the Government doing to ensure that this can be done very swiftly?

I believe that I and all other noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon are standing up for our values of democracy and the international rule of law, yet my noble friend Lord Alderdice in—as always—a very powerful speech suggested that perhaps we were not: that the call for sanctions was not internationally permitted because they were not being put through the United Nations, and that we were therefore talking about engaging in economic warfare. I am not calling for any sort of warfare; I do not believe these Benches are. We clearly need economic sanctions but, by definition, a UN Security Council with a permanent member state—with a veto—which is the protagonist in this incursion into Ukraine will never vote for sanctions. I hope we will all support the international order but still accept the need for sanctions.

As the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, pointed out in his important speech, and as my noble friend Lord Alderdice raised, we need to be absolutely clear not just in this Chamber—talking to ourselves, and maybe talking to members of our businesses, universities or political parties—but in this country that by standing up to Russia and standing up for Ukraine, the costs of these sanctions are not just going to hit Putin, his cronies or Russian businesses. They will impact on all of us. They will impact on energy and gas prices, but that has to be a price we are willing to pay to ensure freedom in Europe.

There is a price for that freedom, but by dealing with this through sanctions and economic means, we can try to ensure that we, as a sovereign country and a NATO member, do not find ourselves tripping into war. That could be existential because, as several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and my noble friend Lady Northover, have pointed out, Putin has made it very clear that he does not rule out using nuclear weapons. We cannot get into a war but we must ensure the rights and freedoms of Ukraine.

Finally, several noble Lords, in particular my noble friends Lady Ludford and Lady Sheehan and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, talked about refugees. In her opening remarks, the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, talked about humanitarian aid for Ukraine. How far will that go? How generous are Her Majesty’s Government willing to be to support those who are internally displaced or who, more likely, will very soon be in Poland and the Baltic states? In his reply, can the Minister tell us—it seems like an echo of everything we have been saying about Afghanistan for the last six months—that the MoD, the FCDO and the Home Office are speaking as one? Are they working together to ensure that we will have an open and generous package for refugees and that visas will be available for Ukrainians and maybe, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, suggested, for Russian dissidents? There are people in Russia who are standing up against Putin. As several noble Lords have pointed out, we should respect Russia and the Russians, even if we do not respect Putin and we think that what he is doing is fundamentally wrong.

Like everybody else, we on these Benches believe that we need to stand and support Ukraine. We need to do it collectively with our European and NATO allies. We support what the Government have done so far, but we now perhaps need them to go a little further.