Ukraine: UK Policy

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I will focus on humanitarian aid policy, an essential component of our assistance to the people of Ukraine, but I would like first to commend the speech of my noble friend Lady Helic, with every word of which I agree. I am also grateful for the speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, and I agree with her on support for active peacebuilding, conflict prevention and development. We are, of course, seeing development cuts across the US and, indeed, Europe; I fully support the increase in defence spending, but I fear that these development cuts will cost us from a national security perspective in the long term.

The UNFPA has highlighted that around 640,000 women and girls in Ukraine will be impacted by the USAID cuts to gender-based violence prevention and response services, including psychosocial support, economic-empowerment initiatives and life-saving information services. I appreciate that the Government will not comment on other countries’ decisions, but here in the UK we are providing at least £120 million in humanitarian assistance through to the end of this financial year, bringing the total humanitarian contribution to £477 million for Ukraine and the region since the start of the full-scale invasion—as an aside, I do not see how we can say that this is not a full-scale invasion; we should not shy away from saying that it is. This humanitarian support is very welcome. However, given the UK cut to ODA from 0.5% to 0.3%, is the Minister able to confirm that this assistance to Ukraine will continue as planned? Also, given the pressure on UK aid, will the current level be continued in future years?

My noble friend Lord Banner spoke about the broader Russian assets held in this country, and I want to focus on one specifically. One way to get significantly more money into humanitarian assistance in Ukraine would be to find a way to release the proceeds of the sale of Chelsea FC, which is £2.3 billion, plus interest, that is currently frozen in UK bank accounts. Given the UK ODA cuts, I hope that the Government are pushing for this as hard as possible. Can the Minister provide an update on these funds?

Finally, I will raise something that has perhaps not been highlighted as much as it should be in this debate. There have been more than 19,500 reports of unlawful deportation and forced transfer of Ukrainian children into Russia. I spent part of last week with a Ukrainian MP, who shared with me her concern that this had been forgotten. Will the Minister join me in remembering these children and condemning this practice, and will he argue for their return in the peace talks?