Russia

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Falkner for securing this timely and important debate. It has been an extremely good and thoughtful debate and, if I am absolutely honest, slightly surprising in its tone. I have been surprised by quite how moderate it has been.

As several noble Lords have already remarked, next month will mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is worth recalling that it was a time of tremendous optimism for democracy and international relations. At this time, Gorbachev used to promote the concept of a “common European home”, and my Russian friends in Voronezh and St Petersburg used to talk about their hopes that Russia could finally join the European family as a full and equal partner. Two years later, in 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed and Russia and its former Soviet republics entered a period of profound economic and political change.

My noble friend Lady Falkner has already touched on the Eurasian Economic Union in her speech. Hillary Clinton has said that she feared that this was President Putin’s attempt to recreate the old Soviet Union. It certainly is an attempt to produce an alternative to the European Union for the Soviet republics. I would be hugely grateful if my noble friend the Minister would say a few words in her concluding remarks about the Government’s assessment of the likely economic and political impact of this new organisation.

I believe that in a debate on Russia and democratic principles it is worth recalling—as the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Anderson, did so powerfully in their speeches—that, unlike the Baltic states and many of the countries of central and eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, the USSR, and the Russian empire before it, had no tradition of parliamentary democracy in the western understanding of the phrase. In effect, it has moved from one system of autocracy to another. The only real exception to this were the very brief but chaotic Yeltsin years before the economic crises that befell the country resulted in many Russians losing faith in their political system and their leadership. It is with deep regret that I believe that the European Union’s eastern dimension strategy did not live up to its rhetoric in the 1990s and that opportunities were missed in the 1990s to build a genuinely fair and democratic society in Russia, based on democracy and the rule of law. Since President Putin’s third term as President, we have witnessed a gradual drift back to many of the old ways of obsessive state media control, paranoia and lack of respect for international law. The acts of aggression by Russian armed forces in eastern Ukraine are a clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and international law.

Two weeks ago, I spent a fascinating five days at a festival of languages in Astana, Kazakhstan. It is clear that the recent events in Ukraine have sent a shiver down the spine of many people in Kazakhstan. While I was in Kazakhstan, I found myself one evening watching a political programme on one of the many Putin-controlled Russian TV channels. I watched an hour-long documentary about the situation in Ukraine. To say that their interpretation of events there was a little different from ours would be an extreme understatement.

The recent media coverage in Russia of the Scottish referendum also made for fascinating viewing, where a presenter on “Russia Today” referred to the “North Korea” levels of turnout and Russia claimed that the conduct of the referendum in Scotland “did not meet international standards”.

And so, sadly, we are now very far from the “common European home” aspirations of 25 years ago. However, as many other noble Lords have said, I believe that we have not been blameless. We have failed to understand the Kremlin’s responses to NATO expansion, as many noble Lords have clearly said. We have also failed to understand even the impact of EU enlargement over the last decade, because in Russia so many Russians see the two as one and the same.

Following the war on terror, it is perhaps understandable that we have paid less attention to what was going on in Moscow, as we thought that the Cold War was at an end. As a result, we have not been sufficiently sensitive to what was a rather predictable reaction from a Kremlin filled from the ranks of the former KGB and Russian intelligence services.

In conclusion, reluctantly, I believe that we must persevere with our policy of sanctions. I say reluctantly because politically the sanctions are currently having exactly the opposite effect to what was desired and are uniting even many liberal Russians against the West. But there is very real evidence that sanctions are making a strong economic impact, and the Kremlin must be made to understand that when it breaches international law there are and must always be strong consequences. We have to remain resolute in our response to Russia’s recent actions, but we must also maintain, as so many noble Lords have said, open channels for dialogue and negotiation, because surely none of us would want a return to the world as it was before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Ukraine

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I start by apologising sincerely to the House for my late arrival to the debate this afternoon. In particular, I apologise to my noble friend the Minister.

The debate this afternoon has illustrated just what a complex, difficult and rapidly developing issue this is. As someone who has studied, lived in and worked in Russia over many years since the late 1980s, I will limit myself this afternoon to issues surrounding the context of recent events. That context is extremely important in setting out why western rhetoric following these deeply dangerous events is not always matched by reality. Clearly, Sunday’s referendum was not legitimate. It had a heavily rigged set of questions and was carried out in a true Putin-esque spirit of “managed democracy”. None the less, the scale of the result illustrates all too clearly the problem in Crimea.

Last week, Henry Kissinger wrote an interesting article on Ukraine in the Washington Post. He stated that:

“The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins”.

Whatever our individual views about what is happening in Ukraine, I believe all noble Lords agree that we want a democratic, open and liberal Ukraine. We all want to see a Ukrainian Government who allow free speech, work to fight against corruption and speak for all Ukrainians—Ukrainian and Russian speakers, Tatars, Muslims and other minorities. However, we cannot successfully achieve such a Ukraine by forcing it artificially to decide between Russia and the West. To do so risks splitting the country and aggravating even moderate Russians.

As many noble Lords have already remarked, the situation in Ukraine is highly complex. There are families of Ukrainian origin living in Russia and Russian-speaking Ukrainians living in Ukraine. After over 70 years of the Soviet Union, the two countries are inextricably linked. For many Russians—including many liberal, anti-Putin Russians—Ukraine is not just any other neighbouring country. As several noble Lords have already remarked today, Kievan Rus is at the heart of Russian history. We should recall that Crimea was Russian as recently as 1954—in the lifetime of many Russians and Ukrainians. There remain many emotional and family ties, as well as, of course, the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol.

One of the side effects of the end of the Cold War is that fewer people have studied Russia, its language, politics and history. It has been seen as less of a priority. As we have seen more and more Russians shopping in Bond Street and buying properties in Hampstead, we have tended to assume that it was all “getting better over there”. Sadly, the EU’s eastern dimension policy has not been as united or successful as it should have been. Our approach has been overly based on bilateral financial and energy deals rather than achieving a successful, united and holistic approach to Russia and its near neighbours. In particular, we have failed to deal effectively with the increasingly authoritarian Mr Putin with one clear and united voice. He has carefully exploited those divisions. We have such great financial, economic and, especially, energy interests with Russia that all too often over the past decade we have turned a convenient blind eye to some of Mr Putin’s increasingly authoritarian behaviour.

The situation in Ukraine is undoubtedly complex, but it is in the West’s best interest to have a stable, democratic Ukraine. That should not involve it having to become either Moscow’s or the West’s buffer zone against the other side. Ukraine must not become an excuse for hawks on either side to reignite the Cold War. Indeed, Ukraine could serve as an effective bridge from western Europe to Russia.

I believe that some errors were made in the early stages of this crisis. As a result, there is a risk of increasingly dangerous extremism on both sides of the political divide in Ukraine. For example, it was deeply insensitive and unwise of the interim Ukrainian Government to demote the Russian language immediately after taking power. From the start, they should have emphasised that they sought to represent all Ukrainians, including Russian speakers, Tatars and other minorities. That policy has now been reversed, but the damage has already been done in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. It has provided Mr Putin with the excuse that he needed.

Moscow, for its part, has clearly breached international law through trying to annex Crimea. Mr Putin has used the mostly non-existent threat against Russian speakers in Ukraine as an excuse for his actions. There can be little doubt that in the short term, this has given a boost to popularity back at home, although it should be noted—as my noble friend Lord Chidgey already has—that liberals, particularly Yabloko, in both Moscow and St Petersburg have expressed deep concern at Mr Putin’s response. Accepting the transfer of Crimea to Russia would set a very dangerous precedent—not least for the countries of the former Soviet Union and, in particular, Moldova.

I believe that we should concentrate all diplomatic efforts now on getting all parties, including Russia, focused on electing a democratically legitimate Government in Kiev on 25 May. Those elections must proceed on that date as agreed and they must be fair, free and properly and fully observed. Any attempts to postpone those elections should be resisted. Ukraine must be allowed to decide its own future. Work should also continue on providing economic assistance and support to fighting the, sadly, currently endemic levels of corruption and promoting judicial, political and economic reform in Ukraine.

There is no doubt that these will be challenging weeks ahead but when we look at how we want this policy to end we have to ensure that, at the end of this process, Moscow understands that if it wants to be a respected player on the world stage it has to put its Cold War-style behaviour in the past where it belongs. The EU, for its part, should work to build a genuinely coherent eastern dimension policy, one which works to improve democracy and could serve as a bridge from the EU to Russia and beyond.

EU: Free Trade Agreements

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

The noble Baroness makes a good point in raising those countries. There has been a lot of focus on the most developed nations, but we also have an obligation to continue to push the economic partnership agreements that we have been trying to make with Caribbean and African countries. However, I would stress that there was a major breakthrough with the WTO agreements. The WTO agreement to aid trade facilitation is worth around £100 billion to the world economy as a whole and the vast majority of that will go to developing nations, which I think is to be welcomed. Certainly the UK will continue to push for trade agreements with Caribbean, African and ASEAN countries. We are great proponents of free trade and of the benefits that it brings for all nations involved in it.

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that concluding the EU-India free trade agreement would bring enormous benefits to the economies of both sides and, therefore, that finding solutions to the remaining obstacles should be a priority this year?

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

Indeed, the Indian agreement would be of great benefit. Of course, India is one of the major powers and is growing fast. However, as we know from our debates in this House, there are challenges with internal Indian beliefs on trade and there are elections in India in, I believe, April this year. Discussions are ongoing, and I believe there will be discussions in Davos with the Indian trade Minister regarding progress on this agreement. We will certainly be pushing the Indian Government for a wide-ranging agreement, but whether that will be feasible this side of the Indian election is extremely doubtful.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, like anyone born after 1958 in this country, I have never had the opportunity to vote in a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union. Some noble Lords, with all their experience of actual referendum campaigns, may tell me that I am being a little optimistic, but as a pro-European I have always believed that a referendum campaign could allow the positive case for membership of the European Union to be heard—or at the very least provide the opportunity to correct many of the more ludicrous Euro-myths that have gained currency over the years.

I very much agree with the speech made earlier by my noble friend Lord Garel-Jones. He said it is a matter of considerable regret that successive UK Governments have failed effectively to make the positive case for EU membership. Instead of arguing for much needed EU reform from a position of strength as a committed European leader, we have consistently weakened our negotiating position by giving the impression that we really do not know whether we want to be in or out.

There is therefore a good case for a referendum, which is why the Liberal Democrats supported the 2011 referendum Act and why we are in favour of an “in or out” referendum the next time there is a further transfer of power from London to Brussels. I agree with many of the noble Lords today who have said that they believe that a referendum is now inevitable. However, the Bill in front of us today is flawed in many important respects and leaves a great many unanswered questions. Indeed, it reads like a Bill drafted in haste for purely party-political purposes.

In particular, I ask those noble Lords who support the Bill to ask themselves the following questions. Do they believe that the referendum question in the Bill, as currently drafted, is genuinely fair? Is it not a leading question? Do they not agree with the position taken by the Electoral Commission on this issue? What is the justification for the somewhat arbitrary date of 2017? Is there not a danger that setting this random date in law will provoke economic uncertainty at a time when the fragile economies of the UK and our EU partners are only just beginning to recover? What is the justification for the inconsistencies of who will actually be allowed to vote in this referendum? In Scotland later this year, 16 and 17 year-olds will be allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum on the basis that it is very much their future at stake. Surely the same logic should apply to a referendum on our membership of the European Union? Also, should the electorate not be based on local election electoral lists, as it will be in the Scottish referendum?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that it is not acceptable for this Parliament to attempt to mandate a future Parliament on an issue of this magnitude. At the very least, should the enactment of the Bill not be subject to an affirmative resolution of both Houses following the next general election? I look forward very much to discussing these and other issues in more detail in Committee and on Report over the next few Fridays.