Sanctions

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

They will not be going about their business freely for much longer.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

If the BBC World Service comes to my right hon. Friend to ask for additional funding to increase the broadcasting in Russia and among Russia’s supporters and allies, will she entertain and agree to such requests?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I will certainly entertain the request, and I will ensure it is value for money.

Relationship with Russia and China

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who stands out as the only Scottish Member of Parliament who voted for the renewal of Trident in 2016. That is a great credit to him and to his prescience, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) said, if there was ever a demonstration of the futility of nuclear disarmament, it is the position that Ukraine finds itself in now. Yet that is the policy of the SNP and of a great number of Labour MPs, and they are a threat to our national security.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing this debate. As the dark shadow of war once again falls across our entire continent, I reflect on the adage attributed to Leon Trotsky:

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

Everyone who loathes war and wants peace should reflect on that. If other people are determined to foment war, we have to take an interest.

The question in this debate is how we should now see Russia and China and the relationship between them. In the UK, we see Russia as an immediate threat, but China as perhaps the much greater long-term challenge. In the US, it is different. All US presidents since Obama have seen China as the existential threat and today’s Russia as yesterday’s problem, Europe’s problem, and a regional rather than a global threat. There are, to be sure, specialists in the US who understand that, like China, Russia is a long-term opponent, but their voices must compete with those who are effectively advocating appeasement for Russia—resets, normalisation, and the overlooking of previous illegal incursions, overseas assassinations, cyber-attacks on NATO allies and so on.

In Europe, Germany understands the existential nature of the Russian threat, but has until very recently pursued a policy of engagement with Russia. This now looks to have been deeply unwise. It has created serious vulnerability for Germany and for Europe as a whole. France, historically anti-American, must now accept that Russia presents the threat. Even this week, the French were, understandably, trying to use this to their advantage to prove their global influence and to try to secure peace. But all of Europe must now be united.

Nor is the United Kingdom beyond criticism. We have a firm understanding of the Russia problem in our analytical community, and of China, but until recently successive Prime Ministers chose to turn a blind eye to both problems. This is now changing, but the UK finds itself without the necessary tools to tackle the Russia threat and the China challenge. Our military has lost its ability to fight a peer enemy. Our legal system allows Russians and Chinese agents to exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in democracy. Our own blind reliance on spot markets to obtain cheaper gas has undermined our energy security. I have spoken before about how the UK Government lack the capacity for deep continuous strategic thinking to match the strategy and planning of our enemies, and I will return to that point.

Putin and President Xi have observed years of western failure to react to Russian encroachments and Chinese anti-democratic influence. We have encouraged them to join together in thinking that, despite our bluster, Putin’s taking Ukraine and China’s expanding influence are in their mutual interests and will remain largely unchallenged. That must now change, and it is changing. Until recently, it seemed that Putin might succeed, as he did in Georgia and Crimea, but Putin has miscalculated. His bullying has mobilised Ukraine’s resistance, is galvanizing support for NATO in previously neutral nations such as Sweden and Finland, and is rekindling Washington’s concern about Russia’s threat to global peace.

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Gentleman will have seen a map drawn by Putin of Ukraine, where a lump is given to Ukraine by Stalin, another lump by Lenin and another lump by Brezhnev. Does he agree that the implicit plan is to take all that bit, to leave a little bit, like a doughnut, for the Ukrainians to be corralled in, to have them like the Uyghur population, to Russify the rest, to finish off Ukraine and to take the large majority of it?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

What is completely clear is that President Putin has repudiated his own words and security guarantees that were given to Ukraine on its existing borders.

Last night’s strikes by Russia on Ukraine’s military infrastructure and border guard units, and the incursions of military vehicles, show that there can be no compromise with Putin. We will only find peace through strength. What is there to negotiate? Putin is now seized by an irrational obsession to crush Ukraine by one means or another. His performance on Russian TV addressing his security council underlined how Putin is now acting out his emotions—his frustration, wounded pride and lust for revenge. According to him, only great powers count, and if you cannot bully your smaller neighbours into submission, you are not really a great power.

President Xi is very different from the usurper Putin. While Russia represents great culture and history, Putin’s rogue regime is fundamentally weak, trying to prove its power despite Russia’s internal dysfunctionality and economic failure. China, however, represents a far older, more consistent and altogether more considered philosophical tradition. Putin acts impetuously; President Xi demonstrates strategic patience. Russia is trying to distract from its failures; China is building upon its success. The task of the west is not only to deal effectively with Putin, but to give a clear message to China and to other countries that might consider endorsing or imitating Putin’s aggression.

To his credit, President Xi has now backed off from his earlier strong support for Putin, as he came to realise that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine will mobilise the west and enable the west to strengthen its defences and have a more competitive stance, against not only Russia, but China. China should reflect on the questions now being asked in Washington and Europe, as raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset. Why should we not formally recognise Taiwan’s sovereignty and its right to self-determination, if China is to co-operate so easily with Putin in Ukraine? China can use this moment to build trust with the west. The west will continue to have great differences with China, but we want to work together with China for global peace and security and for a sustainable planet. We cannot begin to do so if China aligns itself with the now rogue regime in Moscow.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I very much regret having to do this. I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the House and to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), because I misconstrued his record. It was in fact my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) who was the only Scottish MP who voted for the renewal of Trident in 2016. To the right hon. Gentleman’s credit, however, he is not actually a unilateral disarmer.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you for the point of order, Sir Bernard. The record will now be corrected.

Russia

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

That is absolutely the work the UK is doing. That is why we had a very extensive discussion on this subject at the G7. We announced that there would be severe consequences, and we are absolutely working on co-ordination. That is vital. It is very important that the United States is involved. It is very important that the EU is involved. It is very important that the wider world is involved, because this is not just a threat to peace and stability in Europe; it is a global issue about whether we are clear that aggressors will not benefit from aggressive behaviour.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement, which will inform the debate that we are having later about Russia’s grand strategy. We keep saying that Russia’s aggression must not be rewarded, but the past decade and a half has seen Russia’s aggression effectively rewarded and go unpunished again and again. To that extent, how can she ensure that the meetings taking place on 9 and 10 January in Geneva will actually mark a significant departure in past practice from the west so that from now on we will act much more decisively and be completely united? We cannot succumb to the divisive way in which Russia is attempting to separate the United States from its NATO allies.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I agree with my hon. Friend: we do need to step up our efforts as the free world. In fact, in a speech I made before Christmas I said that there had not been enough action, and that peace and security in Europe and beyond had been taken for granted not just by the western alliance but more broadly by the free world. That is why we are stepping up in the work we are doing to challenge Russia and encourage our allies. We are encouraging the United States and the EU and working with them to develop the very clear consequences of any Russian action.

FCDO Staffing

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I have a huge degree of respect for him. However, his questions are predicated on a starting point which I have just said at the Dispatch Box is not the case. He starts throwing around figures like 20% in terms of staff reductions in a clear attempt to generate scaremongering. I have said, and the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have both said, that there will not be 10% cuts, as has been brought up—[Interruption.] There will not be. Therefore, his whole line of questioning is predicated on a statement that is incorrect.

The hon. Gentleman said that we have had to spend less on ODA this year and, of course, that is the case. I remind the House that that is because we have experienced the largest economic contraction in three centuries as a direct result of the pandemic. Nevertheless, we still remain one of the largest ODA-donating countries in the world. We maintain one of the largest diplomatic networks in the world. The Foreign Secretary hosted G7 Foreign Ministers in Liverpool, showing global leadership on a range of issues, including girls’ education and humanitarian issues. At COP26, we saw the UK demonstrate global leadership on the existential crisis of our generation—climate change. We will remain a top-tier diplomatic powerhouse.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Can we just remind ourselves that the UK diplomatic service is in fact part of our vital capability to maintain the competitive stance of this country around the world? The cost of the diplomatic service is a minute pinprick in the overall scheme of public expenditure, well within the margin for error of many other Government Departments’ expenditures. Why would we want to squeeze this capability when it is so vital for our global future? Can we also think about what the diplomatic service is for? We value real subject knowledge and expertise, and country knowledge and the ability to speak the local languages more than perhaps we have recently. We value our history and understanding of our place in the world and the intelligence that those in the service gather and feed back to the centre. It is the centre that has to value that if our diplomatic service is to produce value for money.

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important and accurate point about the value that our diplomatic network and our diplomats around that network provide. We are all incredibly proud of the level of expertise of the FCDO staff, and I know the Foreign Secretary has said this to them directly. Our diplomats are an absolutely top-tier team. We retain a high ambition for our international relations, as set out in the integrated review. We will continue investing in our people, including in language skills and other skills, to ensure that we retain that position. He is right that they are the primary means by which we exercise soft power around the world, and they will continue to be very much at the forefront of our thinking when it comes to planning for the future.

Ukraine

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I cannot comment on hypotheticals. Let me just say again that any military excursion would be a terrible miscalculation and the Russian Government should expect massive strategic consequences, including severe economic sanctions.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on being granted this urgent question, but may I express my disappointment that this matter has had to be raised in an urgent question and that the Government have not volunteered a statement? There was a NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting last week. We have a crisis in the Balkans. We have Russia spiking our gas supplies. We have Russia creating the migration crisis in Belarus, and we have Russia on aggressive military manoeuvres around Europe with its massively renewed military hardware. When will the Government take on board the fact that we are in a hybrid war against Russia now and that there needs to be a comprehensive and united western response, because, at the moment, NATO is weak and divided?

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Stability and Peace

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I very much welcome the points made by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), and I wholeheartedly agree with them, except for one: I think it is NATO’s job not to interfere in the internal affairs of a state but, if invited to secure the security of that state—and we feel we can do that—to make an offer to it to save it from conflagration. I will come back to that. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) on securing this debate, on the very knowledgeable way in which she introduced the topic and on the passionate way that she spoke. I have wonderful words in my prepared speech, Madam Deputy Speaker, but in the interests of brevity, I shall cast aside my beautiful turns of phrase and say what I think needs to be said.

I think there are only three Members here this afternoon who sat through the 1992 to 1997 Parliament. We heard Paddy Ashdown every week at Prime Minister’s Question Time—it was twice a week then—asking questions on what we were going to do about the Balkans crisis. I have to say, I am one of the guilty ones who sat on the Government Benches and thought that he had become obsessed with something that we could not do anything about or should not get involved with. But he was right. It was only when the bread queues in Sarajevo were being shelled by the Serbians that we began to realise that something terrible was happening in our own continent.

I happened to make a visit, I think with the armed forces parliamentary scheme, to NATO, and I heard the then Supreme Allied Commander of NATO describe this as the biggest security failure in the European continent since the second world war. We began to wake up to the fact that something terrible was happening. What had gone wrong? My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton said that we are repeating the same mistakes as we did in the early 1990s. Oh yes we are.

First, there is complacency. Secondly, there are different voices. We talk about the European Union, but the European Union has different voices. Different countries have different approaches. I am afraid that the German Government are pretty ambivalent at the moment about whether the Bosnian state should be secured permanently. The French have always had a stronger relationship with the Serbs than with any other part of the Balkans. The United States now, as it did then, feel that this was a post-cold war European security problem that it should not get involved with. And then there was some precipitate action by an external actor, Germany—the recognition of Croatia, I think in 1990—that triggered the whole Balkan crisis. It took years before it was understood what we had to do—we tried an air campaign, which did not succeed, and we had to put troops on the ground to stop the fighting—but at least when we got in there and did it, we got an agreement.

We got the agreement with tacit Russian co-operation—Russia did not prevent it. This time, Russia is a player in the conflict. It is stoking the ethnic tensions and encouraging the separatists and the break-up of the state, because I imagine Putin regards it as in his national interest to see 1.8 million Bosnian refugees flooding into Europe when western Europe is already facing a refugee crisis. He would love that, and the Chinese are helping, too.

What are we going to do? Are we just going to carry on pussyfooting around? The solution is for EUFOR, which is a small European Union force, to be reinforced very substantially, now. I differ from the hon. Member for Rochdale on this point: I think that if the Bosnian Government requested that, NATO would have to respond. However, that would require persuading the United States’ Mr President Biden, who has become far more isolationist and unhelpful to NATO. I have no brief for Trump, but at least Trump managed to get us all to spend more money; Biden looks completely disinterested from foreign wars. He has to become interested. Just as Clinton started from that position—

[Alicia Kearns]

I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend, who is making a very good point. I just want to briefly make a point about wars. What we are saying, and what Biden does not appear to have an appetite for, is that we are trying to create a forever peace, not a war or a conflict. It takes guts, commitment and determination; I thank all hon. Members who have spoken so far and have shown that. That is a slight divergence from my hon. Friend’s point, but it is important that this is about forever peace, not war.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I was going to go on to the point that it was Madeleine Albright, bless her, who persuaded President Clinton that the Americans had to be involved. President Clinton nicknamed it Madeleine’s war, but this time it has to be Secretary of State Blinken’s peace. My hon. Friend is completely right.

The point is that we can pre-empt war if we get in there with sufficient deterrent force to deter those who are arming the separatists and encouraging their withdrawal from the Bosnian state institutions. The October mandate that Dodik issued that Republika Srpska elements should cease to operate as part of the Bosnian armed forces is an act of revolution, and it must be stopped. It is contrary to international agreements and it is contrary to the UN resolutions. The UN resolutions are still in force under which we can act—and we should act.

What if Russia objects? That is the question that I want to deal with.

[Bob Stewart]

I wonder whether my very good friend agrees that we could do something unilaterally: deploy a spearhead battalion under operational control of EUFOR now.

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[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

We could. I do not know whether we should do that in order to help to secure international agreement and consensus, or whether we should do it after we have secured international agreement and consensus, but if securing agreement takes too long, that may be something that we should do. Brave nations need to act to prevent another conflagration on our continent—it need not be inevitable.

These are my final questions to the Minister. What happened at the Riga NATO summit? What was discussed? When will we have a statement from the Government about what has been decided and how we, as NATO, will proceed on the matter? I am quite certain that the EU cannot do it on its own. One of the myths created by the EU is that there is something called European defence and security, or a European army, or whatever it is. It cannot act. There must be much wider international agreement. The United Kingdom must support EU action and NATO action to do this together.

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[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Members for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for securing this important debate, which is very close to my heart. We have had an excellent debate this afternoon. The House should be united on this issue, and I think it is. This debate has shown our close links with Bosnia and Herzegovina and, without a doubt, it has shown the urgent need for action. I am delighted to have seen the Minister in her place throughout the debate, listening carefully.

I declare my interest as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity and vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was a humanitarian aid worker during the war, living in Serbia and Bosnia, and four years later I returned with my small family to head Christian Aid’s Bosnia office, rebuilding villages in north-west Bosnia and supporting the return of refugees.

I saw how a country that seemed to be peaceful and communities that seemed to be ethnically diverse and happily co-existent could slide into conflict, and I saw how devastating that is for everyone. I lived in communities and spoke to the relatives of elderly people who fled with an hour or two’s notice and never returned to their home. They died, devastated, in another part of the country. I spoke to people whose education and dreams for the future were shattered, whose families were separated and whose husbands were killed. The country suffers that deep trauma still.

I will never forget standing in a village with some returning refugees when my translator froze in terror as he recognised the voice of someone who had been a sniper, firing into the town night after night, during the siege of Bihać. Despite those deep traumas and differences, I pay tribute to everyone in Bosnia who has worked hard to rebuild their beautiful country and who looked atrocities and killing in the face and did not let it define their community forever—to everyone who has consistently chosen peace over hate for many years.

This month is the 26th anniversary of the Dayton agreement, to which the UK is a signatory. We need to reassert our support for the agreement and for the integrity of the national borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The trigger for the current crisis has been genocide denial. We stand together to condemn that genocide denial and the rise of divisive identity-based politics. The UK and international response to the increasingly divisive politics of the leader of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, has been quiet for too long, but I sense a turning of that tide, and I hope this debate will hasten it.

We must learn from what happened in the 1990s and in Srebrenica. When we say “never again,” we must mean it. A return to violence in Bosnia is not inevitable, and I will focus on two things. First, civil society has an important role. We have talked about troops on the ground, which I hope not to see. If we work well with civil society now, we can stop it.

We have learned lessons about peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, and that peace was built not just through diplomatic agreements or military action but through community groups, brave individuals, women’s groups, teachers and young people. It was supported by other countries, too. For example, a stream of parliamentarians from South Africa repeatedly went to Northern Ireland and lent influential encouragement and expertise during the peace process. Let us learn from that.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I emphasise the hon. Lady’s point about the role of women and the empowerment of women in conflict prevention, which has also been raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). The women’s peace movement in Northern Ireland was instrumental in helping to end that conflict, and men should be supporting women’s peace movements.

[Fleur Anderson]

I absolutely agree. There are voices of peace, especially women’s voices, within Republika Srpska, but it is not easy to work with them. Earlier we heard from the High Representative that it is difficult to be in civil society, to be those voices and to be those women who speak out. We need to seek out those groups and find where they are. I have been asking about this for quite a long time, and I do not know the groups with which we should be working. We in the UK face a challenge in what we can do not only to prevent genocide and conflict now—that is clearly value for money—but to build a lasting peace for the future. That has to be done in conjunction with civil society.

Secondly, we need an atrocity prevention strategy. The United States has one. The Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Act 2018 commits the US Government to pursuing a Government-wide strategy to identify, prevent and respond to atrocity risk. We need that across all the countries in which we work, but we need it in Bosnia right now. Such a strategy would include improved communication between desk officers and London and proper training on spotting the signs early and on what to do, and it would put in place a better early warning system to spot the signs of genocide. According to the UN framework, we can see 21 of 80 warning signs right now. What is happening in other countries? Do we spot them? Are we ready? Without a genocide prevention strategy across all our work, we will not be ready in Bosnia or elsewhere.

Finally, what can the UK do now? I echo many earlier points. I welcome today’s announcement of a special envoy to the Balkans. Will the Minister join me in condemning genocide denial and remembering the 8,000 people who died in the Srebrenica genocide? Will she work with the US, NATO and the EU to impose sanctions on countries that undermine the Dayton peace agreement and to assert the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina? Will she provide unequivocal support for the UN High Representative, Christian Schmidt? And will she look into the peacebuilding and civil society support we need to give to groups, communities and individuals in Republika Srpska now?

A co-ordinated, coherent and well-implemented atrocity prevention strategy can save countless lives, stop the need for military intervention and complement diplomatic support.

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[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

This really is Parliament at its best, when we are united and speaking with one voice on the importance of saving lives, because this is where we could end up with this very grave debate and the situation in Bosnia Herzegovina. I thank the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who clearly has intimate knowledge of the subject and a real passion to deter what could be a terrible outcome if we do not get moving, as the international community, in preventing further conflict, in-fighting and hatred, which so many humanitarians around the Chamber have mentioned. I also want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who in this House has a history of stopping violence against women and girls, both domestically and internationally, and the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald). I thank them for securing the debate.

Parliaments have a real role in sparking these debates and in galvanising Governments. We have seen that today. This morning we had the meeting and the briefing from Christian Schmidt, who has a background not just in the defence brief in the German Parliament but in the friendship group with the UK. It is fantastic that he made it such a priority to be here—at the invitation of the FCDO, the Minister, the influential Back Bencher, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton, and all those who were there, including my hon. Friends the Members for Caerphilly (Wayne David), for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), who all have a strong history in this area—to counter the beat of nationalism, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale said. Mr Schmidt warned of a potential return to violence and fragmentation. We had a long discussion about the importance of keeping Dayton alive and going, but also of refreshing it, as it was 20-odd years ago.

I briefly want to put on record my background as a visitor to asylum seekers and refugees from the area, mainly young Kosovans, in the late 1990s. That is how I met my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and then came into politics myself—visiting youngsters in bed and breakfasts in London boroughs. When we visit children in our own constituency, we might have helped their parents as asylum seekers and refugees in the late 1990s.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Nationalism can be toxic, but there is another crucial ingredient in this potential catastrophe: the interference by other sovereign states, such as Russia and China, and the benign neglect by states that should know better. That is what creates the catastrophe. Will the hon. Lady address that a little in her remarks?

[Catherine West]

I thank the hon. Member for making that point, because the role of the US has come up in the debate. We call the agreement the Dayton peace accords for a reason. I hope that the US will join us and put on record its commitment to maintaining the Dayton legacy.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

What about Russia?

[Catherine West]

I was coming to this, but I am happy to bring forward my bullet points for the Minister. Will she condemn the sale of arms to the Serbian police forces, which has been discussed? Will she condemn the role that Russia is playing in the wider picture, given that it was around the table originally for the Dayton peace talks? Can she give us her current assessment of the danger Russia poses in this situation?

We know that widespread bigotry and hatred can snowball into violence, destruction and ethnic cleansing. Through the international actions that we can all take now, rather than waiting for things to worsen, we can have a real impact, because we know that 26 years ago is but a blink of the eye when the feelings still run high. I was particularly moved by the comment of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that he had changed his position during the debates on the Irish question we had here in the 1990s and into the 2000s. He said that he had changed, and I wanted to emphasise our own experience of that conflict—I know that the right hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has experience of that conflict, too. We can change and we can hope to be the conveners of change.

My second challenge to the Minister is to ask what is the UK’s role? As the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who is no longer in his place, asked, what will Sir Stuart Peach’s remit be when he arrives in Bosnia? How will he support the work of Christian Schmidt, so that we can lead with the UN High Representative and not be undermined by players such as Russia? Will she respond to the question on sanctions? Are sanctions being considered in the effort to use every single tool available to us?

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[Wendy Morton]

The most important thing to recognise is that we have renewed the mandate and we welcome the ongoing work that EUFOR can continue. We recognise that it is an important tool and an important deterrent against those with malign intent.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

As I mentioned, I sat through those debates and questions in the 1990s, and I am not prepared to sit through more months and years of prevarication. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) proposed that we should simply make an offer of British armed forces to pump prime the whole of NATO to make a considerable enlargement to the force, because that is what is necessary. The force needs to be moved into the Brčko corridor, which is the main enclave that we need to protect, and to deter the detachment of Republika Srpska armed forces. Otherwise, it will happen—it is happening. It is being encouraged by Russia and we are not doing enough to deter it. We just want a deterrent force; we do not want to start a war.

[Wendy Morton]

Okay. As I explained, I believe EUFOR is an important deterrent, but I recognise that Members of both sides of the House are keen to understand and learn more about what the UK is doing, so let me make some progress.

On the position of the High Representative, we are fully committed to supporting the High Representative as he works with people in-country to implement the civilian aspects of the peace agreement. We support the use of his executive powers, should the situation require it. As Members are aware, he is in London today and I know that he spoke with many Members this morning. I also met him, as will the Foreign Secretary, and our embassy team in Sarajevo remain in close contact with him. That visible and vocal support for the High Representative is essential. We will not allow those who wish harm on that country to undermine his authority.

Many right hon. and hon. Members raised NATO and asked about the meeting in Riga this week. NATO must play an enhanced role in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the western Balkans. At the NATO foreign ministerial meeting in Riga, the Foreign Secretary focused attention on Bosnia and Herzegovina and encouraged greater engagement from the alliance. She called on allies to contribute personnel to the NATO headquarters in Sarajevo and to support work to counter disinformation and strengthen defence reform. The UK will do its part. The UK also offers defence assistance to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s armed forces in support of capacity building efforts and their partnership for peace goals.

On Russia and disinformation, we are seeing a worrying pattern of Russian behaviour aimed at stopping Bosnia and Herzegovina moving closer to Europe and NATO. The UK takes that extremely seriously and will continue to call out aggression. We are also backing projects to counter disinformation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider region, including giving support to independent media organisations.

Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con) [V]]

With the end of the cold war, the UK failed to develop a new national or grand strategy and allowed its mechanisms for maintaining such a strategy to atrophy. This review must start by accepting that and deal with the changes in equipment, concepts, pressure of economics, accelerating technological change, and the new forms of conflict and competition. It must demand new and different operational concepts and a new strategic frame- work to meet the challenge of modern hybrid warfare.

The Chief of the Defence Staff’s announcement of a new integrated operating concept is therefore of extreme importance. The integrated review must set out a conceptual framework that incorporates all forms of new technology and must support the new relevant operational concepts. The Nagorno-Karabakh war demonstrates just how decisive technological advantage can be if one side has deployed it and the other side does not have it. The technology can be more important than force numbers, tactics or training, and that may be a paradigm shift in the nature of modern conflict.

To prevail, today’s military must have electronic warfare dominance, integrated, multi-force battle management systems enabling very short sensor-to-shooter links, 24/7 surveillance and remote targeting, ground, air and sea-launched precision warheads and survivable platforms such as armoured fighting vehicles with active defence suites. At 2% of GDP, what will we be able to buy? Not enough on its own. Not only must the MOD adapt but many other Government Departments need to acknowledge and provide for their own evolving contribution to national security. This also extends to the private sector.

Civilian technological development has become key to maintaining military pre-eminence. A crisis may still require large equipment numbers at short notice, so we must also reduce unit costs and design in commonality, ease of training, and low cost of storage and maintenance. We must also find civilian value for military technology in order to reduce costs.

Here is an example. The west relies on space for everything that we do in our daily lives, including military operations. This contrasts with Russia or China. By 2045, China may well have equivalent reliance, but its design will be resilient and defendable. The UK has no launch capability, but we do have a thriving satellite industry. Now is the time that we must fund a coherent space policy, including launch capability. If Russia’s heavy lift rockets can destroy the global network of telecommunication satellites with nuclear electromagnetic pulse space weapons and instantly it can replace its own satellites, we must show how we would replace ours just as quickly both as a response and as a deterrent. The RAF’s experimental Microset could be a classic dual use capability in such a role.

Finally, Sir Stephen Lovegrove’s welcome move to national security adviser takes defence into what has been too much of a diplomat’s fiefdom, but it is imperative that his successor as deputy permanent secretary at Defence arrives with an appreciation of all this new complexity and the role that technology must play. In this, we need experts not amateurs, however gifted they are.

Russian Federation: Human Rights

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

I do not accept the assertion made by the right hon. Gentleman. The ISC Russia report, to which he refers, was released on 21 July, and the Government responded on the very same date. We have set out very clearly what our response is and that Russia remains a top national security priority for the Government. We have issued sanctions against six individuals and one organisation in relation to Alexei Navalny and, as I have made very clear, we will not speculate on who else we may or may not sanction.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con) [V]]

I thank my hon. Friend for her statements. Is it not clear that the lesson of watching Russia for the past few years is that Russia—or China, for that matter—does not have any respect for an adversary unless it can show strength? What do all our words of condemnation mean without much more comprehensive action? When will the integrated defence and security review be published, and will it address the role of the City of London in looted Russian money? What will we do to strengthen all our alliances to bring the free world together against both Russia’s internal and external aggression?

Oral Answers to Questions

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that the UK has a comparative advantage internationally, with research that is going on at Oxford and Imperial in pursuit of the vaccine and the leadership that the Prime Minister showed at the Gavi summit to smash all the records and get $8.8 billion-worth of funding to ensure equitable access to the whole world. That is good for the United Kingdom—we do not want a second wave globally—and important as a matter of moral responsibility. On misinformation, we have discussed it in the G7 and plenty of other formats, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we must be rigorous and robust in rebutting false information, particularly when it is irresponsible about something such as vaccine safety standards.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to the exchange of correspondence between our right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and me as Chairman of the Liaison Committee about the continuing scrutiny of the overseas aid budget? I welcome the fact that the Government seem to have withdrawn their proposals simply to merge the International Development Committee with the Foreign Affairs Committee. What possible justification could there be for any reduction in scrutiny by Parliament of this very substantial and complicated budget? [R]

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend does as one of the leading parliamentarians and Select Committee members, and indeed, Chairs. The normal position that the Government take is that Select Committees ought to shadow Departments, but having said that, the representation is ultimately for the House to decide. I welcome all the scrutiny; he will know that we have not only affirmed the role of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact in providing scrutiny and accountability on aid decisions, but I want to review it to make sure that it is focused on what adds the most value and that its critical analysis is followed by practical recommendations.

Hong Kong National Security Legislation

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his judicious remarks, and I certainly welcome the substantive points he made. He talked about the importance of this House, not just the Government, speaking with a united voice. That is exactly what we have had today on the key issue at stake, and I welcome his contribution to that. I also agree that it is heartbreaking to see the scenes in Hong Kong, just hours after the enactment of this national security legislation. We are counselling the Hong Kong authorities and Beijing to step back, but it is clear that, having enacted this legislation, they wish to proceed. We will need to wait to see the precise application and enforcement of this action before deciding some of the measures that we might take next, but these are under active consideration, including with our international partners.

I took the right hon. Gentleman’s point about BNOs. The full details will be set before the House by the Home Secretary, but we are very clear with our commitment to provide a path to citizenship for all eligible BNO-status holders and we will do the right thing by all of them. I have been very clear in relation to HSBC and I will say the same thing in relation to all of the banks. The rights and the freedoms of, and our responsibilities in this country to, the people of Hong Kong should not be sacrificed on the altar of bankers’ bonuses.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I welcome every word of my right hon. Friend’s statement and the bipartisan nature of these exchanges. I invite him to take up the appeal made by the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) for a long-term strategic approach to China. What can we learn from the disastrous mistake of the Government just a few years ago, who thought we were embarking on some new “golden era” with this dictatorship?

Let me draw attention to the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the weekend, when he said that

“foreign policy-making is often weakened by the lack of deep knowledge of the language, culture and history of the nations with whom we are negotiating or whom we seek to influence.”

Why has that been the case? What can we learn from it? How will the Government now embark upon a big, comprehensive, sustainable strategic review of our relations with China, involving not just people within the Government but people beyond the Government and other nations?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, for that. He makes a range of important points. On Chinese expertise, I do not think the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was referring to the Foreign Office. In any event, I can provide the reassurance that we have some of the finest Mandarin-speaking diplomats around the world and we are exceptionally well represented in Beijing by Her Majesty’s ambassador, Dame Barbara Woodward. We are increasingly, across Government, looking at all aspects of our relationship with China. Obviously, the House is interested in and will know about Huawei. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who is no longer in his place, referred to the situation in universities, and rightly raised the question, as, in fairness, did the hon. Member for Wigan, about an integrated strategy. Clearly, as we bring forward the integrated review, China’s role in the world and our relationship with China will be an essential element of that, and that work is already under way.