Ukraine

Debate between Boris Johnson and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much; he is absolutely right to draw attention to defence spending. It is great that the German Chancellor also now sees the importance of that. For a long time, my hon. Friend and I have been campaigning for Germany to shoulder more of the cost of defence in Europe, and that is a good thing. We have seen massive increases in our defence spending, but we want to make sure it is targeted on things such as tackling cyber and disinformation and all the modern forms of warfare in which Putin specialises.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I welcome the sanctions announced today on the five banks and the three named individuals. However, the Prime Minister will be well aware that there are many, many oligarchs who would, at face value, have huge wealth and huge assets in their own names, but that that wealth and those assets are absolutely in the gift of the Russian state and at the beck and call of the Russian state. Will he confirm that the sanctions we will be discussing and agreeing later today intend to ensure that those trusted custodians of Russian state money are able to be sanctioned in the way the three individuals named today are being sanctioned?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. We will be able to sanction oligarchs, associates of President Putin and companies of strategic importance to the Kremlin.

Sue Gray Report

Debate between Boris Johnson and Stewart Hosie

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member is entirely right about the suffering of people with learning disabilities, and indeed all vulnerable groups who were exposed to lockdowns for long periods. That is why, actually, we worked so hard to make sure that we could get this country out of lockdown and keep it out of lockdown, and that was our objective.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I do not need to wait for the full Sue Gray report, because this one tells me one important fact: there were a heck of a lot of parties. At which point during this catalogue of frivolity, while the Prime Minister was clearing last night’s empty wine bottles off his desk before settling down to work the following afternoon, did he conclude that having one rule for him and another for the general public was undermining his own health messaging and costing people’s lives?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is misrepresenting what Sue Gray says. He is also, perhaps inadvertently, completely mispresenting what happened.

Ukraine

Debate between Boris Johnson and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much, and I go back to the answer I gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). I know that, emotionally, many people will want to commit NATO troops to the defence of Ukraine. We have UK troops there now, and members of the Ranger Regiment are going to supplement those we already have.

I have to say that no member of NATO is currently willing to deploy in Ukraine in large numbers to fight Russian aggression in the way that my hon. Friend suggests. Indeed, we have to beware of doing things that would constitute a pretext for Putin to invade. We have to calculate and calibrate what we do very carefully, and I think that the right approach is to build a strong package of economic sanctions, continue to supply defensive weaponry and do all the other things that we are doing.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The Prime Minister said that we have already declassified compelling intelligence exposing Russian intent and that

“we will continue to disclose any Russian use of…false flag operations or disinformation.”

How much of that declassified information will be made fully public so as to blunt or halt the spread of Russian disinformation by letting the people who see it know that it is false before they decide to press the “share” or “send” button?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. It is very important that people in Ukraine and around the world should be able to trust the information that we are giving out. I have no doubt that the intelligence that we shared about the coup attempt—or the people conspiring against the regime—in Kyiv was right, but we will divulge as much of our sourcing as we can without compromising our intelligence sources.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am sorry that the wonderful festival at Hay-on-Wye has had to be postponed this year. I thank my hon. Friend for what she is doing to promote it, and I congratulate the organisers on their typical Welsh ingenuity in making the festival online, turning it into Hay-on-Wifi.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP) [V]]

Both covid and Brexit are suppressing trade and damaging jobs and the economy and while we hope that, as covid ends, global trade will bounce back, there is no guarantee that that will happen quickly. The Prime Minister could mitigate some of this damage by seeking an extension to the Brexit transitional period. Will he explain to the House why he is being so negligent in not seeking that transitional extension now?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he is doing to promote the prospects of the new spaceport in Newquay which this Government are constructing; he is doing an outstanding job. I think we all have a favourite candidate for the person who is best placed to trial one of the new vessels that we propose to send into space. If it is a horizontal spaceport, I am anxious that it will take off at a horizontal trajectory, in which case, even if we were to recruit the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) to be the first pilot, there is a risk that he would end up somewhere else on earth—maybe Venezuela would be a good destination.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

Q15.   Mr Speaker,“I would vote to stay in the single market. I’m in favour of the single market,”and if the European Union did not exist, we would have to “invent” it. Those are not my words—they are the Prime Minister’s. What was it about the trappings of power that led him to abandon reason, embrace Brexit and put so many jobs, so much trade and so much prosperity at risk across these islands?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said in the House on Saturday, there are clearly two schools of thought—two sides of the British psyche—when it comes to this issue. The House has been divided, just as the country has been divided. I happen to think that, after 47 years of EU membership, in the context of an intensifying federalist agenda in the EU, we have a chance now to make a difference to our national destiny and to seek a new and better future, as a proud, independent, open, generous, global free-trading economy. That is what we can do. That is the opportunity that this country has, and I hope very much that the hon. Gentleman will support it and help us to deliver Brexit, deliver on the mandate of the people and get it done by 31 October.