Ukraine

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I believe he may have been on the ground recently to have some of these discussions himself. Turkey is indispensable to the negotiations that need to be conducted to keep grain flowing, and we are very grateful to it for the role it is playing.

As temperatures drop, Putin apparently believes he can chip away at western resolve by forcing up food and energy prices. Our task is to prove him wrong. There are signs that, far from weakening the mood of the international community, it is hardening. Back in March, 141 states condemned Russia at the UN General Assembly; at last month’s UNGA, that number rose to 143, or three quarters of the entire UN. Russia’s four supporters were Syria, Belarus, Nicaragua and North Korea—with friends like that, Madam Deputy Speaker. The reality for Russians is that they have become pariahs, isolated from the community of nations and unable even to be elected to UN bodies such as the Committee on Non-Governmental Organisations, UN Women and UNICEF boards.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I absolutely agree that, as the winter sets in, there are clearly some additional challenges presented. One of those will inevitably be holding together our western unity in the face of rising inflation and a very challenging energy situation. Will the Government comment on what steps they are taking to ensure that the UK does its part, but we manage to stand side by side with NATO allies and other western allies?

[James Heappey]

There are two answers to the hon. Lady’s intervention. The first is that the UK, like Governments across Europe, is making a significant intervention to help its citizens with the cost of living. But no matter what Governments in the UK and elsewhere are doing, one should not ignore the fact that millions—hundreds of millions—of people across Europe are grudgingly accepting the increase in their cost of living because they know how important it is to do the right thing and to stand up to the Putin, and that to allow our will to collapse at this point would be to betray the Ukrainian people and hand Putin the territorial gains he has made so far. The second answer to her excellent intervention is that Putin himself keeps reinvigorating the western alliance. Every time we would think the cost of living pressures or the threat of a nuclear escalation, for example, might cause people to waver, he does something atrocious or his forces do something atrocious that quickly re-emboldens the western alliance and strengthens western public resolve to keep pushing on.

Maintaining the international consensus is vital, and that consensus starts with a recognition of what should be a universal truth: Ukraine has the right to robust self-defence when faced with aggression from another state. Russia’s attempts to change Ukraine’s borders by force are unacceptable and an egregious breach of the UN charter. Its offers of renewed negotiations are not made in good faith. Indeed, Putin has made it clear that any negotiations will not include those territories he continues to annex illegally. That is why, when the Prime Minister spoke to President Zelensky on his first day in office, he assured him and his people of our continued diplomatic, military and economic support. Together with our partners, we are determined to provide enduring diplomatic, military and economic support so that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position to deliver a sustainable and just peace through a negotiated settlement when the Ukrainian Government choose.

As we enter the long winter the western alliance must continue to hold its nerve. Ukraine remains in the ascendancy as it continues pressing on two axes of advance. It has been putting pressure on Russian defensive positions in the Luhansk oblast and has increasingly threatened Russia’s supply and communication routes in the area. Further south, in the Kherson oblast, Ukraine has applied continuous pressure to Russian forces and has carried out strikes on logistics hubs and bridges. Last Wednesday in occupied Kherson, Defence Minister Shoigu ordered his troops to withdraw from the west bank of the Dnipro river in the face of Ukrainian tanks. Kherson city was the only regional capital captured by Russia since the invasion; it is now back in Ukrainian hands. No matter what we may rightly say about the military sense in such a withdrawal, one should not underestimate nor diminish the incredible success of the Ukrainian armed forces in pushing the Russians to need to withdraw in the first place.

But that success in Kherson is only the start of a very long and hard winter. Cold and wet weather will make fighting harder, but as the going gets tough the UK will continue doing all we can to give the Ukrainians what they need. With temperatures likely to sink as low as minus 20°C, we have responded to Ukrainian requests for more cold weather equipment. Last week the Prime Minister announced that Ukrainian recruits leaving the UK will be kitted out for the extreme cold. We are also providing 25,000 sets of extreme cold weather clothing, 20,000 heavy duty sleeping bags and 150 insulated tents to prevent cold-related injuries and ensure troops can operate effectively and efficiently. Other European allies are doing likewise, and all of that—that care for the Ukrainian armed forces as they face the bleak midwinter—is in stark contrast to what the Russians are providing their troops with. I dread to think what Russian families would think if they were to see inside their son’s, husband’s, boyfriend’s or father’s rucksacks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard]

And humanitarian support. In August, the Government announced that the UK and its allies would begin to establish a plan of action to support Ukraine into 2023, but we still have not seen one. Will the Minister say where it is and why there is a delay in producing the plan? We are running out of 2022—will the report and strategy be ready by the end of the year? What state is it in now, and is it a costed plan or just a set of ambitions? We ask those questions not to put the Minister on the hook or in a bad place but to press him, because we want to see the support gotten right, and scrutiny and clarity for the United Kingdom will help our allies to ensure that they are equally as robust in supporting Ukraine.

Even before the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Labour had been making the case for an updated integrated review. The Defence Secretary previously argued against that, but now argues for it, which is a welcome U-turn from the Government. I know that the Minister has had a similar change of heart, and that is also welcome. However, the Government have given little signal as to what will be in the integrated review refresh and how it will be updated. I would be grateful if the Minister also set out what he believes needs to be updated in the integrated review. Does the review have clear terms of reference that can be scrutinised? Will he tell us which cuts to the armed forces he now wants to reverse and whether further Army cuts will be halted?

At the last Defence questions, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) asked a fair question about why the Government are pressing ahead with cuts to our armed forces before the integrated review reports. What happens if the integrated review says that we should have kept the capabilities and equipment that the Ministry of Defence is scrambling to scrap now?

It is no secret that next-generation light anti-tank weapons have been vital to the defence of Ukraine, but the Secretary of State has yet to adequately explain whether a new contract to replenish UK NLAW stockpiles has been signed, and with whom. NLAW production will require old production lines to be rebuilt and restarted. If an order was placed today, how long would it be before a new NLAW rolled off the production line? Would it really be two years away? If that is true, that delay is dangerous and one that the UK can ill afford.

I turn to a technical but serious area that has not been addressed: dual-use technology, which is civilian technology that can have a military application. Last month, the United States imposed a set of new sanctions on Russia targeting a network accused of procuring military and dual-use technologies from US manufacturers and illegally supplying them to the Russian war machine. The Royal United Services Institute, the UK defence think-tank, confirmed in August that UK components are appearing in Russian weaponry. That can include oscillators and standard crystals. No UK-produced equipment should end up in the hands of Putin and his generals, but it is especially difficult to be sure of that when it comes to dual-use equipment. The House has already passed sanctions on such equipment, but the concern is that western electronics and technologies are still reaching Russian weapon manufacturers. That will be concerning to colleagues, so we need clarity that British firms are not, in good faith, making materials or contributing to the supply chain of western manufacturers whose end products could end up killing Ukrainian civilians.

What steps are the Government taking to identify dual-use technologies that could be used by Putin? What steps is the Minister taking to stop those technologies from getting into the hands of Russia or its agents? Does he feel that the current dual-use technology sanctions are sufficient? What steps can he take, working with our allies, to monitor and shut off possible purchasing routes for Russia of western dual-use equipment like gyroscopes, wi-fi technology, ceramic chips, resistors and semiconductors? This is a complex area, and I realise that I have put the Minister on the spot, with his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), replying to the debate, so if he cannot set that out, I would be grateful if he put a letter in the House of Commons Library. It is a difficult area but one that we must ensure that we are getting right.

Since the war began, Russian troops have been committing atrocities against Ukrainian civilians. Just as in Bucha, Izium and Mariupol, there is now evidence of Russian war crimes in the Kherson region. We will not know for some time how many civilians the Russians have butchered, but we must be unrelenting in our pursuit of those war criminals until each and every one of them has stood trial for their crimes.

As Ukrainians face the arrival of winter, it is becoming increasingly clear that Putin’s strategy is to target civilian infrastructure, including energy and water plants. The Minister set out some support that the UK Government are providing, but what additional missile defence is the UK providing to its allies to protect Ukrainian infrastructure from missile attacks by Russia? What plans does he have to deal with the potential for an additional flow of cold and hungry refugees this winter? The effect of Russian bombardment of civilian infrastructure is already degrading Ukraine’s ability to provide clean water and power to all of its population, and that will drive a further humanitarian crisis.

I turn to how we can afford the defence of the UK and our allies in Ukraine. The Government’s disastrous mini-Budget cost £30 billion—the equivalent of 60% of the UK’s current defence budget, which could have been better spent on hospitals, teachers and the cost of living crisis. That sheer amount of money—abused by the Government—is the cost of 23 brand-new Type 26 frigates. The MOD is the only Government Department in the current spending round with a real-terms revenue cut each year. New figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that, adjusted for inflation, that is a £2.7 billion real-terms cut to defence spending. At the Defence Committee, the Secretary of State for Defence said that with additional defence inflation, he has £8 billion of additional costs on his budget. If we are to continue to provide support to Ukraine and ensure that we can afford an enhanced forward presence for our NATO allies and our other NATO commitments, we need certainty that funding will be available as required for our armed forces.

I have been re-reading the rather good “Shifting the goalposts?” Defence Committee report, which shows that Labour Governments have always spent more on our nation’s defence than Conservative Governments. Does the commitment to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 still exist? Can the Minister see a point where Government defence spending will fall below the NATO 2% of GDP target? Given the Minister’s and Secretary of State’s previous comments on defence spending, can the Minister say whether he and the Secretary of State will still be in their places if Defence funding is cut in the Chancellor’s autumn statement on Thursday?

[Catherine McKinnell]

On defence spending—I do not believe that this has yet come up in the debate—Putin is clearly using propaganda as a serious weapon in this battle, and it is one that we all have an interest in countering. It would be helpful if the Minister, in summing up, could give some reassurance that the UK is committed to the counter-disinformation unit and working in collaboration with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to ensure that we play our part so that this propaganda does not win in Ukraine or elsewhere?

[Luke Pollard]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is right. Putin has invested heavily in disinformation technologies and resources to spread misinformation and disinformation in social media news feeds right across the world, including here in the United Kingdom. That investment was not made on a whim. It was made against a clear strategy, with the wish being to divide, split and misinform western populations and use our democracy against us. To protect our democracy and our allies, we must be absolutely determined to tackle disinformation, misinformation and those dark cyber-activities online. We are talking about not just state-sponsored hacking and cyber-attacks—that is one end of the spectrum—but all our constituents seeing things on their Facebook news feeds that are deliberately deployed and shared to try to split and degrade public opinion and create the impression that the United Kingdom’s support for our friends in Ukraine is somehow coming from a dark place, when it is not. That means further action to strengthen our work on social media. It means looking at where Russia is investing in disinformation and how we can strengthen our civil society against that in future. I hope the Minister and his colleagues, for instance those looking after the Online Safety Bill, will take that seriously, too. It is not just military grade activity we need to look at; it is everything through to how each of us uses our social media.

To conclude, let there be no doubt that Labour Members share the Government’s resolve to support Ukraine for as long as is necessary to defeat Putin. As the Ukrainian countryside turns to mud and then freezes over, we are about to enter an incredibly difficult winter, as military doctrine normally suggests, with frontlines frozen and civilian populations suffering further. The Ukrainians are showing incredible resolve in standing up to Russia, but they cannot do it without continued western support. How we use the winter months to prepare for the expected spring offensives—ensuring our supply lines, commitment, resolve and technologies are available to our friends in Ukraine—will be crucial in keeping the pressure firmly on the Kremlin and ensuring that Ukraine wins.