Ukraine

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Of course we saw at the Vilnius summit the initialling of partnership agreements with both Moldova and Georgia, the two countries whose relationship with the EU is most advanced. It is very important that those agreements are signed and completed, and that our response to Ukraine sends out a message on our clear position against Russian interference in Moldova and Georgia, and indeed in other neighbouring states.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I am conscious of the time, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman and then make more progress.

[Chris Bryant]

I wish to ask about the issue of impunity, because the Foreign Secretary is right to say that if Russia constantly learns that it can get away with things, it will continue to go further. For a long time this House has held the view that the people involved in the murder of Sergei Magnitsky and in the corruption that he unveiled should be banned from this country. Why will the Government not just do it?

[Mr Hague]

As the hon. Gentleman knows from previous debates, we already have the power, and we already use the power, to exclude from this country people guilty of human rights violations. The Home Secretary has made very clear her readiness to use that power.

Back to the main strategic issue—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mr Alexander]

I want to make a little more progress.

Today, the European Union is Russia’s largest economic partner, with an annual trade of £275 billion. The UK alone handles at least £2 billion of Russian business in financial services a year. Let us also remember that as a result of the corruption that I have mentioned, the Russian economy has witnessed significant levels of capital flight in recent years, as well as rising levels of Russian prosperity as a consequence of energy. In that sense, there is a real and enduring vulnerability among the Russian elites to the travel bans and asset freezes that have been put on the table by other European leaders in recent days. Let us also not forget that a central part of President Putin’s claim to legitimacy in the Russian Federation has been based on a guarantee of rising prosperity. However, we have already seen the effect that the proposed actions by European leaders has had on the rouble and the Russian stock exchange.

In the immediate term, the most powerful means to alter the Kremlin’s course is to target those elites on whom it relies for its support. That is why I hope that at the European Council meeting due to take place later this week, EU leaders will consider further expanding the list of Ukrainian and Russian officials subjected to these targeted measures. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s indication that that appears to be the British Government’s approach, ahead of the Council meeting on Thursday and Friday. I would also be grateful if the Leader of the House could confirm in his winding up whether, at that Council meeting, the UK Government will be urging the cancellation of the EU-Russia summit, which is still scheduled to take place in Sochi in June.

Labour has also argued that further diplomatic pressure can and should be applied in the short term by seeking agreement among the G7 on suspending Russia from the G8 group of the world’s largest economies unless President Putin changes course. I was intrigued by the Foreign Secretary’s remarks at the Dispatch Box on that subject. I understand that indications have been given by No. 10 since this debate began that the British Government could take further action in relation to the G7, as distinct from the G8. Will the Leader of the House clarify the position, not only on the cancellation of the G8 meeting but on Russia’s suspension from the G8? I think that the Foreign Secretary has indicated the willingness of the G7 countries to meet together as an alternative grouping to the G8, as a result of the Russians’ recent flagrant breach of the law.

Given the precedents that have been set by Russia, the European Union must also be prepared to increase the pressure if the short-term measures are unsuccessful. I certainly welcome the bilateral measures, which we heard about for the first time this afternoon, relating to UK-Russian military co-operation and to the steps that the UK Government are taking in relation to arms exports. In the medium term, the European Union must be prepared to consider stronger sanctions against Russia’s broader economic interests, such as its energy exports or its banking sector. Such decisions should not be taken lightly, and the burden on EU domestic markets must not be ignored, but, if required, those options must remain available to European leaders when they gather in the coming days.

Alongside short and medium-term pressure on Russia, it is also surely vital that the European Union considers the long-term strategic implications of the current crisis. I welcome the fact that at yesterday’s meeting EU Foreign Ministers met the EU Energy Commissioner. I encourage the EU to undertake urgent work on exploring ways of proliferating and diversifying European energy imports in the future.

Let me turn now to my final substantive point. As the Opposition, we do not believe that the crisis can be resolved simply by applying ever more pressure on Russia to change course. Effective engagement with Russia remains key to helping secure the diplomatic de-escalation and resolution of the crisis. In particular, the work done by EU High Representative Cathy Ashton in engaging with President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov in recent weeks has been welcome. I also welcome the dialogue that took place last week in London between the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov. At that meeting, the Secretary of State made it clear that in the view of the United States, Russia has legitimate interests—historical, cultural and strategic—in Ukraine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) on his speech—he just persuaded me against the idea of holding referendums very often.

What more do we really need to know about Vladimir Putin? Even if we leave aside for a moment his self-enrichment, which would put Victor Yanukovych, Imelda Marcos and Muammar Gaddafi to shame; the way in which misinformation, media manipulation and the repression of independent journalists are a standard part of the Putin package; and the perversion of the criminal justice system in Russia, which means that more than 95% of all prosecutions lead to conviction, because they are determined by political persuasion, rather than justice; what more do we need to know?

[Mr Newmark]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Chris Bryant]

I do not know which point it is, but of course I will give way.

[Mr Newmark]

He seems to have forgotten one important point. You can add targeted assassinations on British soil to your list.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not have a list, but I think that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) does.

[Chris Bryant]

That was one of the other things I was leaving aside for a moment.

We know how Putin reacts in a crisis. That is what really worries me. He always reacts with extreme force. In Beslan the state used such force to resolve a hostage crisis that 334 of the hostages, including 186 children, were killed. When terrorists from the Chechen republic took over a theatre in Moscow, the state’s intervention ended up killing not only all the terrorists, but 130 of the hostages.

We also know about his territorial ambition. I can do no better than quote the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois). During a debate on Georgia in the previous Parliament, he said:

“Whatever one may think of Georgia’s actions on 7 August, Russia used grossly disproportionate force in response, and by subsequently recognising its supported regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia is attempting to redraw the map of Europe by force”.—[Official Report, 20 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 686.]

That is exactly what we are hearing again today. What more do we need to know?

In Syria, Putin actively prevented an early resolution to the conflict and assisted Assad’s barbarous regime in repressing its people, and all for the strategic advantage that accrues to Russia, as has already been said, from its naval base in Tartus, which is vital for access to the Mediterranean. Now, after trying to bribe, bully and coerce the whole of Ukraine into aligning itself with Russia and against the European Union, he has effectively annexed part of an independent country.

I am afraid that the international response, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said, has thus far been pitiful and spineless. People have even trotted out in this Chamber the argument that most of the people in Crimea are Russian speaking and wanted to join Russia in the first place. Can Members not hear history running through the decades? In 1938 the British apologists for Hitler, combined with those who felt that Germany had been treated badly after the first world war, combined with the British mercantilists who wanted to do more business with Germany, and combined with the British cowards who wanted to avoid war at all costs, argued, using the same argument that has been advanced today, that the vast majority of the people in the Sudetenland were really German and wanted to be part of Germany.

I have no desire for us to be at war, or for there to be a war of any kind. I opposed the proposed military intervention in Syria for the simple reason that I could not see how bombing that country would help. However, we should be ready for any eventuality. I was saddened that when I formally asked the Foreign Secretary on 30 November 2011 whether he would rule out the use of force in tackling Iran’s illegal nuclear ambitions, he refused to do so. Others agreed with him. I was told, including by Members on my side of the House, “Don’t be silly. You simply can’t rule things like that out.” Well, perhaps they were right, but I want to ask now why on earth we ruled out any military intervention, in whatever set of circumstances and at whatever stage, from the very beginning of Putin’s advances into Ukraine. I am not arguing for war; I am simply asking why we do one thing for Iran but say exactly the opposite when dealing with Russia.

I think that the EU has shown little honour in this. The Ukrainian Government have behaved with extraordinary and admirable restraint.

[Mark Hendrick]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. In the last but one Foreign Office questions, I asked the Foreign Secretary what the fact that NATO has a co-operation agreement with Ukraine means, and he gave the impression that I was asking for war. I was not asking for war; I just wanted to put the military options on the table.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I think he also agrees with the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who spoke earlier.

There has been little honour in the way that Britain, France and the United States, having signed up to the Budapest memorandum, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, now make lots of great speeches but introduce the measliest level of sanctions and targeted interventions against Russian individuals.

The real problem is that we all know where this might all too easily be leading: to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Belarus. What will we say then? What will we do then? We have done far too little to safeguard European energy supply over the years. We have surrendered our military capacity to intervene. We have let commercial interests alone determine our foreign policy. We have failed to tackle deep Russian corruption within the EU, especially in Cyprus. It is not so much that we have let Russia pick us off country by country but that we in the European Union, country by country, have gone begging to Russia to try to do more business with it and left aside too many other issues.

There are things that we could and should be doing. We should target a much longer list of Russian officials. The Foreign Secretary referred, I think, to Leonid Slutsky. He should not be a member of the Socialist Group in the Council of Europe, and nor, for that matter, should his party. I am delighted that the Conservative party has now taken the action that it has, for which I had been arguing for some time. I cannot see for the life of me why the Government still use their slightly weaselly language about the potential of a Magnitsky list. It has been implemented by the United States of America, the European Union has called for it, and the Council of Europe is calling for it, and we should go down that route.

A Russian friend of mine says that Putin is not yet mad. That may be true, but what will our surrendering and our appeasement do for his sanity?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I think the Leader of the House has concluded his speech.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Ukraine.

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Two years ago, on 12 March 2012, this House unanimously agreed a motion calling on the Government to introduce precisely the kind of Magnitsky list that the Leader of the House just mentioned. At the time, the Government said they were not going to oppose the motion—indeed, those in the Government shouted “aye” along with the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who had introduced the motion. Yet despite it having been unanimously agreed, the Leader of the House has today, as far as I can understand it, reneged on that position. Far from being more robust with Russia, we are being less robust today than we were two years ago. Have I got that right?

[Mr Speaker]

Far be it from me to say whether anybody has reneged or not, although I note in passing that to renege, whether disagreeable, not least in this case to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), is not unparliamentary—nothing unparliamentary has happened. He is a considerable expert in parliamentary procedure and has just written a two-volume tome on the history of Parliament. He may well be very dissatisfied, but he has vented his concerns and they are on the record.