Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

We are clear that countries should not sell arms to the Myanmar military. We played a key role in securing and strengthening an EU arms embargo following the 2017 Rohingya crisis. The Foreign Secretary welcomed ASEAN’s unique role in addressing the crisis, in line with the purpose and principles enshrined in the ASEAN charter.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the effect of increases in numbers of Russian forces at the border with Ukraine on peace and security in that region.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)]

We have significant concerns about the recent Russian military build-up of forces on Ukraine’s border. We are working with our allies—I was at a NATO meeting of Foreign and Defence Ministers last week—and our objective is to deter Russia, reassure Ukraine and de-escalate the situation.

[Chris Bryant]

I am glad to hear that, but, in 1994, the UK, Russia and the United States of America signed the Budapest memorandum, which issued not exactly guarantees but assurances that we would respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine, in return for which Kiev surrendered 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads, which was vital to secure peace in the region. Is it not now all the more incumbent on us to make it very clear that we will continue to provide political, diplomatic, scientific, financial and, if necessary, military support to Kiev?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who has long-standing experience of this issue; I agree with his level of concern. There are three things that we are doing right now that matter. The first is holding Russia to its international commitments, including not just the ones that he mentioned, but the OSCE principles of accountability for the build-up of troops. Russia has not responded to the calls for an explanation within the OSCE. We will continue our robust approach to sanctions. He is right that we will continue to provide diplomatic support, but we will also continue to provide military support: since 2015, through Operation Orbital, we have trained more than 20,000 Ukrainian armed forces personnel.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Wendy Morton)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. The Minister of State for South Asia and the Commonwealth, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, set out the UK’s serious concerns about human rights in Sri Lanka in a statement at the UN Human Rights Council on 25 February, and the UK has welcomed the adoption in March of a new UN Human Rights Council resolution on promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka. That UK-led resolution enhances the UN’s role in monitoring the situation and collecting evidence of human rights violations that can be used in future accountability processes. Just quickly on the point about sanctions, though, it is important to recognise that it would not be appropriate to speculate on any further designation.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I agreed with the Prime Minister when he said that his greatest mistake when he was Foreign Secretary was in relation to Russia—that he had misplayed the relationship with Russia—and I want to return to that point. We now know for certain that the two men who were involved in the Skripal poisoning, or attempted poisoning and inadvertent successful poisoning, were GRU officers, almost certainly acting on the direct command of the Kremlin, and that those two officers were also involved in a murder and an explosion in the Czech Republic. It seems extraordinary to me that this has taken so many years to come out. Why has there been such a delay in this information coming to the public, and what are we going to do to make sure that murderers on Putin’s payroll are not strolling the streets of every capital in Europe?

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the Czech explosion that led to the attribution was many years ago. The decision to attribute was the product of a long investigation by the Czech authorities, and he will have seen that we stood absolutely full square in solidarity with our Czech friends.

In the ways that I explained earlier to the shadow Foreign Minister, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), we have increased and continue to increase our measures for screening and for accountability, and of course, through the Magnitsky sanctions—which the hon. Gentleman himself has championed—we have a new means of targeting human rights abuses. To the extent that they also impinge on dirty money, which in fairness the hon. Member for Wigan spoke about, I have already made clear that we will shortly be introducing an extension to the Magnitsky sanctions to cover that.