National Security and Russia

Dan Carden Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention and for the serious and close interest he takes in all these matters.

I was talking about Russian oligarchs and their power. As the Prime Minister will know, it is not just the Labour party pressing for action. Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition party leader who was barred from standing for the Russian presidency and has faced down intimidation of him, his family and his supporters at the hands of the Russian state, has made clear that the most important thing the UK could do to curb the power and punish the actions of Vladimir Putin is to hit his billionaire allies in their pockets. I hope the Prime Minister will listen to that advice.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

There are a lot of people out there who are very grateful that my right hon. Friend has called on the Government to follow due diligence and the guidelines set out by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Has he noticed that the Government have quietly heeded his advice?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will discuss that organisation further on in my speech.

In welcoming the expressions of co-operation and solidarity from our international allies, including the withdrawal of the EU ambassador to Moscow and the co-ordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats, we must continue to build further, concrete multilateral actions to send a clear message that the Russians’ actions are not acceptable. As I said previously, it is by building alliances that we strengthen our approach and the action we take.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. I am from a generation that was born as the cold war ended. I am also from a generation that does not want another to begin.

Let me be clear: it is an outrage that nerve agents have been used on the streets of a British city, in clear contravention of international law. It is appalling that people have been left fighting for their lives, including a policeman, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. I am sure that the whole House is relieved by the recent news that he has been discharged from hospital and was able to return to his family. We are lucky that other members of the public, who could also have been killed or injured, were not. If the evidence is clear and incontrovertible that the Russian state organised the attack, the measures that the Government have taken are commensurate with what any Government should do in such circumstances.

We need to send a clear message that banned nerve agents cannot be unleashed in this or any other country without robust consequences. However, the often hysterical, ill-informed and plain infantile attacks on my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for calling on the Government to follow due diligence, and particularly the guidelines that the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons set out, are not only disgraceful but have not helped our case in the court of international opinion. I note that the Government quietly heeded my right hon. Friend’s advice.

To call for due diligence makes absolute sense. My generation is old enough to remember the so-called dodgy dossier that was used to take us into what many believe was an illegal war in Iraq. Politicising intelligence and turning it into propaganda is not the sort of activity that a democracy such as ours can ever be comfortable with. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right then, just as he was right on apartheid, Chile, Afghanistan and Libya. One would think that some Members of this House, who have been far less prescient, would have learned to show a little more humility towards someone who so often found himself on the right side of history.

My question today is: what sort of future relationship will Britain and indeed, Europe have with Russia in the longer term? If it is to be one of ever-growing suspicion and hostility, where could that lead? What sort of relationship does President Putin truly want with our country and with Germany, France and the other European countries that are important for future trade, development and peace?

[Chris Bryant]

I have been thinking about what my hon. Friend says about due diligence and due process, and of course he is right. However, President Putin presumes that we will do everything we can to ensure that there is proper process, a fair trial and so on in this country, but that would not be available to anybody in Russia. We have to face that. Having gone through the whole Litvinenko process when I was a Minister, I know that the worse thing for Marina Litvinenko was that it was impossible to have a proper trial because the Russians simply would not co-operate. We very slowly ended up with a judicial review and inquiry. We may end up having to do exactly the same thing this time, but we need to walk into this with our eyes wide open.

[Dan Carden]

I do not disagree with anything my hon. Friend says. The UK’s role as a beacon and a light of hope in international law is as important as any other role we play.

At some point soon, it will be important to have a grown-up debate, beginning with some of Russia’s closest neighbours, which have the most to lose and gain from all this. At that point, we may also ask whether the Defence Secretary, who told Vladimir Putin to “shut up and go away”, has matured enough to take part in it. The policies that were played out in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union ultimately failed, and have helped contribute to where we are now. Russia has seldom helped itself either, even as some close to the Conservative party were helping themselves to some of its oligarchs’ rotten roubles, not least to help fund the Conservative party.

At some point soon, we will all have to step back from the brink and reset relations with Russia. This House can take pride in the work that this country has undertaken historically with the United Nations and others of destroying chemical and nerve weapon stocks, and bringing about international agreements designed to ensure that they are never used again. The world has been rightly appalled when chemical weapons have been used against civilians in Syria, and that is why the world is at one with Britain now over the use of nerve agents here.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises what happened to America in its relationship with Russia when President Obama pressed the reset button: absolutely nothing. President Putin grabbed the opportunity and moved on with his own policies. When the hon. Gentleman talks about agreements to end the use of chemical weapons and nerve agents, I stress that we have heard it all before from Russia, and I plead with him not to take at face value what the Russian state says.

[Dan Carden]

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman about taking things at face value, but I believe that there will be a day when we and the political leaders of this country and of other European countries seek to press the reset button again. Whether President Putin is there or not when that happens, we shall see what sort of success we have then.

The message is clear: we must bolster international law, working in co-operation with our international allies; put human rights at the heart of an ethical foreign policy; support and strengthen the United Nations, and use diplomacy to expand a progressive, rules-based, international system—rules that must apply to the strong as much as the weak.