Ukraine

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I know that the door of my right hon. Friend, the Chair of the Defence Committee, is always open for such discussions. The Treasury has been very clear that we need to replenish our stocks, and that it will support us in ensuring that they are replenished. I can also assure him that we are making certain that we remain well within our tolerances. There are tasks here for which we always need to be ready, and I can assure him that we remain ready for them.

The equipment that we provide must be as effective as possible, so we are training specialist Ukrainian units in its use. Last month, for example, Ukrainian troops learned how to use our armoured fighting vehicles on Salisbury plain, and those vehicles have now started to arrive in Ukraine; the number will build to 120 in total. Our support does not end there. The House will be pleased to hear that the challenge laid down by Putin’s brutal war has been seized by UK industry. I have been delighted by the agility that the UK’s defence sector has shown, working closely with Defence Equipment and Support, in bringing through innovative ideas; in some cases, those ideas literally go from desktop to theatre in a matter of weeks. I am determined to maintain this innovative drive, so that we capture every idea, support the best of them, and then swiftly put the results in the hands of our Ukrainian friends.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Can the Minister set out how support for Ukrainian forces will be updated or augmented to deal with increased and intense artillery bombardment from better supplied Russian forces? They have retreated much closer to their own borders, and their supply lines have greatly opened up. Given that, how can we further support Ukraine in defending itself?

[Jeremy Quin]

The hon. Gentleman knows that we are doing our utmost to support our Ukrainian friends. There are intense discussions between our Ukrainian friends and the Ministry of Defence at a number of levels, including between myself, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces and our opposite numbers in Ukraine. We are ensuring that the equipment that we source to support Ukraine is tailored to its needs and its battle plan in the weeks and months ahead. The hon. Gentleman is right that opportunities may well open up, but I do not for one second underestimate the fierceness of the fight and how intense it is at present in Donbas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I am sorry that the immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), is no longer in his place, because my principal motivation for coming along to this debate was to highlight some of the deeply frustrating, upsetting and challenging circumstances being experienced by constituents of mine in Angus who are trying to sponsor people on the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Of course, my situation in Angus is no different from that of MPs across the House who are trying to expedite that humanitarian assistance at a very human level.

The Homes for Ukraine scheme sits in stark contrast departmentally with the role of very hard-working Ministers in the Ministry of Defence, who have discharged their responsibilities with enthusiasm and efficacy and to great effect. I hope it is acknowledged that they will not often hear a comment like that from an SNP MP in this place, and I do not make that observation lightly. It is in sharp contrast to Ministers in the Home Office. That is not just a rhetorical observation or a political point—I genuinely wish it was not so, but it is.

The evidence is there for all to see in comparative analysis between what the United Kingdom has managed to achieve under the Homes for Ukraine scheme and what others in Europe have achieved where a Government’s ambition has matched the ambition manifest in the communities of those countries. We see that in Ireland, which has given refuge to considerably more refugees per head of population than the United Kingdom. The same is true of Denmark, which has received one Ukrainian per 194 members of the population. In the UK, that is depressingly one Ukrainian per 1,249 members of the population. The United Kingdom has not even managed double what Ireland has achieved, and Ireland is 15 times smaller than the United Kingdom.

As if that were not bad enough, in answer to my written parliamentary question about unaccompanied minors trying to access the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the Home Office has confirmed that unaccompanied minors are only eligible if they are travelling to reunite with a parent or legal guardian in the UK. My constituents in Angus are suffering from the same predicament that was so eloquently outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) in regard to young people. In my case, it is two young 17-year-old boys. As she said, we all know 17-year-old kids. Can the House imagine what it is like being stuck in Budapest, alone and barred from refuge in the United Kingdom? It is to the United Kingdom’s shame that that situation has been allowed to come to pass.

Unlike the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), I will not shy away from looking at the integrated review, because if we have learned anything over the past couple of months, it is that events have a terrible habit of catching up with us if we find ourselves in any way unprepared. If the United Kingdom prosecutes its integrated review in the way it has set out, it will have an Indo-Pacific tilt. It was never a great policy to begin with, in my view—it reeked slightly of a post-Brexit rebound effect, trying to get as far away from the European continent as possible, and before tensions required it, a bit like someone turning up at a party in the afternoon with their carry-out before anybody else is on the same page. That particular strategy did not merit being advanced before the events in Ukraine, and it certainly does not merit continued investment down that path since then.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Member gives me the opportunity to enlarge on something I touched on. He is completely correct to say that we have to look carefully at where we should have our fleet and where we should be amassing our forces. I personally believe it is the high north and the north Atlantic—the bit opposite the top of my constituency.

[Dave Doogan]

A rare moment of accord between the hon. Member and I. He is absolutely right. If we look at the dysfunctionality of Russia’s land forces in Ukraine, we can contrast that with Russia’s sub-sea naval forces and secure precisely no comfort from thinking that that reads across. They are among the very best in the world, crewing some of the very best submarines in the world and deploying some of the very best tactics in the world. If we think that we can combat that threat in the South China sea, we are very much mistaken. That alone is an opportunity to quickly have a root-and-branch review of the integrated review.

The Minister for Europe and North America is in his place to reply for the Government. We have touched on the grain situation in Ukraine. It is not NATO’s, the west’s or Ukraine’s responsibility, but humanity’s responsibility to get that grain out of Odessa and into global markets where it can provide a lifeline—literally, sadly—to the poorest in the global community. If it is sufficiently, or even remotely, close to his area of responsibility, he might consider whether there is some mechanism that clever people in the Department for International Trade, or his Cabinet colleagues, could look at to forward buy the value of the grain in Ukraine so that it is already sold before it leaves. That would deny Russia the opportunity, however tenuous it might be, of saying that it is aiding the Ukrainian war effort with finance.

If the finance is already in place, that argument no longer stands and it will be evidence that, if Russia still blockades outward transit of grain from Odessa, that is purely a malign act of belligerence that will cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. Getting the grain out would also vacate the silos and storage facilities in Ukraine so that they can receive this year’s harvest and not store up the same problem for years to come. It is vital that we co-ordinate the best ideas around that priority, so I look forward to hearing how we might do that.