National Security and Russia

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister (Mrs Theresa May)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered national security and Russia.

Three weeks ago, the Russian Federation was responsible for an attempted murder here in our country. This was not only a crime against Sergei and Yulia Skripal: it was an indiscriminate and reckless act against the United Kingdom, putting the lives of innocent civilians at risk; it was an assault on our fundamental values and the rules-based international system that upholds them; and it was part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive Russian behaviour, but which, with the first offensive use of a nerve agent on European soil since the foundation of NATO, also represents a new and dangerous phase in Russia’s hostile activity within our continent and beyond.

So this debate is taking place because there is no greater responsibility for this House, for this Government and for me as Prime Minister than recognising threats to our national security and acting to meet them. So let me set out for the House: what we now know about the recklessness of this act and its exposure of innocent people to potential harm; the evidence that Russia was indeed responsible; the wider pattern of Russia’s illegal and destabilising actions within our continent and beyond; the extensive actions this Government have already been taking; and our determination to work with our international partners to confront the evolving nature of this threat, to defend the rules-based international system and to keep our people safe.

Let me start by updating the House on the situation in Salisbury. Sergei and Yulia Skripal remain critically ill in hospital. Sadly, late last week doctors indicated that their condition is unlikely to change in the near future and that they may never recover fully. This shows the utterly barbaric nature of this act and the dangers that hundreds of innocent citizens in Salisbury could have faced. An investigation continues into all the locations at which the Skripals had been present on Sunday 4 March. As a result, we now have a fuller picture of the recklessness of this act against our country. Although Public Health England has made it clear that the risk to public health is low, and that remains the case, we assess that more than 130 people in Salisbury could have been potentially exposed to the nerve agent. More than 50 people were assessed in hospital, with Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey taken seriously ill. Everyone in the House will welcome the news that he has been discharged and, as we said earlier, we continue to hold him and his family in our thoughts as he makes his recovery.

We are quite clear that Russia was responsible for this act. As I set out for the House in my statements earlier this month, our world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down positively identified the chemical used for this act as a novichok, a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by the Soviet Union. We know that Russia has a record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations, and that it views some former intelligence officers as legitimate targets for those assassinations. We have information that indicates that within the past decade Russia has investigated ways to deliver nerve agents, probably for assassination, and has, as part of this programme, produced and stockpiled small quantities of novichoks. That is clearly in contravention of the chemical weapons convention, so it is right that we have been working closely with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, from which a team arrived in the UK last week and collected samples. This is a normal part of our discharging our obligations under the convention, although we are clear as to what the evidence is.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the upholding of non-proliferation regimes with our partners is central to our international security, while Russia has recklessly undermined and violated them. As I have set out, no other country has a combination of the capability, intent and motive to carry out such an act. There is no other plausible explanation—and that is not just the view of the UK Government; it was the unanimous view of every single leader at least week’s European Council and it is the view of our allies in NATO and around the world.

There are some who question whether there could be alternative explanations, so let me be absolutely clear: we have been led by evidence, not by speculation. When faced with the evidence, we gave the Russian Government the opportunity to provide an explanation, but they did not do so. They provided no explanation as to why Russia has an undeclared chemical weapons programme, in contravention of international law; no explanation that could suggest that they had lost control of their nerve agent; and no explanation as to how this agent came to be used in the United Kingdom. Instead, they have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance.

Incredibly, the Russian Government have deployed at least 21 different arguments about it. They have suggested that they never produced novichoks, or that they produced them but then destroyed them. They have tried to claim that their agents are not covered by the chemical weapons convention. They have pointed the finger at other countries, including Slovakia, Sweden and the Czech Republic, and they even tried to claim that the United Kingdom was responsible for a chemical attack on our own citizens. For a nation state like Russia to resort again to peddling such preposterous and contradictory theories is unworthy of its people and their great history.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Cabinet Ministers in this House defended Russia, despite the growing evidence of the enormity of its crimes, from 1929 to 1931. At least that was understandable on the basis of a shared ideology. Now that Russia has abandoned that ideology, to what can the Prime Minister attribute the reluctance of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) to point the finger where it properly lies?

[The Prime Minister]

I can find no reason to attribute to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for the stance that he has previously taken on this issue. I hope that, like some of his right hon. and hon. Friends, he will take a different position in this debate.

As I was saying, to peddle such preposterous theories is unworthy of the Russian people. It is merely an effort to distract from the truth of Russia’s violation of international law. This unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom is a clear violation of the chemical weapons convention and a breach of the UN charter. This act against our country is the latest in a pattern of increasingly aggressive Russian behaviour, attacking the international rules-based system across our continent and beyond.

Russia’s illegal actions in Crimea were the first time since the second world war that one sovereign nation has forcibly annexed territory from another in Europe. Since then, Russia has fomented conflict in the Donbass, repeatedly violated the national airspace of several European countries and mounted a sustained campaign of cyber-espionage and disruption.