Ukraine

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the beauty of speaking late is that all the heavy lifting has been done; I needed only to listen carefully to the speeches from some very senior noble Lords, and I agree with what they said. Overall, I am very supportive of everything that His Majesty’s Government have done, and I echo the support of Ben Wallace, who did a fabulous job when he was Secretary of State. If we have alternative views in this House, it would be quite fun to have them earlier on the speakers’ list so that we can respond better to them.

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for initiating this debate, and so soon after a major general defence debate. The first issue that I am obliged to raise, yet again, is the one of “Peter”. That is not his real name but the one I have adhered to throughout these debates, initially for reasons of security and latterly for consistency. Your Lordships will recall that Peter runs a small business that, among other things, was exporting armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine. Those vehicles are used both offensively and, more often, to provide protected mobility around the battlefield; they are frequently used for casualty evacuation. Peter has around £3 million-worth of equipment ready to be exported to Ukraine under an export licence granted by His Majesty’s Government, but he was de-banked by a major high street bank at the start of the year. The relevant bank was helpful to me by extending the closure date to March and agreed to continue the provision of banking services on receipt of a letter from a Treasury Minister asking it to relax the money laundering regulations in a specific way.

Unfortunately, Ministers have been unable to undertake such an action. At the time, it seemed to me that the bank was being allowed to determine UK defence and security policy. Ministers also indicated several times in debates that they regard the complete integrity of the money laundering regulations as more important than facilitating the export of armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine. One wonders what the officials in the Russian embassy are sending back to the Kremlin on our determination that Ukraine is not defeated.

I am ashamed that, despite working on this problem since January, I have made little progress with the original problem, although I have found that it was the tip of an iceberg. The shame arises from the fact that I know the avoidable loss of life of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians is being caused by my ineffectiveness. It is unfortunate that the print media have chosen not to run the story of me directly holding Ministers responsible for that avoidable loss of life, despite being briefed in writing. Perhaps I am still in the editors’ sin-bin for successfully having the temerity to suggest that newspapers should be properly regulated in accordance with Leveson and without the involvement of any politicians. I thought that I would be forgiven when I secured an amendment to the then Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill to prevent journalists being accidentally arrested at the border, but maybe not.

It became apparent to me that these problems were much wider than just Peter and were adversely affecting much of the UK defence industry—although it was very reluctant to put its head above the parapet. The same high street bank’s name came up regularly. I ran several amendments to the then Financial Services and Markets Bill dealing with what we now know as de-banking—and I stress that this was before the Farage scandal. Unfortunately, I received very little support from members of the Opposition Front Bench—so ably led by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, who opened the debate for the Opposition—despite my briefing them in writing.

Fortunately, my noble friend Lady Goldie agreed to a meeting with me and the MoD to discuss these matters. She immediately grasped the significance of the problem with regard to the wider defence industry and passed it on to the Minister for Defence Procurement and other Ministers. That is why the media and the City Minister are now openly talking about the matter. Shortly after this, the Farage scandal unfolded. During discussions with the relevant high street bank, it was made clear to me that its problem was an unacceptable regulatory risk due to the money laundering regulations and dealing with Ukrainian businessmen. Reviewing our debates in the Chamber, it is obvious that I believed the bank.

Since those discussions, we have had the Farage scandal, in which the chief executive officer of another high street bank lied to a senior journalist and divulged Mr Farage’s personal banking information without proper authority. In the light of these events, it is reasonable for me to consider the possibility that the bank’s problem was not money laundering. Clearly, it could have negotiated extra bank charges to cover the cost of any extra due diligence. Rather, was it the bank’s ESG agenda, which we have seen adversely affect other SMEs supplying the MoD directly? Perhaps the bank recognised, correctly, that I would not be able to persuade Ministers to relax the money laundering regulations. In the light of what we now know about the banking industry’s ESG agenda, the behaviour of one bank’s CEO and the possibility that I might have been misled, will my noble friend the Minister ask the appropriate Treasury Ministers to review their decisions not to relax the money laundering regulations in the way that I have suggested, in order that Peter can export to Ukraine the armoured fighting vehicles which are so desperately needed?

Some time ago, my heart sank when one of David Cameron’s advisers confidently stated that we no longer needed armoured brigades with their expensive armoured battle groups. Boris Johnson said much the same thing about main battle tanks. In the reserves, I was a military logistician, not a teeth arms man. However, I know that a competently led, properly equipped, dug-in infantry battalion is usually extremely difficult to defeat without using heavy armoured battle groups. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, touched on this. Any attempt to attack dismounted, or with only light vehicles, is likely to result in very high casualty rates. This is exactly what we are seeing in Ukraine on both sides, with some other complications—such as both sides having access to very effective ISTAR. No wonder President Zelensky is so keen on acquiring equipment for armoured battle groups, particularly MBTs, which the UK was in the lead on.

It is important to understand that a reality of war is that an attack by a NATO armoured battle group is a terrifying industrial process. Of course, defensive positions will be sited to take advantage of natural features and obstacles—natural and constructed—and the like. However, defenders will also use anti-tank mines, and this is happening in Ukraine on a very large scale. Unfortunately, we are reading that courageous Ukrainian sappers are manually detecting and disposing of mines in order to facilitate attacks. This is far too slow and dangerous—my noble friend Lord Risby touched on this; I feared that he was going to make my speech for me. It is not clear to me how the Ukrainian forces can hope to prevail without being able to deal with the minefields on an industrial scale. The British Army uses a system called Python, a rocket-launched tow rope filled with about 1.5 tonnes of plastic explosive. When detonated, it will neutralise 90% of mines over a length of 200 metres and a width of 7 metres. Also available are Trojan armoured engineer vehicles, which, among other things, have a mine plough to push any remaining mines to one side. Sadly, this is a very low-population equipment, which means that we cannot release it to the Ukrainians.

The good news is that we have world-class defence engineering companies, such as Pearson, which lead on mine plough technology. The Python system, although clever, does not appear to be difficult to produce. What are we doing to help the Ukrainians in this crucial area of industrial mine clearance?