Ukraine Update

Debate between Jeevun Sandher and John Healey

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

That was exactly the focus of the Ukraine defence contact group, and the purpose of pulling those 51 nations and partners together 10 days ago and securing the confirmation of a record €21 billion in extra military aid for Ukraine during the course of this year. That was supported by the US, with the presence of Defence Secretary Hegseth, who welcomed what he saw quite clearly as confirmation that European nations and others are stepping up to meet the challenge that he and President Trump have issued to us, quite rightly, and stepping up to meet the challenge that requires us to do more to keep Ukraine in the fight and strong for a potential peace that we all hope will be negotiated.

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. Keeping ourselves, Europe and Ukraine safe means that we have to produce more fighting forces than Putin can, but traditionally this country has focused on producing exquisite and expensive platforms. Clearly that trade-off is changing, and we are seeing $1,000 drones in Ukraine destroying $9 million tanks. The production trade-off between expendable and exquisite platforms has to change across our allies and ourselves. Producing those drones takes months; it will take years even to upgrade our own Challenger tanks. Will the Secretary of State set out how that changing trade-off in production will be implemented and introduced in the strategic defence review and the defence industrial strategy to keep ourselves, Europe and Ukraine safe?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is spot on, and he provides the answer to his own question about how that necessary understanding from what we have seen in Ukraine, and in other conflict zones in the middle east recently, must involve a combination of the more traditional, sophisticated defence platforms that we have tended to procure, with much more rapidly updated, updatable and upgradable new technologies such as drones. That will be set out in the strategic defence review and captured in the defence industrial strategy, but I hope my hon. Friend will see the announcement that I referred to in the spring statement of a determination to earmark 10% of defence equipment spend from this year on for novel technologies such as the ones he cites.

Russian Maritime Activity and UK Response

Debate between Jeevun Sandher and John Healey

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman has huge experience in this field, so he will recognise that I simply will not and cannot get into responding to hypotheticals. He urges me not to allow undue constraint of perhaps established practices or rules where there is a good case for flexibility. I hope he will take as a signal of the serious intent that I will bring, with the approach and return of the Yantar to UK waters, my readiness, as I have reported, to alter the permissions that the Royal Navy was using so that, should the captains of the warships that we deployed to watch and track the Yantar require it, they could go closer, see better and determine more carefully what exactly the Yantar was up to. Like the surfacing of the submarine in November, that was a move to deter and discourage the sort of activity that we simply do not want to see in our waters.

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

Keeping ourselves safer at home means ensuring that Putin loses abroad, because when Putin is finished in Ukraine—whenever that may be—he will come for more. Defeating him means showing him that we have the resolve and the resource to defeat him in the future. Can the Secretary of State assure me that, as part of the SDR, we will have a way to combat, prevent and protect ourselves from Russia?

[John Healey]

I hope the content of my statement—the assertion that the most immediate and concerning threat to the UK comes from Russia—and the action I have taken in response to the Russian spy ship, Yantar, being in our waters again, will reassure my hon. Friend that, exactly as he urges and as the shadow Defence Secretary the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) has recognised, Russia is a serious menace. In Ukraine, it is fighting the first full-scale war in Europe since the second world war, but as the shadow Defence Secretary said, its aggression particularly in the grey zone—warned about by the heads of the CIA and M16—tells us that this is a regime intent on disruption and on disrupting our way of life. My hon. Friend is right to start by saying that the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine. If Putin prevails in Ukraine, he simply will not stop in Ukraine.