Ukraine: UK and NATO Military Commitment

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the shadow Secretary of State.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Today marks day 117 since Russia began its brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. It is now a grim, grinding war of attrition. NATO’s Secretary-General warned last week that the alliance

“must prepare for the fact that it could take years.”

Everything that can be done must be done to help to maintain the Ukrainian military’s morale, weaponry and personnel. The Government will continue to have Labour’s full support in the military assistance they provide to Ukraine.

In April, when responding to the Defence Secretary’s statement in this House, I urged the Government to move to supply

“the new NATO weapons that Ukraine will need for Putin’s next offensive”.—[Official Report, 25 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 463.]

In these last two months, what NATO-standard stock has been supplied from the UK to Ukraine, and how many new contracts for missiles or ammunition production have the MOD now managed to sign and start?

On Friday, as the Minister said, the Prime Minister offered to train 10,000 new Ukrainian soldiers every three months. This is exactly what is needed. Did President Zelensky accept Britain’s offer? Will these Ukrainian recruits be trained in Britain? Which other NATO nations will be involved in such training?

As we mark the start of Armed Forces Week, the Labour leader and I had the privilege of visiting NATO’s maritime command and our UK Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood this morning. We wanted to thank our personnel for the service they give to our national and NATO commitments. However, there are serious growing concerns about the UK meeting its NATO commitments, with the failure to reboot defence plans in response to Ukraine, delays to a fully modern warfighting division until 2030, continued uncertainty over Ajax and, of course, further deep cuts to Army numbers.

The new head of the Army said in an internal message to troops last week that

“there is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle”,

so why are Ministers pushing ahead with plans to cut another 10,000 soldiers? When will they halt these cuts, and when will they start to rebuild the strength of the British Army to meet the threats that our country and our NATO allies face?

[Leo Docherty]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s questions and, as ever, we are grateful for the support of the Opposition for our Ukraine defence policy.

To go straight to the questions, new contracts are under discussion. The Minister for Defence Procurement and the Prime Minister had a meeting this morning, which was the latest in a series of discussions about escalating the supply of NATO-standard equipment, which is very important.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke about training, and that was a very significant result of the Prime Minister’s visit last week. I think the Defence Secretary also had some discussions. Not being privy to those discussions, it is not appropriate for me to speculate about their content at the Dispatch Box. However, I can say that the reference point for the UK’s contribution will be the remarkably successful Operation Orbital, which has trained some 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers since 2014. We have a long and deep heritage of working very closely and successfully with our Ukrainian allies, and I think that will be a very good basis on which to conduct future training support. As to which NATO allies may be involved, I cannot confirm that, but I would say that NATO, by disposition, tends to work in alliance, so I suspect other nations to be involved.

I am glad for the update about the right hon. Gentleman’s visit to PJHQ, but I would ask him to be a bit more optimistic about our absolute resolve to meet our commitments. This is about a disposition in which we are absolutely resolute to be agile and to strain every sinew to deliver at pace the technological and military revolution necessary to make ourselves more lethal, agile and deployable around the world than ever before. For too long, the measurement of our military capability has been about men and vehicles in garrisons, rather than our ability to project power, and that is something that we are absolutely confident we are getting right.

To prove the point, the fact the Chief of the General Staff is mentioning Russia demonstrates that, since March last year, this has been part of our job done. That is nothing new, and under the leadership that we are showing and with the determination for us to change and embrace modern technology as part of our ability to deliver lethal effect, we are getting to a point where we are more match fit than ever before to counter Russian aggression.