Ukraine Update

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome this statement on day one after the recess and on day 194 of Russia’s brutal illegal invasion of Ukraine. I thank the Defence Secretary for the regular briefings he has given during this period to those in all parts of the House and on all sides. On behalf of Members on all sides, may I say that we trust that he will remain in his post in the new Truss Cabinet?

I say on behalf of my party that we now stand ready to work with the new Prime Minister to maintain the UK’s united support for Ukraine and united determination to stand up against Russian aggression. President Putin expected Ukraine to fall within six days. Six months on, the massively brave Ukrainian resistance, military and civilian alike, is stronger now than it was in February, and all the Government’s moves to provide military, economic, diplomatic and humanitarian help to Ukraine will continue to have Labour’s fullest backing.

We strongly support the UK’s training programme for new Ukrainian army recruits, which the Labour leader and I saw for ourselves on Salisbury plain. I am humbled by the fact that those brave new recruits whom we met last month are now on the frontline, fighting in Donbas. I thank the Defence Secretary and Brigadier Justin Stenhouse for organising our visit. Will this training under Operation Interflex be extended beyond the initial commitment of 10,000 troops and beyond the basic soldiering skills currently covered?

We also welcome the extra long-range missiles and unmanned air systems announced over the summer. What is the strategy behind our military assistance? Is it designed to help Ukrainians hold current ground or take back more territory from Russian forces? What action has been taken to replenish our domestic stockpiles? How many new contracts have been signed? Has the production of replacement NLAWs—next generation anti-tank and anti-armour weapons—now finally started?

The war is entering a critical new stage, with Russia unable to deploy the overwhelming force needed for a decisive breakthrough and Ukraine well on the way to sapping the will of the Russian army to fight, hitting ammunition dumps, command posts and airfields deep into Russian-held territory. With the Russian military leadership under increasing military pressure, does the Defence Secretary agree that we are approaching another turning point, where Putin is likely to step up efforts to persuade the west to lean on Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire and negotiations? What are the Government doing to counter such activities?

What are the Government doing to explain to the public that the energy crisis and supply disruptions are not a result of Russia’s war, but an essential part of Russia’s war? Russia is fighting on the economic battlefield, not just the military battlefield. What action will the new Prime Minister take to help the country with escalating energy costs, rapidly rising food costs and the highest rate of inflation in this country for 40 years?

On the subject of the new Prime Minister, before the Tory leadership campaign, the Defence Secretary and Defence Ministers said that the invasion of Ukraine proved the integrated review right. They said:

“if more money were made available, there are other things that we would do more immediately than regrow the size of the Army.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2022; Vol. 718, c. 688.]

Then, towards the end of the leadership campaign, the Defence Secretary wrote of the new Prime Minister:

“I welcome her plans to update the integrated review, reconsider the shape of our forces, and increase defence spending.”

I welcome his conversion to the arguments that Labour has been making for well over a year, but what does he believe now needs updating in the integrated review? Will he halt his plans for Army cuts? Will the £1.7 billion cut in day-to-day MOD spending now be replaced?

Finally, very few people believed Ukraine would still be fighting Russia’s invasion six months on. We now know that Russia’s aggression will go on a lot longer. Will the Government set aside individual announcements and instead set out a grand strategy of long-term military, economic and diplomatic support, so that we can help ensure Putin’s invasion really does end in failure?

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful for the support of the right hon. Gentleman and his party on Ukraine. I apologise to him that he did not get my statement earlier. I changed it at the last minute—I was taking a bit of time as I wanted to give the House as many facts as we could and declassify some material.

It is my ambition that Operation Interflex—the training of Ukrainian forces in the UK with the international community—goes on as long as necessary, for now. We set a target of 10,000 troops, but through this pipeline I envisage that we will continue to train as many as are sent by Ukraine, to ensure that we are providing forces for them during the offences they are engaged in. Last Thursday, I again visited Yorkshire and met some troops who had come back. I met one man who had been injured by shrapnel and another man who, not long after leaving, had used a British NLAW to destroy a Russian tank. The scheme has a double benefit: we are learning as we go and improving the curriculum to ensure they get the very best training—they already want to learn more about some things and less about others—and our own troops are learning on the latest battlefield what our enemy does and how we deal with it. That is incredibly important, and we will continue to supply and support them as long as possible. When they arrived for the first curriculum I went to visit them, and some of those guys were getting off the plane in their tracksuits, training in uniforms and then having to hand them all back. They now leave here with 50 pieces of uniform—equipped, ready to go, with much better battle training and so on—to go into the next phase of their training in Ukraine. We will continue to supply that.

How many are trained, again, is in the hands of the Ukrainians, but we already know that they will want more specialist training. That is where I often convene our international partners, because they might want to do that closer to Ukraine than in Yorkshire or wherever we are delivering it. Those are the two phases, but the training is still going strong. I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman came to visit, and I am happy to facilitate the leaders of the other parties or their Defence spokespersons to come and visit it as it progresses. I notice we have all the Vikings—the Danes, the Swedes and the Finns—all in the same camp, so come October time they will be able to teach us about working in the cold. That is very good.

Our strategy is to give the Ukrainians the absolute best chance either to negotiate, when they wish to, from a position of strength or to defeat Russia in their own country—to hold their position, to push back the Russians and, if necessary, to defeat Russia within Ukraine, to ensure that Russia comes to its senses and withdraws from its military and illegal action there.

We signed off last week on more replenishment of the high-velocity anti-air missiles, which are made in the same factories as the Thales NLAWs, to ensure that they are replaced. Right across the western industries there is a challenge with replenishment. Many of the supply chains have been dormant, and I think the right hon. Gentleman will know—as I think either he or the Leader of the Opposition made a visit to Belfast—that it is not as simple as switching on a tap. I have been very clear that we will place the orders, but we need to encourage the arms industry to invest as well.

It is not just for us to effectively pay for manufacturers to double their production lines; those lines will be full of customers, and we would like to ensure we get the balance right. Nevertheless, I will not sacrifice our readiness and our stocks to do that. The industry has letters of comfort from the accounting officer in the Department to say, “We will be placing orders, and you should start to proceed.” I met the head of BAE recently, who said it is already starting to expand its production, so that is on track.

The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne is absolutely right about the energy crisis. It did not come out of nowhere; some of it was about peak demand post covid, but President Putin is weaponising energy. He has weaponised a lot of other stuff over the years: he has weaponised cyber, political division in our countries, misinformation and corruption, and energy is just another plank in his arsenal. It is important that we communicate to our constituents that some of the deeply uncomfortable times that we all face are driven by a totalitarian regime in Russia that is deliberately setting out to harm us and trying to test whether we will sacrifice our values for our energy costs. That is very important.

For what it is worth, President Putin is sowing the seeds of the end of energy dependency, not only for Russia but around the world. We must all work on putting investments into renewables, which many Governments have talked about—I have been in this House under both Labour and Conservative Governments—but diversity of supply is also important. In the long term, Putin has put Russia in a weaker position. Switching off the pipeline instantly will just persuade Germany even more that it has to invest in something else, and I think that is a good thing.

I am delighted to join the right hon. Gentleman on a commitment to more defence spending; I wonder whether he will join us in our commitment to 3% of GDP on defence spending by 2030. I have always been very clear that as the threat changes, we should change what we do and how we invest. The Armed Forces Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey), has made the point that it is not as simple as taking whatever extra money we get and doubling or increasing our troops; the lesson of Ukraine, as I have often said, is that history shows that when people spend lots of money on lots of new platforms and on certain numbers, they can hollow them out and not actually produce medium, small or large perfectly formed units.

If we have more money, I can assure the House that we will ensure that our soldiers and sailors are less vulnerable than they are today, that they have the 360° protection they need and that we invest in the enablers to make sure that the frontline is properly supported. All the vulnerabilities that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown—across the western armies, not just in the United Kingdom—will be fixed. At the same time, we will make sure that we fix the forces we have with better maintenance, better spares and everything else, so we can be more available and readier.

It is always tempting at these times for people to come out with ideas that are like going back to the steam train. Some people still want to go back to the steam train. There is always a tendency to want to suddenly mass up, but if we mass up without the appropriate funding, we will be in a mess in 10 years’ time. I do not want to repeat that.