Ukraine Update

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Although the commitment to 3% of GDP on defence is welcome, 2030 is further away in time than the entire duration of the second world war. It would be nice to see that commitment, which the Select Committee on Defence originally called for about six years ago, implemented a little sooner than the new Prime Minister plans. Can the Defence Secretary confirm that the extra expenditure on replenishing the arms supplies that we are giving to Ukraine is being met with extra funds from the Treasury reserve? What steps are we taking to ensure that the Russian people get the same message about the failure of Putin’s campaign that the rest of the world can clearly see?

[Mr Wallace]

On the latter point, in one sense it is sad, because it is people’s lives, but in Russia they cannot ignore the long and continued train of bodies to their loved ones and families. It was not missed by Soviets in the Afghan conflict. The terms “boys in zinc” and “load 200”, which are now in the Russian vocabulary, refer to the planes that brought back the dead bodies: zinc was what they used to wrap them. That is clearly before people in Russia. It is not helped by the misleading, dishonest and manipulative state information that tries to say that these people died fighting Nazis. The only people who are displaying a fascist tendency in Ukraine are the Russian regime; it is not in any way being extolled by the Ukrainians defending their soil. But we obviously do our best.

On the increase to defence funding, some of that £2.3 billion is replacing gifted equipment from our own stocks; that is already being done. We were able to release the GMLRS M270 because we received some others from another country, which we are refurbishing. We will continue to keep pace and make sure that we do not sacrifice too many of our own stocks. At some stages, there are also opportunities when our stocks come out of life or approach their sell-by date and are perfect for gifting, because they will be used. We have already planned to replace them. Some of the NLAW orders are actually quite old, because we knew anyhow that they were coming out of date; they were a 2003 weapon, so we had already started that process. I think it is NLAWs, but I can happily write to my right hon. Friend about the exact weapon system.