Ukraine and Russia

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that very serious and important issue. She will understand that, as a matter of policy, I will not comment on intelligence, but I will address the reports she has raised.

One of the great privileges of being in this post in the last seven weeks has been meeting the people in our special forces and seeing the capability that they have. It is truly remarkable and my only regret is that we are not able to show, for obvious reasons, the country more publicly just how exceptional these people and their capabilities are. It is in that spirit that I find it utterly unthinkable and shameful that anyone who has served this country, in whatever capacity, would think it in any way acceptable to support the Russian state as it wages war in Ukraine. The Ukrainians’ fight is our fight. Their frontline is the frontline for freedom and democracy. Those actions are an affront not only to this country and our values, but to the values that underpin the uniform that those who serve in our armed forces wear. I know I speak for the entire armed forces community in saying that.

Let me reassure the House and send a very clear message that we have robust legislation in place to tackle foreign hostile activity. The National Security Act 2023 gives our intelligence agencies and the police the tools they need to detect and disrupt threats, but the Act specifies under its interpretations that

“‘information’ includes information about tactics, techniques and procedures”.

It is applicable to any individual and extends beyond the period in which personnel are employed by the UK armed forces. Let that be a warning to anyone who has supported, or considers supporting, the Russians as they wage war in Ukraine.

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

I warmly endorse almost everything the Secretary of State has said today, and I genuinely congratulate him on his appointment. In my first speech in this House almost 30 years ago, I promised to support Labour Governments as long as they supported the nuclear deterrent, the conventional armed forces and NATO. I would like to think that I have kept that promise.

The one area where I have to dissent, however, is the section where he comes on to the proportion of GDP spent on defence. As I have said to some of the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessors, it is no good banging on about something being the largest increase since the end of the cold war. We are now in a situation that is worse than that at the height of the cold war, so the comparison we have to make is between what we are spending now and what we spent during the cold war, which was, in modern calculating methods, between 4.5% and 5.1% on defence. So let us not talk about increases to 2.7%. We really must remember that even when the Berlin wall came down, we were spending over 4% of GDP on defence at that stage. Those are the sorts of efforts that we have to make, because if Putin fails in Ukraine, the threat to this country will recede for a generation.

[Wes Streeting]

I give the right hon. Gentleman an undertaking on those three things to make it as easy as possible for him to support this Government: supporting the nuclear deterrent, building capacity in our armed forces and supporting NATO are things I believe in very strongly. In the spirit on these exchanges, I will take at face value the point he makes about the comparison with the cold war and resist the temptation to discuss the starting point we were faced with on defence spending and the condition of our armed forces when this Government arrived.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw historical comparisons and provoke all of us to think more widely about the context we are operating in domestically, across Europe and internationally. I have not heard a suggestion from the official Opposition that the Government should be making a 4% or 5% commitment, nor any proposals to that effect, but let this discussion help the public understand why, at a time of constrained resources for households, businesses and Government, we are making an active political choice to invest more in our defence. I respectfully say, as someone who has been responsible for hospitals and the NHS, that schools, hospitals and homes are important things, but they are valueless if reduced to rubble. That is the experience of the Ukrainians; that is the kind of threat that we are operating under; and that is why we must commit, and continue to commit, to increasing defence spending.