Ukraine

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is right: in sometimes fractious times in our country, the spirit of the British people and their generosity has known no bounds. Their compassion is humbling and their desire to continue to stand steadfast alongside the Ukrainian people is a tribute to our nation. We can also all be proud of the role our armed forces are playing in training Ukrainian forces. We can be proud of the contribution of our diplomats and our brilliant ambassador, Melinda Simmons, on the ground in Kyiv. As has been said, we can be proud of the way British families have opened their homes to Ukrainians fleeing war and supported their cause from home.

Putin’s war in Ukraine marks the end of the post-cold war era and we need a new mindset for these challenging times. The past year has illustrated some hard lessons. First, it has laid bare how naive and complacent we have been about Russian malign intent in this country and others. The invasion exposed a decade of chronic inaction against dirty money from Russia and other authoritarian states, which saw Kremlin-linked oligarchs and kleptocrats use London as both the hiding place and service industry for their ill-gotten gains. It should never have taken the invasion of Ukraine for us to act and although some progress has been made, the job is far from done. Labour will continue to hold the Government to account until Britain is no longer a soft touch for illicit finance.

Secondly, as the Defence Secretary himself conceded, for a decade we have hollowed out and underfunded our armed forces. Many in Europe believed that the era of wars between states was over. We reshaped our security, defence, intelligence and diplomacy to tackle different threats, allowing core capabilities to dwindle. Even when Putin broke international law and invaded his neighbours, our responses were weak. That must change, beginning with the immediate need for a stockpiles strategy to sustain support for Ukraine and rearm Britain.

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

As someone, not alone, who has called on both Front Benches for a very long time to commit to spend 3% of GDP on defence—a figure that we were still spending in the mid-1990s after the end of the cold war—I am used to hearing people say that we need to spend more when they are not in a position to do so. Could the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that if he were in a position of power, we would reach 3% of GDP as a minimum on defence?

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee for all that he has said on this issue over many years. We in my party have committed to a defence review on day one if we were to come to office. I gently remind him that throughout our previous period in office, spending on defence per capita was higher than today, standing at 2.5% when we left office. We are seeing what is happening across the European continent—so many European countries are committed to spending more, including the 3% that he indicates. We must play our part alongside France, as 50% of Europe’s defence capability.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a matter of great satisfaction that we have American visitors present today to witness the absolute unity of outlook on both sides of this Chamber. It can never be stressed too often that three concepts lie at the heart of defence and security: deterrence, containment and the unpredictability of future conflicts. To give an example of the last, one has only to look at the exchange between the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and myself on the day of the invasion. I asked him:

“If, as appears likely, Ukraine gets overwhelmed, will we offer to give sanctuary to a Government in exile, pending Ukraine’s future freedom?”

The then Prime Minister replied, quite sensibly:

“One of the points I made to President Zelensky this morning was that it might be necessary for him to find a safe place for him and his Cabinet to go.”—[Official Report, 24 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 570.]

I was quite sensible in asking that question, and my right hon. Friend was quite sensible in giving that answer because, let us be frank, not many people—at least, not many outside the Cabinet and Government of Ukraine—thought that Ukraine had much chance of resisting what appeared to be, and indeed was, a massive, albeit ill-conceived, onslaught against numerically far smaller forces. I said there are three concepts, and that is an example of the unpredictability of future warfare.

I remind amateur strategists, such as myself, in all parties, that just as we were not prepared for the successful resistance of Ukraine, we should not now become too complacent that Ukraine cannot possibly be defeated. We could wake up tomorrow to find that there has been some terrific, unexpected Russian breakthrough and the whole strategic situation has changed completely. That is why the appeals being made so strongly from both sides of the House are that we must, to coin someone coining someone else coining a phrase, “give them the tools to finish the job”.

It can be argued that deterrence failed, but why did deterrence fail in terms of Russia invading Ukraine? I am sorry to share this with friends from across the Atlantic, but one reason deterrence failed in this context was that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia came almost six months to the day from the catastrophic and bungled exit from Afghanistan by NATO. I am not saying that that planted the seed in Putin’s mind to do what he did, but it certainly may have affected the timing of him doing something that he had almost certainly wanted to do for a long time. We have to bear in mind what sort of signals we were sending. The answer is that we were sending signals of weakness, and when signals of weakness are sent to an authoritarian—that is the rather mild term used these days for what most of us from another era would call the totalitarian—type of government, we ought to know what to expect their behaviour to be.

I have talked about unpredictability and the limitations of deterrence. There is one element of deterrence—nuclear deterrence—where the results are more certain, should one dare put it to the test; but it nevertheless has to be considered in every scenario, no matter what sort of terrible fighting and atrocious behaviour may go on below the level of the nuclear threshold.

Let us talk a little bit about containment. Containment is what one has to do when faced with a deeply hostile opponent. It is no good talking about battling for “mutual understanding”. The trouble is, we can have mutual understanding where one person understands that the other person is a democrat and the democrat understands that the other person is a totalitarian dictator. That is not a recipe for peace; it is actually a sound portrayal of a situation where, unless the democrat shows the dictator that he cannot get his own way by force of arms, the dictator will try to get his own way by force of arms.

I have two other topics I shall touch on briefly in this contribution. One is to draw attention to an important analysis that appeared on the website “Desk Russie” on 30 December 2021, just two months before the invasion. It was by an old friend of mine whom I have known for the best part of 40 years. She is a brilliant French historian and former Sovietologist called Dr Françoise Thom. She drew attention to the texts of two draft treaties that were unveiled by the Russian Foreign Ministry on 17 December 2021. One was a draft treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation on security guarantees, and the other was a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It was made absolutely clear that these were take it or leave it offers. They were encapsulated by the deputy Foreign Minister Grushko, who said:

“The Europeans must also think about whether they want to avoid making their continent the scene of a military confrontation. They have a choice. Either they take seriously what is put on the table, or they face a military-technical alternative”—

that is war to the rest of us. This is a deputy Foreign Minister stating in terms that unless European states do what Russia wants, they can expect to be embroiled in armed conflict.

A former deputy Minister of Defence, Andrey Kartapolov, of the Duma Defence Committee, said as follows: “Our partners”—meaning our partners in the west—

“must understand that the longer they drag out the examination of our proposals and the adoption of real measures to create these guarantees, the greater the likelihood that they will suffer a pre-emptive strike.”

What was in those draft treaties? I will give the Chamber one example. Article 4 states, in part, that

“the Russian Federation and all participants which were, as of 27 May 1997, member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, shall not deploy their armed forces and armaments on the territory of any other European state in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997.”

What is the significance of 1997? Well it is this, Madam Deputy Speaker: it was only after 1997 that 14 of the present 30 members of NATO joined the alliance. Starting in 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined, and then almost a dozen more followed.

What the Russians were basically saying was that, unless America agrees to withdraw its support from all those newly freed democracies, and unless all NATO countries agree to withdraw their armed forces from all those NATO member countries, they can expect to find themselves in an armed conflict with Russia. The trouble is, statements of that sort do not get reported in the west as clearly as they should be—if they do at all. They are generally kept in, as it were, the specialised centres and the highly learned brains of people like Dr Françoise Thom.

I am basically saying that there are three outcomes when we get into a situation such as this. The first is that we can capitulate. The second is open warfare. The third is containment, otherwise known in the old days as cold war. I really resent it when people say, “Oh, you don’t want to go back to the cold war.” If the alternatives are capitulation or open warfare, then cold war is the very best we can do in staring down an aggressor.

I end where I began when intervening earlier to draw attention to the state of the UK’s defence budget, notwithstanding the considerable injection of cash that was made under the previous Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Even that only brought our percentage of defence expenditure up from about 2.1% of GDP to 2.3%.

A few years earlier, in 2015-16, there was a change in the accounting methods for calculating what our expenditure on defence was as a proportion of GDP. That was not an illegitimate change; it just led to us including certain items which NATO counts towards defence expenditure that we had not previously counted. If it had not been for that change in accounting, our expenditure on defence would not have been at 2.1%, which was what it was before the cash injection given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip; it would have been at 1.8%. My right hon. Friend’s cash injection would have taken it up to 2.1%.

Under the old system of accounting, in the mid-1990s, we were still spending 3% of GDP on defence. At the height of the cold war, in the mid-1980s, as I have said time and again to this House, we regularly and consistently spent—under the old system of accounting—between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence. We hear talk of arguments between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury on whether some extra billions will be made available. We all recognise that if Ukraine succeeds in defeating this aggression, while they will be doing it for their own benefit, they will benefit the whole of the western world. It will mean that the odds of us ever having to engage in that sort of fighting ourselves, against a regime of the sort there is in Russia, will be massively reduced.

Ask yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, what we would do if we found ourselves against our will forced into a conflict of that sort. Immediately, the amount we had to spend on defence would shoot up, not to 3% but probably to something like 10% or 15%. It would take every single scrap of effort, financially, economically and industrially, that this country could possibly generate. That is what always happens if we find ourselves in a war—not to mention all the costs in human life, treasure and misery. Therefore, this should be seen as an investment. If we increase our defence budget, we are investing in the freedom of Ukraine, and we are investing in the freedom and peace of the whole of the western world.

Turkey and Syria Earthquake

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady makes a sad but important point. This situation will evolve, and sadly, it is highly likely to get much worse before it gets better. I will make sure that my office liaises with Mr Speaker about the most effective way to provide timely updates to the House, whether it be via the Dispatch Box or in some other format. I recognise that over the next few days and next week, when the House is not sitting, the Dispatch Box might not be the most effective way of doing so. I also recognise that this situation will be coming to its peak over the next couple of days, and Members, rightly, will expect to have updates, so I will try to find a way of most effectively facilitating that.

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

A situation of this sort in a fellow NATO member would seem to be tailor-made for military assistance from us to their civil powers. Do we not have any Royal Navy ships in the area, and are there not Royal Marine contingents that could be put quickly to work, with the agreement of the Turkish authorities?

[James Cleverly]

I will take the ideas that my right hon. Friend put forward very seriously. The initial assessment of need is very much in urban search and rescue, and the UK, along with a number of NATO and non-NATO partners, is putting forward that capability. I suspect medical assistance will be next, but we will continue liaising very closely with the Turkish Government and the United Nations about what is needed on each side of the border.

British Council Contractors in Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Baron]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We asked these people to step up to the plate and are looking away when it is our turn to do so. That cannot be right and does not create a good impression of our country’s approach to such matters on the international stage.

Last summer, after activity from the British Council all-party group in particular—I thank the APPG and its members for being so hardy in this cause—the Government opened an application window for the contractors to apply for a place on the ACRS. The British Council worked at pace with the FCDO, as the Minister will know, to winnow out genuine applicants. By September, around half had heard that they had a place on the scheme, pending security checks, but they have heard nothing since. Certainly, that was the case up to Christmas. The other half of applicants—around 100—had simply heard nothing at all. Their papers were stuck in a bureaucratic mishmash in Whitehall. Following pressure from the British Council all-party group in particular and from others, I understand that over the Christmas recess around half of the contractors had their ACRS applications acknowledged and granted, and I look forward to hearing whether the Minister can confirm that.

Barriers remain. People will apparently require the necessary ID and travel documents to leave Afghanistan. They left their homes at short notice and are in fear of their lives, moving from one safehouse to another, and I am sure the Minister will be sympathetic to the case that they might not have all their paperwork. The idea of applying to the Taliban for passports is, as I am sure the Minister will realise, just not feasible. Meanwhile, new-born children may have arrived, bringing further complication for paperwork.

In the interest of brevity, knowing that others might want to contribute to this very brief debate and wanting to allow the Minister plenty of time to respond and take interventions if necessary, I have four questions for the Minister. I hope he will take note of them and answer them in turn. First, am I right to understand that around half the contractors have been given the go-ahead? It is a simple yes or no.

Secondly, have they been told they can make for the border? If so, I ask the Minister what he and the wider ministerial team at the FCDO are doing to encourage Governments in third countries to offer a greater degree of flexibility on paperwork for those seeking to cross the border out of Afghanistan. Such arrangements were previously agreed with the Government of Pakistan, which allowed individuals under the predecessor Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme to cross the border without ID if their names were on a list approved by the British Government. Is it going to be as simple as that?

Thirdly, I understand that around half of contractors are yet to hear anything. By when can they expect to be contacted? It is totally unacceptable, as Members have already heard and will continue to hear. It is totally unacceptable—a view widely held in the House—that those people have had to hold on and wait for so long. It is just inhumane.

Finally, may I make a plea to the Minister? In my various deliberations, I have heard some unedifying, if not distasteful, talk of quotas. Will he ensure that quotas do not prevent those who worked for Britain and their families seeking safety in the UK? After all, there was no talk of quotas when we asked for volunteers. There is no talk of quotas when it comes to the extent of these people’s bravery in stepping up to the plate when we needed them. We should therefore not be talking about quotas when it is our turn to stand by them.

In conclusion, although I do not doubt Government or the Minister’s good intentions—it is often an issue of cock-up rather than conspiracy—the sad fact is that after the scheme was introduced, for the whole year of 2022, not one person was relocated. I will not accept any of the talk I have heard previously of many hundreds or thousands being helped. That is disinformation. People who got out under Operation Pitting have been retrospectively shoehorned into various schemes. I hope the Minister will not recite those figures to me. The sad fact is that during 2022 nobody has been relocated under the scheme.

As we reach the first anniversary of the ACRS, I urge the Government finally to get all those contractors and their families to safety. Recent talk in certain circles of the number of Taliban being killed has not helped them at all. After all, the ACRS was a flagship scheme announced with great fanfare, but nobody has yet been relocated. The litmus test of the success of the scheme is how many people have been relocated over the course of the past year, and that figure is a big fat zero. Now is the time to put that right.

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

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way so near to the end of his speech. I just wanted to remind Members that this is very similar to what happened with Afghan interpreters, where there was a redundancy scheme—this was before the fall of Kabul—and an intimidation scheme. While considerable numbers were brought out under the redundancy scheme, none was brought out under the intimidation scheme, at least until the fifth report of the Defence Committee of 2017 to 2019, which was published in May 2018 and recommended a more generous approach. As the Minister was a member of the Defence Committee that drew up that report, I am sure he will be sympathetic to a request for a meeting to discuss all these matters—as has already been offered by his ministerial colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell).

[Mr Baron]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I completely agree: there are many similarities, and one would have thought that we would have learned the lessons by now.

Having finished my address, I look forward to the Minister answering those four specific questions.

British Council Contractors: Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and he is quite right to express deep concern about those who are caught in this way. He asks me whether he may raise cases privately with me, and of course the answer is yes. I will make arrangements for those meetings to take place straight after this urgent question is over. He asks a number of questions, and if I do not answer them fully, I will ensure that we write to him. He is right to say that we keep in very good contact with regional partners in countries to try to advance this issue. This particular stream only opened in June this year. The Foreign Office has processed and is informing something in the region of 200 of those who are eligible in principle, and if the dependants are added to that, it is something like 750. So those are proceeding, and it is of course up to the Home Office to procure the necessary security clearance prior to them securing entry clearance. So, the process is going on, but I fully accept his frustration—it is a frustration we all share in this matter—and as I say, perhaps we can proceed with a private meeting, as he has requested.

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

Is there not a fundamental problem with talking about safe and legal routes for people who, if they expose themselves to the Taliban, are at risk because of that very fact? Last Thursday evening, I was at the Last Supper gallery to attend a photographic exhibition organised by the Sulha Alliance on behalf of Afghan interpreters, several of whom were there, including one who had been shot and another whose brother had not got out and had been murdered. The photographer, Andy Barnham, felt it necessary to anonymise the photographs because of the risks of identification. Do the Government not have to come up with a better idea for how to extract people who are at risk as a result of helping us, without them having to declare themselves openly and thus put themselves in more peril?

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend, with great eloquence, makes a most important point. There are various ways in which we can deal with this, and which it would not be sensible to talk about on the Floor of the House. He makes one of the big difficulties very clear. If it would be helpful, I am happy to discuss this with him.

Anti-lockdown Protest in Shanghai: Arrest and Assault of Edward Lawrence

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

As I said in answer to a previous question, we will be updating the integrated review to ensure that we continue to invest in our alliances and the capabilities that we need. We have not committed to publish a separate China strategy, but we will continue to maintain as much transparency as possible and keep Parliament updated on our approach to China. The integrated review will be the main focus for that.

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

This disgraceful episode reminds us of the importance of the BBC’s work in China. About a decade ago, ringfenced funding was stopped for the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring. Some ringfenced funding has now been restored for the World Service but not, as far as I know, for Monitoring. Will the Government undertake to look at that matter? The degree of investment in such services should not be competing with commercial BBC considerations.

[David Rutley]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I have already highlighted that a broader strategy is taking place with the World Service, but I will follow up about Monitoring and get back to him in more detail.

Missile Incident in Poland

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I find myself in complete agreement with the shadow Foreign Secretary. It is absolutely right that we stand in solidarity with our allies—our formal allies in NATO, and also the Ukrainian people as they defend themselves. He speaks about endurance; I have spoken in the past about the need for strategic endurance, recognising that we must send the message to not just Vladimir Putin, but every other potential aggressor around the world, that we will defend the UN charter, international humanitarian law and the right of territorial integrity until the job is done. We must maintain that strategic endurance.

The shadow Foreign Secretary is absolutely right to ask about support for the international coalition that has condemned Russia’s actions. Some 141 countries voted for the resolution at the UN General Assembly at the start of the conflict, and 143 voted to condemn the illegal annexation of the eastern and southern oblasts in Ukraine. However, that coalition needs to be supported. I and the Ministers and officials within the Department regularly engage with countries in the global south that are worried about food security, fuel security and the availability of fertiliser. We have worked in conjunction with our international allies, particularly Turkey, to ensure that the Black sea grain initiative is supported. We hope that that initiative will be extended, and we are lobbying for that extension to occur so that Vladimir Putin cannot use hunger or the fear of hunger as leverage to support his illegal attempted invasion of Ukraine.

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

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s remarks about strategic endurance. From our point of view, that must surely involve the continued supply of the munitions that have enabled Ukraine to resist so effectively so far. Can the Foreign Secretary assure the House that he and the Defence Secretary have made appropriate representations to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister that tomorrow, we must not send a signal of weakness in respect of how much we are prepared to invest in defence?

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point about the need to send an important message to the world, and indeed to our Ukrainian friends, that we are in it for the long haul—that we do have that strategic endurance, and we will support them until the job is done. My right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary and I have discussed this issue on a number of occasions; indeed, we will have high-level representation at the Ramstein donor conference, which is occurring as we speak, to ensure that we listen to the needs of Ukraine, and that both the scale and nature of our support are co-ordinated with Ukraine so that it can defend itself against the evolving threats it sees from Russia.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

This issue is with the Greater Manchester police and, because we are a country that believes in following the rule of law, we are waiting for it to complete its investigations. At that point, the Foreign Secretary will determine how to proceed.

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

Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that we are not making the same mistake in respect of China that we made in respect of Russia, which is to believe that increasing our economic ties and interdependence will enable an authoritarian country to mend its ways? It did not work in the case of Russia, and it will not work in the case of China either.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

My right hon. Friend is extremely knowledgeable and thoughtful on these issues. I offer him this thought as we await the completion of the police investigation: our approach to China is co-ordinated across Government, and the FCDO is at the heart of the cross-Whitehall strategic approach to China in line with the integrated review, which is presently being refreshed. I know he will understand that, in due course, our position will be set out clearly.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

No, Mr Speaker.

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

May I attend the meeting that the Minister is going to have about judges, so that the plight of Afghan interpreters and others who helped our forces can also be considered?

[Leo Docherty]

Yes.

Ukraine

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Given the emphasis that Putin is putting on attacking infrastructure, and without in any way asking the Foreign Secretary to be specific, will he reassure the House that our armed forces are paying enough attention to protecting undersea pipelines and internet cables? Between now and the autumn statement, will he have a quiet word with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to say that now is not the right time to be rowing back from a long overdue promise to increase expenditure on defence?

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend tempts me to go beyond my brief at the Dispatch Box. All I can say is that I always listen to his advice carefully, and I have no doubt that the Secretary of State for Defence, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will all have listened carefully to the points that he put forward.

Violence against Religious Groups: Nigeria

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

I thank the hon. Member, and I send my best wishes to the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown), who I hope feels better soon.

The hon. Member asks a really important question about what we are doing to address the drivers of conflict, and there are different drivers in different parts of the country. I have had the huge privilege of being able to visit the country, talk to a lot of different groups and meet my counterparts a number of times. For example, in some parts of the country there are conflicts between herders and ranchers, so we have provided technical support to the Office of the Vice-President to develop Nigeria’s national livestock transformation plan, which sets out a long-term approach towards more sedentary forms of cattle rearing. That is explicitly to address some of the drivers of intercommunal violence, and the plan is now being implemented in eight different states in the middle belt region. That very specific, targeted work is now being implemented.

We also support efforts to respond to the conflict. For example, there is the work we do on regional stabilisation efforts and the regionally-led fight against armed groups, including demobilising, deradicalisation and integration of former group members. We provide humanitarian aid to the crisis in north-east Nigeria, where 8 million people need life-saving assistance. One of the issues we have helped with is improving respect for humanitarian law within the defence services, so part of our defence training offer is improving understanding of international humanitarian law. During my visit to Nigeria, I was really pleased to hear that, in the north-east region, the relationship between security actors and local community members seems to be improving. This was told to me by a local community leader, who directly related such improving of relationships to the work we have been doing to help improve understanding of humanitarian rights by the security services. So we are taking many different actions in a very complex situation.

Incidentally, I will have the huge honour of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury tomorrow, and I will certainly be discussing this with him.

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

Will the Minister take a look at early-day motion 95, which has been tabled by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others, about the horrific stoning to death—and then the burning of the body, and indeed of the buildings of the college—of a young female Christian student, who had the temerity to object to the way in which a WhatsApp group was being used for inappropriate “religious” purposes? Does she accept that this problem goes wider than marauding groups, and will she make every effort to ensure that the Nigerian authorities bring the perpetrators of that barbaric crime, as well as of this one, to justice?

Ukraine

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right. We have been leading on providing that equipment. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces has informed me that the US has provided 200,000 rounds, and I know that we are working very hard to corral allies around the world to make sure that Ukraine has the equipment it needs.

Secondly, we are also relentlessly ramping up our economic action to choke off the funding for Putin’s war effort. The UK is leading the way: we have sanctioned more individuals and more organisations than any other nation. So far, we have designated over 1,500 individuals and entities, including more than 100 oligarchs with assets worth over £198 billion.

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

I think the Government are to be strongly commended for all the economic sanctions work they are doing, but how can that prove effective as long as Germany is pumping billions of euros into the Russian economy week in, week out for oil and gas?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. Friend is right that it is absolutely crucial that we cut off Russian funding from hydrocarbons. That is currently accounting for a third of the Russian economy, so it is a target of the United Kingdom to get others to follow our lead. We are ending all imports of coal, oil and gas by the end of 2022, and we want to see a timetable for others to do the same. It will only be when we cut off that supply of money from hydrocarbons that Putin will no longer have the funding he needs to supply his war machine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Putin’s war is now two months old and it has already backfired. Ukrainians have resisted heroically. They have paid a great price but they remain undefeated and undaunted, with President Zelensky the embodiment of their courage. NATO has been united in its support and has shown more focus than ever since the cold war.

Tougher sanctions have been agreed by a broad range of countries, but this is no time to be complacent. The appalling truth is that Putin could still win in Ukraine. He continues to commit war crimes, and the longer that this war goes on, the more atrocities are revealed. There appears to be, frankly, no end to his aggression in sight. As the Secretary of State said, in that light, I welcome the decision by Melinda Simmons, the UK ambassador, to return to Ukraine. Having met her, I know that she would have been reluctant to leave in the first place. It is really good that she and her staff are back in the country.

We are deeply concerned about the reports from Moldova today. This looks worryingly like the familiar Putin playbook of fabricated grievances and concocted attacks that have been used in the past as a pretext for aggression. Will the Secretary of State address those worrying reports and restate our united support for Moldova’s sovereignty and territorial integrity? Putin must not be able to spread this damaging war beyond Ukraine.

We now need a plan to sustain opposition to Putin’s war, keep his criminal regime isolated globally and force him to pull out of Ukraine. That means maintaining the strength of our military, economic, diplomatic and humanitarian assistance, and it means working with our NATO allies to continue to supply Ukraine’s army with lethal weapons.

The Opposition welcome the 5,000 anti-tank missiles and 100 anti-air missiles that the Defence Secretary announced yesterday, but that is not the full amount. I would be grateful to know what the Secretary of State can tell us about the total number of weapons provided to Ukraine by NATO allies so far. Can she confirm whether the UK has started production of replacement next-generation light anti-tank weapons and Starstreak missiles?

It is vital that the Government address gaps in the UK’s sanctions regime. Will the Secretary of State back Labour’s call for a new US-style law to target those who act as proxies for sanctioned individuals and organisations? Will she finally fix the 50% rule, which allows a company to avoid sanctions if 49% is owned by one sanctioned individual and 49% is owned by another?

We also need a longer-term strategy to deal with the indirect consequences of this war, which could go on for months or, sadly, years. In their integrated review, the Government outlined their strategic focus, describing it as an Indo-Pacific tilt. Does the Secretary of State agree that the deprioritisation of European security at this moment was a mistake? As war ravages parts of our continent, we need to put past Brexit divisions behind us, stop seeking rows with our European partners and explore new ways to rebuild relations with European allies by exploring ideas such as a new UK-EU security pact.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s generally consensual approach, but the fact is that if we entered into a new military or security relationship with Europe but without the United States, we would be fatally undermining the deterrent power of NATO. Putin would like nothing more. Will the right hon. Gentleman please be more careful in his recommendations? That is my advice.

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful for the remarks of the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee. He is quite right that this is not in the absence of the United States; it is simply about underlining the fact that with France as the biggest defence ally within the European Union and with us, there is a key transatlantic relationship that the Europeans are talking about and that we have to be part of. We have to be in the room. I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman agrees with me on that point.

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman says. Just to underline the point, he will recognise that the decision by Germany totally alters the picture of defence in Europe over the next decade. We can sit on the sidelines and allow a conversation between France and Berlin, or we can be part of that conversation. It must be vital to our own industry that we are part of the conversation.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Very much in the spirit of consensus, I will entirely concede the right hon. Gentleman’s point if he believes that the effect of our being part of that conversation would be to help stop Germany paying for Russia’s war effort, as unfortunately it is at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

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

In earlier debates on 9 and 15 March, I set out my analysis—for what it is worth—of the nature of Putinism in the context of post-communist Russia, and I do not propose to try the patience of the House by repeating all that now. I will just say once again that the great country of Russia is in the grip of a sick, cynical psychopath who is himself firmly in the grip of small-man syndrome. Thus, he waves his shiny new intercontinental ballistic missiles at the world as if it had not been the case for the last half century that if Russia had wished to destroy the west, or if the west had wished to destroy Russia, either could have done that within the lifetime of a day.

What we have to look at more specifically are the political and military forces at work. I do not propose to dwell on the issue of the EU and its aspirations for a combined military voice, whether alongside, apart from or instead of NATO. All I say to the House today is what I have said for many years: without the United States and its military presence and power, there is no security for Europe, and I include the United Kingdom in that concept of Europe.

Once upon a time, it seemed crazy to suggest that the Kremlin archives would ever be opened, but at the end of the first cold war they were, and who knows, one day they may be opened again. I venture to suggest that when that time comes, it will be seen that one of the key factors that weighed heavily in Putin’s decision to do this monstrous thing of invading and raping the country of Ukraine was the way in which a new and apparently weak United States President betrayed the mission in Afghanistan—leaving not even in an orderly way, but in a disorderly way under the arbitrary pressure of a symbolic deadline. That, I am sure, sent a signal to Putin that he would never have a better chance than now to flex his military muscles.

There are the military means of opposing this invasion and the economic means of opposing it. I must say to the House that, while I praise all the efforts being made on sanctions, sanctions will not affect the outcome of this war unless and until Germany stops paying billions of euros to Russia to fund it. By all means let us go on with sanctions, but let us not fool ourselves into thinking that they can possibly be decisive under the present economic flow of wealth from Europe into Russia.

I want to make a point that I have not made before in these debates: this is clearly a David versus Goliath contest. People will nod at that and say, “Well, that’s a bit obvious.”, but I suggest that right hon. and hon. Members remind themselves why and how it was that David beat Goliath. Goliath was armed with all the might and the conventional weapons, but David was armed with a slingshot—a simple weapon that nevertheless proved more than a match for the traditional might of Goliath.

I suggest to the House that that is why, in most areas of the war it has been trying to wage, Russia has not been doing very well. Our Defence team can take a lot of credit for that, in terms of what they have supplied to Ukraine. Ukraine has been supplied with slingshots, in the form of missiles, that have meant that Russian aircraft are not safe in the skies, Russian tanks are not safe on land and Russian ships, as we have seen, are not safe in the Black sea.

However, there is one shot left in Goliath’s locker: the cruel, ruthless bombardment, from an apparently safe distance, by artillery, of Ukrainian cities. I am not quite satisfied yet with the answer we are getting on the question how we should be helping Ukraine to counter that. Matching artillery piece for artillery piece is not the answer, any more than matching tank for tank or aircraft for aircraft. We need to see a smart system of eliminating Russian artillery, in the same way that its other heavy equipment has been eliminated.

[Bob Seely]

rose—

[Dr Lewis]

I suspect my hon. Friend is going to make a constructive suggestion in that respect.

[Bob Seely]

On that point, targeted missiles of the kind we have seen launched at tanks at short range are an answer, but the argument in favour of moving to NATO calibre 155 is that, all things considered—of course shells come in different specifications—it offers slightly longer range. By using longer range, the Ukrainians can stay out of Russian 152 range and target them with their 155s, potentially forcing a change in Russian tactics. There is benefit in moving to NATO calibre as well as in directed missiles.

[Dr Lewis]

I do not dispute that at all, but we must remember that Russian artillery has Ukrainian cities to aim at, whereas Ukrainian artillery would only be aiming, presumably, at Russian artillery. That may be the best answer there can be, but I would have thought that some of the more modern, smarter systems such as suicide drones might be a more effective response.

That leads to my final point. When people say, “What does victory look like?”, it is not so much a question of victory over Putin as of showing Putin that, unless he desists from this, he will end up much worse off than if he gives up. What has happened so far is that his troops have paid a price that has not shown commensurate gains—his aircraft similarly, his tanks similarly and his ships similarly—so all he has left is this method of artillery. We want the Russians to think that every time they fire an artillery round, their artillery piece is going to be destroyed. We have a very capable Defence Minister doing the wind-up—I am delighted to see him nodding—and that is my one point that I wish to see addressed, because if we can show Goliath that all his weapons are useless and that we can supply the slingshots, perhaps Goliath will decide that it is better to stay away from the battlefield.