Leo Docherty
Main Page: Leo Docherty (Conservative - Aldershot)Department Debates - View all Leo Docherty's debates with the Cabinet Office
National Security and Russia
Leo Docherty Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Jeremy Corbyn
To that end, we applaud the Government’s decision to ask the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to conduct its own independent analysis of the nerve agent used in the attack, to verify the tests conducted here in Britain, as we proposed two weeks ago. We are certain that those results—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The right hon. Gentleman will give way when he decides to do so.
Jeremy Corbyn
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The second issue I want to raise is the nuclear deal with Iran, of which Russia is a signatory and, indeed, a strong supporter. At a time when it is more under threat than ever from those now in charge of Donald Trump’s foreign and security policy, we will need a united front to defend that very important deal with Iran, which was promoted by President Obama and others. Whether we like it or not, Russia must be part of that process.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, particularly when we have had such a demonstration of moral relativism—such an apologia, in many ways, for a regime that has really done nothing to justify the explanations that have been permitted it.
May I welcome the clarity that you have brought to this debate, when all that we have had from some parties is very much the opposite? We have had obfuscation, deception and dissimulation. We have had all the tricks and all the terms that we are used to when we talk about a regime that has institutionalised lies, deception and dishonesty not, as Churchill put it, as vanguards for the truth, but instead of the truth. These are attempts not to build a better world, but to destroy one that is trying to serve the people of these islands and our allies and friends.
I am privileged to be speaking today about security. We have heard—and no doubt we will hear more—about how security is built on military hardware, and Members will not, quite understandably, hear me resile from that point. However, security is, of course, not built just on military hardware. It is not built just on the training teams that, even now, are helping the Ukrainians to defend themselves against the Russian tanks that are in Donetsk and in the Donbass, and that care about the overflights over Ukraine. It is not just about the British battalion that is, even now, in Estonia, demonstrating to the Russians that the NATO commitment is real. Those British troops are not there just because they are capable, but to demonstrate that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Leo Docherty
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to consider the fact that the Leader of the Opposition is on record publicly as stating his belief that NATO should be closed down? Does my hon. Friend agree that that sends a deep signal of alarm across these Benches?
Tom Tugendhat
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but he is slightly limited in what he said. He should have said, quite accurately, that it sends a deep signal of alarm across this House, and I look here even at friends in the Scottish National party and at many on the Labour Benches, who will remember, of course, who it was who built NATO: Clement Attlee. Who was it who built the independent nuclear deterrent? It was the Attlee Government, who recognised that the United Kingdom had a role to play as a force for good in the world. That was an era when socialism loved Britain and did not hate it. That was an era when socialism respected the west and did not hate it. That was an era when socialism stood for something and did not stand for nothing.
Boris Johnson
I am aware of Iceland’s action. If we think about this action in the round, there has never been a collective diplomatic expulsion or action like it across the world. I therefore hope that this episode will mark a turning point. We do not want this to be a bilateral confrontation between Britain and Russia, as many hon. Members have said.
Like many on both sides of the House, I have been very careful to make the distinction between our quarrel with the Russian state and our position with the Russian people. I echo the heartfelt sympathy voiced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about the horrific fire in the shopping centre in Kemerovo in Siberia, which claimed the lives of scores of people, including children. It is vital to state that our differences have never been with the Russian people, whose artistic, cultural, literary and musical achievements are matchless. Our quarrel, as I say, is with the Kremlin, whose approach is to conjure up the spectre—the turnip ghost, if you like—of foreign enemies to cement domestic support. The idea that Russia or the Russian people are ringed by enemies is totally implausible and untrue. Far from being surrounded by foes, the Russian people are surrounded by friends and admirers such as ourselves who want nothing more than to live in peace with them on the basis of the very international rules that, tragically, their leaders have made it their project to subvert or overthrow.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) said, the Kremlin has tried to respond to its actions in Salisbury with the usual tactic of concealing the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation. The Russian state media have pumped out no fewer than 21 separate theories so far, including some of almost sublime absurdity. They have claimed variously that Britain launched a nerve agent attack on its own soil in order to sabotage the World cup, that America did it to destabilise the world and, most sickeningly and cynically of all, that Sergei Skripal attempted suicide and apparently tried to take the life of his own daughter with him.
Leo Docherty
Conservative Members will welcome the Opposition’s somewhat tardy acceptance of Russian culpability for the crimes in Salisbury. What, in the Foreign Secretary’s judgment, has brought about that change of heart?
Boris Johnson
At this stage of the debate, all of us on both sides of the House will welcome as much unanimity and accord on this matter as we can find. We do not seek to make windows into men’s souls and to try to establish exactly how or why the Opposition decided to change their mind, but we welcome it. I listened very carefully not only to what the Leader of the Opposition had to say, but also to the explanation from the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw). I welcome what the Leader of the Opposition said.