War in Ukraine: Third Anniversary

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree. I can understand that reluctance. I think it is twofold. Those who have financial services markets are worried that if they leap out and do this without full agreement, all those other countries will say, “That is the last time we will ever invest money in that capital market. We will move it to the other countries that do not do that.” I can understand from the Government’s standpoint that it has to be agreed across at least the G7, as its members controls most of those capital markets. That would mean there would not be any country for an oligarch or totalitarian leader to go to.

We have had a long time to get this right. Canada has made the strongest statement of all. I am told that America was okay under the last Administration. I am not sure now, but I would hope that President Trump realises this money is there. We should make this agreement as fast as possible. There can be no peace deal without money attached to it, and that money is necessary for Ukraine and must be used for Ukraine, and it is a huge sum. If we think we can use the earnings from the capital, we can use the capital too, because there is no definition or delineation between them. If we own the earnings, we own the capital.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have organised debates on this topic in the past. Does he share my view that we now need to get a lot faster in seizing this money, not only to pay for the munitions needed to win the war, but crucially, then to win the peace in Ukraine, making good the horrific scale of damage that Russia has inflicted on that great country?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate and all those who have spoken today.

It was Václav Havel who said that the best defence against tyranny is to live in truth. On this third anniversary, we have the opportunity to repeat some truths to this House—that Ukraine is a democracy, that democracies need defending, and that the best way to defend democracies is for democratic nations to come together with a unity of purpose around our values. We should not have to remind the world that Ukraine is a democracy, but some have impugned that. We in this House know that, at times, all democracies face challenges. Let us be honest, this country once had to suspend elections during the height of world war two. Gosh, I am even old enough to remember when thousands of people invaded the United States Congress because they wanted to overturn a democratic election and nullify the result and the election of President Biden.

Let us send a clear message from this House that we do not regard President Zelensky as a dictator. We regard him as a hero of democracy, and we in the west should have his back. We must also remember that, at times, democracies will need defending, especially against dictators —especially when it comes to Russia. President Zelensky is on the frontline of an effort to re-contain Russia on behalf of us all. Russia is a country that invades its neighbours time and time again. It has been invading its neighbours since the days of Ivan the Terrible. It has invaded its neighbours on eight different occasions since 1945—on average, that is once every decade since the end of the second world war.

Faced with that threat, why on earth would we make concessions now? Some 700,000 people have been lost in this war in Russia. Russia now faces a NATO that is bigger and stronger. Russia will run out of T-80 tanks in April, and it has lost more artillery systems in the past year than in the previous two years put together. Russia, at the height of the war, controlled 19.6% of Ukrainian territory; today, it controls 19.2%. In the face of that weakness, why on earth would we make concessions now to those who want to make Russia great again? We should confront them with strength, not weakness, because that is how peace is secured.

Finally, it is vital for us across the west to unite around our values, to celebrate those values and not to attack each other. I am worried that what began as political improvisation in the United States has now become, under the new President, a political project. I am worried that some of the noises that I hear sound like the report that Thucydides made of the Athenian threat all those centuries ago, which is that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. In this country, we know how that story ends. When we talk about the rules-based order, we do not mean the rules of the poker table, or even the rules that we set out at the end of world war two. We believe not simply in a rules-based order, but in a rights-based order. The rights that ensure our freedom were enshrined in the UN’s universal declaration of human rights at the end of world war two and in the Council of Europe’s European convention on human rights, co-authored by this country, based on Churchill’s great vision of a great charter. Those are the rights that we should be celebrating, because they mean freedom for all of us.

Those rights, values and freedoms must be defended with strength, so the Prime Minister’s decision to increase defence spending was right. This House will need reassurance that that money can be well spent, but, crucially, given the cuts that are to be made to the aid budget, we must think hard, creatively and quickly about how we now lead a great multilateral effort to increase the amount of aid spending around the world. We need to think in this 80th anniversary of the Bretton Woods institutions about how we reinvent the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for new times, so that they are bigger and better in the world to come. That is the way that we become evangelists for the rights that are now being defended so valiantly by Ukrainian forces on the continent of Europe.