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.

Foreign Affairs and Defence

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and welcome to the Chair.

May I warmly congratulate the Defence Secretary on his new role, and strongly endorse the comments he made about Britain’s armed forces? My own regiment has recently been on the frontline in Estonia, and I want to strongly endorse the words he used. I also endorse the advice he gave to new Members sitting on these green Benches. I first sat on these green Benches—on the Government side—37 years ago, and I strongly agree with what he said. I feel that sense of honour and privilege every day in this House.

I had hoped to start by welcoming the Foreign Secretary to his place. I wanted to wish him well in discharging the immense responsibilities of the office he now holds. I have to say that I was dismayed to hear the Foreign Secretary answer questions on the “Today” programme this morning that should more properly have been answered in this House—a view that I believe Mr Speaker shares. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the Foreign Secretary will be very well served by the outstanding civil servants at the Foreign Office. I want to express my gratitude to our ambassadors and high commissioners around the world. On overseas visits throughout my tenure, I was superbly served and looked after. I also want to thank the outstanding young officials who worked in my private office.

I should like to pay a special tribute to my noble Friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. He demonstrated clear strategic thinking about how British foreign policy needed to adapt to the world as it is today and injected real energy into British diplomacy. I hope the whole House will acknowledge that to persuade a former Prime Minister to serve as Foreign Secretary was a real benefit to our country. It was also a pleasure to serve alongside the former Members for Berwick-upon-Tweed and Macclesfield, who I am very sorry are no longer sitting alongside me on the Front Bench. They were both superb Ministers, who worked diligently at the Foreign Office.

I cannot recall a more perilous period in international affairs. I entered the House of Commons just two years before the momentous fall of the Berlin wall, which precipitated the demise of the Soviet Union and the consequent end of the cold war. It is difficult to overstate, having lived with the terrifying spectre of nuclear confrontation, the collective relief we all felt. Yet the world is once again in the grip of a galloping escalation of tensions and dangers, where the international institutions created on the heels of the second world war to defend our values and protect mankind are being undermined, the narrow nationalism that so disfigured our continent is once again rearing its destructive head, and despots and dictators increasingly ride roughshod over democratic freedoms and the rules-based order.

Putin’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine has brought war once again to the European continent. The Israel-Gaza conflict is devastating and risks regional conflagration. Poverty and debt stalk the global south. Yet covid taught us that no one is safe until we are all safe, while climate change is the greatest existential threat of our time. Never have we faced dangers so grave when our fates are so closely entwined. So at the very time when we need an international rules-based order to tackle these common threats—climate change, migration, terror and pandemics—we are more fragmented than ever. Divisions are hardening and debate is coarsening.

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

I am very grateful to the right hon. Member, my constituency neighbour, for giving way and I am delighted to see him in his place—on the Opposition side of the Chamber. Can I take it from his remarks that he subscribes to the view that we need not only a rules-based order, but a rights-based order? Here in our country, and indeed in Europe, the framework for those rights is the European convention on human rights. Are we to take it from his remarks that it is the policy of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition that we should remain a member of the ECHR?

[Mr Mitchell]

That is certainly the policy of the Opposition, and I hope it is common across the House that we should remain part of the European convention.

I was talking about divisions hardening and debate coarsening. Public discourse is increasingly vitriolic, be it in pursuit of single issue causes or broader agendas, from the left or the right, or driven by motives that may or may not be religious and may or may not be well-intentioned. The challenge this presents to British foreign policy is immense, but Britain has punched above its weight precisely because of our leadership role in the international system.

As His Majesty’s Opposition, our role is to hold the Government to account, but also to give the strongest possible support where we can. I hope that we can work constructively, as our two parties have done hitherto. In opposition, we will continue to make the case that Britain must be a force for good, that it is outward-looking and global in perspective, that we stand up for internationalism and co-operation, that we stand against populism and isolationism, and that we stand with the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. I am very proud of the Conservative party’s record in government on all those fronts. We stood firmly behind Ukraine, and we worked day and night with international partners to maximise the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, while supporting negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli hostages. We produced a groundbreaking White Paper on international development, which drew in the support of all political parties in tackling global poverty in a complex geopolitical environment.