Ukraine

Debate between Liam Byrne and Mark Francois

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to follow the excellent speech of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), as well as that of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy).

I will add three points to the debate: first, on the importance of how we break the balance of force that we see arranged on the ground; secondly, on how we choke the oligarchs of war who are helping to supply Putin’s war machine; and thirdly, on how we commence the pursuit of justice. There is more to say about that, because I was unhappy to hear the Foreign Secretary, who is just leaving his place, not row in behind the Vice President of the United States and say that our Government had also arrived at the conclusion that Russia was committing crimes against humanity. One has to ask, how much more evidence do they really need?

We have heard the call loud and clear from two former Prime Ministers about the need to supply what Ukraine needs now. The truth is that both sides of the conflict will find it difficult to summon the 400,000 to 500,000 troops necessary to make a breakthrough one way or the other, so the challenge that may lie ahead is that Ukraine continues to suffer the pattern of more and more troops being thrown into infantry attacks under artillery fire in the east of the country and endless missile strikes on population centres. That is a grinding, terrible waste of life.

We have to leapfrog out of this bad habit that we have gotten into where first we say no, then we say yes, with an extended time period in between. On air defence, we said no to Patriot missiles until we said yes. On tanks, we said no until, months and months later, we said yes. Now, can we please just short-circuit the process and send the F-16s as fast as possible, with trained pilots? It is great to hear that we are training pilots, but at last week’s Munich security conference there was a clear consensus among Democrats and Republicans to send a very clear message to the President of the United States that it was time that fast jets were sent to support our allies in Ukraine. We heard directly from President Zelensky, just a few yards from this Chamber, that the wings of freedom are needed today, so let us jump out of the no and get to yes as fast as possible.

[Mr Francois]

We gave 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. Those are very capable tanks, but in and of themselves they will not change the whole course of the war. What they did do, however, was help unlock the delivery of hundreds of Leopards. What the Ukrainians really want are MiGs, which they are familiar with using, and F-16s. By the same argument, if we gave one squadron of older Typhoons that then unlocked hundreds of MiGs and F-16s, that would be worth doing, would it not?