Ukraine

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and the leader of the Alba party may like to reflect on his celebrity status on some of those channels.

The Government already have some considerable powers, and Magnitsky sanctions have been used against a number of Russian individuals after Salisbury. In fact, some of the people I met in the Russian Ministry of Defence were sanctioned under such measures. We continue to deliver on that.

More widely, the whole of Government will produce a response for this House in due course. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about using sanctions now rather than waiting for something to happen. The key point here is that we must be in a position to threaten to deliver sanctions against Russia if it does something. Were we to unilaterally deliver them now, but America and the European Union did not, there is a danger that would play into President Putin’s attempted divide and rule narrative.

There are plenty of measures that we could take, and we are planning a serious set of sanctions. The question to President Putin is: “Do you actually care what is going to happen to your people, because it will be they who suffer the most as a result of the sanctions?” It will be interesting, as a responsible leader, whether he will listen to that.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome this statement. The penny was dropping at the Munich security conference that this is about not just Ukraine, but a wider realignment of global power with the formation of a new Russia-China alliance that is fuelling Putin’s adventurism and, indeed, perhaps taking us towards another cold war. The money laundering issues aside, which absolutely must be addressed, I ask the Secretary of State to consider the sanctions. There is a concern that we are actually helping Putin with his intention of turning Russia away from the west and towards a new alliance with China in the long term.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wallace]

It is incredibly important that NATO seeks to use the extra troops to provide resilience, reassurance and containment. One reason why we have up to 400 Royal Marines in Poland is to assist Poland should a catastrophe happen and huge numbers of refugees pour across the border. I urge the European Commission to make deep plans about what it will do about potentially massive migrant flows, the like and scale of which we have not seen since the second world war.

[Mr Speaker]

Before we come to the statement on covid, I would like to point out that the British Sign Language interpretation of proceedings is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.