Financial Assistance to Ukraine Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, on her maiden speech. I came across the NFU many years ago through my very good friend Lord Plumb, who introduced me to this Chamber. He taught me quite a bit about the NFU and mentioned the noble Baroness to me as one of the up and coming stars of the institution. I am surprised that she had difficulty with public speaking, but clearly she has overcome it extremely well. We all look forward to many contributions in this House, given her special knowledge of agriculture, Ukraine, Africa and other subjects.

You can always depend on me when we have a debate on Russia. I am the one who makes the speech no one wants to hear. Today, unfortunately, my two co-religionists, the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Campbell-Savours, are not present, so I am left to do this all on my own. My message has not changed over the years. My message is very simply this. We have all agreed that Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine. It does not take an O-level in geography to recognise that. But what we have not been very good at is looking at the consequences of where we are now and where we are heading to. We need to remember my good friend John Major’s advice: in a hole, stop digging.

We need to look at some perspective. The Minister in the Commons, Darren Jones, said that we were going to carry on until Russia ceases its war of aggression and we win. I will first ask a very simple question. What is “win”? I have seen no evidence of any movement in Crimea to go back into Ukraine. Nor have I seen any evidence from Luhansk or Donetsk to the same effect.

The Ukraine Government made, as I have said many times, a tragic and stupid mistake when it outlawed the Russian language in places where 100% of the people spoke Russian. That alienated the eastern provinces, and the chasing out of Viktor Yanukovych did the rest. We now have to live with the consequences and build for the future.

The extraordinary revenue acceleration is a Group of Seven agreement, but has it been implemented elsewhere? Is this particular programme on the statute book of the US Senate? Will it sustain itself in the face of a President Trump? Is it passed by the Canadian Parliament? Will it sustain itself with a Prime Minister Poilievre, whom Canada is likely to get? Is it on the statue book of the Federal German Republic? Will it survive a new Chancellor in Germany? Has it gone through the French Parliament? That Parliament appears unable to pass any legislation at all at the moment, let alone something like this.

I am unclear as to where we are, apart from the fact that we are passing the Act. What about the rest of the people on the list? What is actually happening? In the case of Italy, Italian support of Ukraine is not at a very high level at the moment. From what I know of Prime Minister Meloni, I wonder what her Government are doing? It would be good to know—not because I will vote against the Bill or try to stop it; it is a government Bill that seems to have the support of everybody in this House apart from me, so it will go through. But we need to know where we are with the Bill.

We also need to know pretty soon where we are with the new United States Administration because, let us face it, they will call the shots; we are not going to. This will be like Afghanistan—the US Administration will decide on a policy, we will be lucky to get a phone call and we certainly will not be able to carry on on our own. We need a European dimension to all this that looks at it from the interests of Europe. Those interests clearly involve the rebuilding of Ukraine but also involve coming to an arrangement with the Russian Federation that will stick. We seem to forget that we expelled Russia from the Council of Europe. “Great”, we said. We expelled 135 million Russians from the protection of the Court of Human Rights. We do not talk about that, though, do we?

We need a reset of our relations with the Russian Federation, with Ukraine and with the riparian countries of eastern Europe that rightly feel alarmed about Russia but also feel a little alarmed about the capacity and willingness of those of us further west to defend them. It is fine to say, “We have Article 5 of the NATO treaty”. I talked not so long ago to a Portuguese admiral —noble Lords will be surprised who I tend to know—who said, “Oh, yes, Article 5 says an attack on one is an attack on all”. It does not say what we have to do about it, though, does it? He said, “Do you honestly think that the people of Portugal would send troops to Ukraine? They would not”.

This is going to be difficult, but it has to be done. We need to think again about European security. We have spent too long behind an American blanket, expecting them to look after us. The fact of the matter is that 80 years after the end of the war, we have to start redesigning a Europe that works for Europe. We cannot continue to rely on the United States.

In building that new unity, we have to get closer to the European Union. I really am on my own on that—in this party, anyway. The European Union and the countries that are closer to us geographically in Europe are our future. I say to both parties that if neither of you can come to terms with Europe, you will lose the youth vote and it is not impossible that we will end up with that little Bench down at the end sitting on that Bench over there, and God knows who sitting on this Bench. Let us think our way through to a brighter future and stop repeating all the shibboleths of the past.