Ukraine

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Friday 26th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Camoys, on his excellent maiden speech. His career in foreign affairs and diplomacy will greatly add to our debates in the future, so I very much welcome him here today.

I know that I have said this on previous occasions, and the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, has stressed it, too, but the fact that this Parliament and the peoples of the United Kingdom remain united in supporting Ukraine sends a strong message to Putin and his allies. We stand with NATO allies in providing military, economic, diplomatic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in the face of this illegal invasion. We have heard in this debate about the remarkable courage and resilience of Ukraine’s brave defenders and we should take huge pride in the training and aid that our Armed Forces and NATO allies are providing.

It is clear—we have heard it strongly through this debate—that Putin must be defeated in Ukraine. The cost of this war has been horrendous. We have heard how he has used food supplies to Africa, weaponising important humanitarian aid in periods of drought, and we have heard about the terrible crimes that have been committed. We have also heard about the huge loss of life, not least of the brave servicemen fighting for Ukraine, but also of the hundreds of thousands of Russian forces who have been sacrificed. It is outrageous and terrible and I just hope that that message gets through, despite Putin’s attempts to hide all the news in Russia.

We must stand full square behind Ukraine, strengthening its hand on the battlefield, supporting relief and reconstruction, maintaining western unity, isolating Putin and undermining his war effort. We must ensure that our diplomatic coalition remains robust and committed to Ukraine’s victory.

As ever, our Armed Forces have played a key role, including, as I have mentioned, in our training efforts. Some 30,000 Ukrainian recruits have been trained here, and the RAF has transported hundreds of thousands of pieces of aid. We thank them for all the support they are providing.

As my noble friend Lord Coaker said in his introduction, with a general election coming there may be a change of government, but there will be no change to Britain’s resolve in confronting Russia’s aggression and pursuing Putin’s crimes, and in standing with Ukraine. We are in this for absolutely the long term.

I, too, welcome the 10-year defence agreement. As we have heard in the debate, it is vital that Ukraine has a better idea of what it will receive over the next 10 years—it cannot be on just a year-by-year basis. We need urgently to ramp up our own industry, encourage our allies to do more and make it clear to Putin, as my noble friend Lord Robertson said, that things will get worse, not better, for Russia and that he cannot win.

There needs to be a stockpile strategy to sustain and support Ukraine and rearm Britain, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said. Ukraine is depleting our military stockpiles and, unfortunately, the Government are acting too slowly to replenish them. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, is absolutely right in this regard. We need to shift parts of our defence industry and MoD procurement on to an urgent operational footing in order to support Ukraine for the long term and to rebuild our stocks for the future, as the noble Lord, Lord Camoys, ably argued.

As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, the Government indicated, I think for the first time in October 2022, that they were in principle supportive of seizing Russian state assets to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction. I certainly welcomed the reconstruction conference that was held, but no specific proposals have been forthcoming. Yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said that G7 partners are urgently discussing this, ensuring that any action we take is legally robust. Well, we need a little more urgency to ensure that we can effectively use these assets and take up some of the initiatives pursued in the European Union.

This issue has not simply been started here. Again, I reflect the point made by my noble friend Lord Robertson: it is not just Democrats in the US who support seizing these assets to rebuild Ukraine; there is very strong support among the Republican Party too. Legislation has been drafted and supported by Republicans, and while I absolutely share the concern expressed about the future, we should not simply see the United States as a one-person country. It is made up of many states and politicians, a large number of whom strongly back Ukraine in its fight against Putin.

I have been concerned for some time that the Government have been too slow in ridding the United Kingdom of illicit finance and fully implementing the recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 Russia report. We must never allow London to act as an ecosystem of lawyers, accountants, company formation agents and others who are facilitating the very people behind the Russian regime and, ultimately, aiding Putin’s illegal war.

We heard three clear messages from this debate. The first, I suppose, is that the priority is to urge the United States and the European Union to deliver support urgently, and to commit to that as quickly as possible. The second is to focus on our diplomatic efforts, particularly broadening the alliance we have established so far. We have a very strong alliance in NATO, but I welcome the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, in building that alliance beyond, including through our engagement at the General Assembly. We need to refocus our activities, not just at the Security Council level, but looking to UNGA as a way of building those links and deepening the alliance.

The third message, which, sadly, we did not hear much about in the debate, is to strengthen our sanctions and our ability to undermine the Russian economy and Russia’s ability to fight this war. We need to close the loopholes and step up enforcement. In Tuesday’s debate on Russian sanctions, I mentioned the letter from Anne-Marie Trevelyan to all MPs, in which she said that the UK, the EU and the US had sent joint delegations to Russia’s neighbours, particularly Uzbekistan, Georgia and Armenia, and that bilateral arrangements had been made with Turkey and Serbia. She also said that these were yielding positive results. I know from my own recent visit to Georgia that there has been a huge increase in luxury car imports, which do not stay very long in Georgia and are moved to Russia. We need to understand just how these loopholes are operating and what we can do; certainly, we could take action on oil and gas. Can the Minister tell us what the positive results are from those arrangements? How are we evaluating them? It certainly looks like sanctions are failing.

The creation of the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation, announced on 11 December, is very welcome. On Tuesday, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, said that the Government are planning to legislate to give this new body a toolkit of civil enforcement powers, including the ability to levy civil monetary penalties—similar to the powers of the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation—but he did not give us a timetable. We are now an urgent situation, and we need to make people aware of these powers. We need to have them, so I hope the Minister can explain the position today.

On Tuesday, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, also addressed the many unintentional breaches of sanctions that arise because of a lack of awareness. We now have this body, and what we really want to know is how we can build a campaign to make people incredibly aware—all businesses in all communities—of the importance of complying with and implementing sanctions. This brings me to my final point on this issue: can we make these bodies more open to parliamentary scrutiny by subjecting their activities to a quarterly report, rather than the current annual one, which leaves things a bit too late?

I conclude in relation to what we have heard across the Chamber, which is that horrendous war crimes are being committed by Russian troops. My noble friend Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent highlighted this. I welcome what the Minister said about our support to the ICC and our efforts to build a very strong case, but since March 2022 Labour has been calling for a special international tribunal to prosecute Putin and members of his armed forces for the crime of aggression. The EU backs the plan and so do the Ukrainian Government. I hope that we can give more positive support to this because we need to ensure that in future people who commit these acts know that they will be held to account by this country and allied countries. I very much welcome this debate and the Minister’s commitment so far.