Ukraine

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a very great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and that was a very wise speech. We should not be surprised, because he is the epitome of the experience and expertise which we often call in aid when we are defending your Lordships’ House. It came up earlier this afternoon because there was a question on Afghanistan, and he revealed that he was serving in Kabul in 1962. That says a lot.

I should also like to say how much I echo those who have paid deserved compliments to my noble friend Lord Soames. That was a magisterial speech and we look forward to many more. He is indeed a very worthy successor to his father. When I was a young Member of Parliament, I went out to be entertained at the embassy in Paris and was given the most wonderful, friendly welcome and the best lunch I had ever had. Then I had the great good fortune of serving for 10 years or so on the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, where his mother was a towering figure and a very worthy leader of that trust.

This is, in a way, a strange debate because it was changed yesterday morning when we all received an email at around 9 am telling us that President Zelensky was going to address Parliament in Westminster Hall. What a speech it was. It was brave, defiant and—as the noble Lord, Lord McDonald made plain in his splendid speech—had a large begging bowl at the end, but we all responded enthusiastically because we were in the presence of a great patriot. He is a man written off by Putin, a comic who turned himself into a statesman and to whom we all owe an enormous amount because, under other leadership, Ukraine might well have ceased to exist as an independent country by now.

We owe President Zelensky a great deal because patriotism, as he was saying in his speech, is not enough: you have to have the ammunition. I am glad we have been able to give him a lot and hope we will be able to give him more, but I hope also that we will have regard to our obligations to our own country. My noble friend Lord Soames was absolutely right in his splendid speech to underline that point: greater recognition of the need for more defence expenditure.

We are facing a terrible task. Look at Ukraine as it was on 23 February last year and as it is today on 9 February this year. All around one sees destruction, desolation, a country that has been robbed of much of its history. The history of a nation is often symbolised in its great historic buildings, museums and galleries. Many have been pillaged and looted and their treasures taken to Russia. Many a historic church and monastery has been destroyed. We are going to need trillions of pounds or dollars to restore Ukraine but we must all be committed to that. Whether Russia pays reparations, as it certainly should, or whether that does not come about, we all have a duty to rebuild, so far as we can, a brave country that must have boundaries no smaller than they were on 24 February last year.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, said in his very interesting speech that the war will be won on the battlefield. It is rather interesting that we had a politician say that and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, saying rather the opposite: that it will end, as all wars do, with politics and negotiated settlement. That is right, although I entirely understand why the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, said what he did, because many have made the point that if Ukraine is defeated, we are all defeated; I have made it myself in past debates. The democratic cause would be defeated. That must not be allowed to happen, not just for us but for our children and grandchildren. They will inherit a difficult world whatever happens, but it will be made all the more barren and bleaker if democracy is on the run.

I will make one or two suggestions. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to the BBC World Service. I happened to be at the same meeting that he, the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and others were at last night with the BBC, specifically in the context of Persian language broadcasts. It made the point that it really did not have a budget on which it could rely. Soft power is very important. We have said time and again over this last year that we are not the enemies of the Russian people, and we certainly are not. One thing the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was right to do was to point to Russia’s enormous losses in the Second World War of some 26 million people. They are a brave people and most of them are good people. We have to appeal to them and use every means that radio and modern communications give to us to get the message across: “You are not our enemies. We wish you to be our friends. You’ve never had the benefit of democracy; it’s something you really should have.” We have to get that message across day after day, hour after hour. It is essential.

The other thing we need is a diplomatic offensive. In his very fine speech, the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, talked about the numbers in the General Assembly. He is right that four or five voted with Russia, but others were equally right when they pointed to the fact that India and the South Africans have not taken the side of Ukraine. Two very important members of the Commonwealth of Nations, which used to be the British Commonwealth, have, in effect, sided with the dictator.

We need to have a real diplomatic offensive. We need to try to arrange that all ambassadors be entertained by the Foreign Secretary here in London and, even more important, a meeting to be attended by Members of both Houses of Parliament to underline the unity in this Chamber and in another place. When Sir Keir Starmer and the Prime Minister stood together yesterday, it was a real piece of symbolism. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to it. It indicated that, whatever we might fall out about—as we do and we will, whoever is sitting on this or that side of the House—there are certain things on which we cannot and will not be separated. It would be very useful to have a series of ambassadorial meetings with those countries that are either hostile or wavering to say, “We in this democracy are totally united on this.”

I also think that we and our allies, all the countries of NATO and the European Union, should summon the Russian ambassadors in the countries concerned to say, “We are united. Of course we are prepared to talk, but you’ve got to withdraw your forces from Ukraine before we do.” I do not suggest that this will be an overnight success, but it should be done as a concerted exercise: an increased use of both soft power and diplomatic channels.

There is another thing that we must do, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, in his excellent speech. A friend said to me the other day that we must “destroy Wagner”—pronounced as the late composer, which I do not think is quite what he meant. The noble Lord spoke about that dreadful organisation spreading mayhem and indulging in rape and violence of every sort. It must be a proscribed organisation. If nothing else comes out of this debate, although I hope that much will, a pledge from the Front Bench that that will be acted upon would send us all into the Recess feeling a little better and with a spring in our step. Let us hope that when we come back and we mark 24 February, some advance has been made on at least one of these fronts.