UK-Ukraine Credit Support Agreement

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, and, although I do not wish to lead him, I am sure my noble friend the Minister will be able to reassure him, as I can, that there is no basis for any suggestion that the British Government’s views on Russia, or their policies or attitudes towards Russia, are in any sense affected by donations to the Conservative Party. As a former director of Conservative Central Office, I know that 30 years or more ago we were very clear that donations to the Conservative Party do not buy influence over its policies.

I am very glad to contribute to this debate as a member of the International Agreements Committee and to say how much I appreciate how our chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, introduced it so admirably and set out the specifics of the report and how we went about our task. I want to say a bit about that. I am afraid I do not bring ministerial experience to match that of my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever. I thought he set out the policy context within which we want to set this debate very well, and that is something I want briefly to touch on.

On the process point, we report under CRaG, which gives us the opportunity to initiate a debate and for this House to look at the issues. We did so because the policy context within which the agreement had been reached, and is now to be ratified in due course, is fast developing and dynamic. Although the explanatory memorandum that accompanies the agreement set outs its content very fairly, neither it nor the agreement itself set out any of that policy context. It is my view, which I hope might also be the view of my colleagues on the committee and in the House, that although the Minister in the other place, Mike Freer, signed the explanatory memorandum, the Department for International Trade, as the lead department, should have recognised its responsibility to set out the policy context in it to enable the House and we as a committee to see what the Government’s intentions were.

It is not simply a commercial transaction, important as the potential business opportunities in the United Kingdom are, at Rosyth and elsewhere; it is even more important politically, diplomatically and geopolitically. It is not only important but welcome—I do not have any dispute with it; it is a very helpful step in the process of giving Ukraine access to all its sovereign rights, including enhancement of its naval capabilities, as the programme is intended to do. Frankly, we are not the only ones doing this—the United States is enabling it to buy US patrol boats, and Turkey is apparently building a corvette—and it is important to recognise that this naval component is an essential part of what Ukraine lacks in terms of its inherent right to self-defence. For example, there is a significant risk that without this kind of enhancement of its capability, it will lose effective access to the Sea of Azov and some of its coastal territory. That is not an acceptable position for it to be placed in as a sovereign country. It is therefore very important that we do it.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was correct to suggest that the essence of what President Putin in Russia is aiming to do is reassert a sphere of influence. That does necessarily mean that he wants further acquisition of territory, although we should never forget that there is not a status quo here; there is an illegal annexation of Crimea and separatist control of parts of the Donbass. That is not acceptable. We are in a position where de-escalation, valuable as it is, does not mean that we are able easily to move to what one would regard as an acceptable long-term situation; there is a question mark over what de-escalation really means. There is not a “normal” here, because the territorial integrity of Ukraine has been not only threatened but already fundamentally abridged.

We need to be clear that de-escalation does not mean backing down; it does not mean giving concessions to Russia as a process of trying to return to some kind of status quo. Far from it—what de-escalation means is requiring the de-escalation of Russian threats, because there would be no issue if no further Russian threats were being made. It is interesting in that context that Russia seems to think that the response to this is to make exaggerated demands. They will back down. There are good reasons to think that Russia will not invade Ukraine. The costs and consequences, including domestically inside Russia itself, would be dramatic and unacceptably damaging for President Putin. He may well not want to do it, but he may well want to demonstrate that he has secured concessions and victories as a consequence of it, but we should not give him any of that.

NATO has been very clear about its position. Ukraine has been an enhanced opportunities partner since 2020. The summit in June last year reiterated the Bucharest declaration about the long-term possibility that Ukraine will join NATO. I do not think there is a timetable or prospect of that, but we absolutely should not forgo Ukraine’s rights, or the position that NATO has already taken, in response to threats from Russia. It is very important for us to have a continuing account from Ministers of the Government’s approach, which this debate affords, and that there is no moment, I hope, when we say, “Oh well, Russia has backed down and the troops have moved off. It’s all right then”, because it is not all right: Ukraine does not have access to its own territory and does not have the possibility of asserting its sovereign rights throughout its territory. We should be alongside Ukraine in maintaining pressure to secure that, and this agreement enables us to be a partner to Ukraine in a significant area of its defence capability. I therefore welcome the agreement.