Ukraine

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House because it is very difficult to say anything original after about 20 speeches. What is nice about this debate is that there is nothing party political about it. I congratulate the Minister, who is currently not in his place, because I agree with almost everything, if not everything, he said. It was an excellent and very robust speech. I also congratulate my friend and former pupil, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, on his speech, which covered much of what I wanted to say, and the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, on his excellent maiden speech, with which I also agreed on almost everything.

I will make several points that are not necessarily entirely related. We in the West need to realise that this is the most dangerous time of our lives since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. There is a real danger of all-out war, which we must avoid if at all possible. We need to prepare the population, however, by warning the nation and getting everyone onside with this danger, as mentioned by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, and my noble friend Lady Helic. We must prepare ourselves as a nation. We must fill our munition bunkers, which were emptied because we gave all the munitions to the Ukrainians; the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, mentioned that in relation to our industrial needs. We must allow Ukraine to fight, as Russia does, an all-out war, which includes letting them use any munitions we give them, including Storm Shadow, to attack Russia.

We must spend a huge amount more on defence and not pussyfoot around on 2.5%. We face a war situation, and the only way to deter war is to be prepared for it. I suggest that we probably need to double defence spending. Yesterday, the Defence Secretary, the right honourable John Healey, said that we are not prepared to fight a war at the moment. We of course do not want a shooting war between NATO and Russia—I have a personal, family reason for not wanting to see British soldiers killed in Ukraine—but Putin threatens a nuclear war. The aggressor threatens us, saying: if we escalate, we will have nuclear war. I am afraid that we need to call his bluff. He is the aggressor. Luckily, China will constrain him from using any nuclear weapons.

From another angle entirely, it worries me that the Americans do not seem to study history. Do they not know what happened with isolationism in the 1930s and where that led?

There was the BRICS meeting in Kazan only this week. South Africa and India, two nations that should have been at CHOGM, were there listening to Putin rather than listening to the Commonwealth meeting.

There is a so-called axis of evil, with Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. Iran and North Korea are already helping Russia in its fight. Luckily, China is now the senior member of this partnership. Previously, as those with knowledge of history will know, under Stalin, China got very miffed because Stalin used to try to bully the communist Chinese in the early 1950s.

The noble Lord, Lord Spellar, said that this is a 10-year war. However, I was sanctioned in 2015, as I think he was, because I said that Putin had an aggrand-isement policy in Crimea. I suggest that Putin has been attacking the West for more than 10 years. Litvinenko was murdered not two miles from here 18 years ago. Then, 16 years ago, Putin invaded Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Last week, we had the warning —we should remember this—from Ken McCallum of MI5 that Putin intends to disrupt, and cause chaos in, our nation. This is war.

This is the most dangerous time of our lives, not just for us but for NATO and the West. The situation is getting worse. There is an urgency here. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for whom I have a great regard, is conducting a defence review—incidentally, I do not defend the defence policies of the previous Government. I wish him well, but we cannot wait very long; the West needs to act. If you go to Poland, the Baltic states or Finland, they will tell you that we need to act now, not in a year or two. If we want to keep peace, prosperity and security in Europe, we must see the West defeat Putin.