Ukraine

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I start by echoing much of what has been said. It is very rare for us in this place to be in accord with one another—would that it was not the case that we had to talk about this at all, but it is, and on Ukraine we are in full accord.

I want to touch on some international comparisons. Estonia proposes an EU-wide ammunition purchase programme for supplying Ukraine. It would not have to be through the EU—pan-European or pan-NATO is probably a more helpful term in this legislature—but we need something to increase the co-ordination and depth of the ongoing ammunition delivery programme. I do not want in any way to undermine that which has been achieved, but it is quite clear that Russia is looking to prosecute a war of attrition for a very long time, and it would be helpful to demonstrate to the Kremlin that the west will meet that with renewed resurgence in its supplies to Ukraine.

Of course, doing so depletes the United Kingdom’s defence supplies and the supply chain has been caught short. That is not their fault, but the fault of a slightly less than strategic defence procurement plan—dating back many Defence Procurement Ministers, I hasten to add. We must ensure that we step that up at renewed pace. Interestingly, Norway has passed a five-year, £6.15 billion Ukraine support package and the terms on which it will be expended will be decided in concert with those in Ukraine. I wonder whether the UK should seek to emulate that, with ringfenced, dedicated funds over the next five years to send, again, a strong message.

I am not suggesting to the Foreign Secretary that the UK has not chipped in—of course it has, with many billions of pounds and no small measure of moral support as well—but such measures would help to show Putin that we are not going away and we are not shrinking from the challenge, however he wishes to present it. Canada, as other hon. Members have touched on, has changed its law to allow the seizure of Russian funds and started the process of seizing a first batch of frozen funds to send to Ukraine. The UK should follow suit in short order.

What progress has the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office made with our friends in India, to demonstrate to them that it is not acceptable to ride two horses in this way and that Russia’s criminality cannot just be dealt with by turning a blind eye or holding their nose on the altar of cheap oil prices? It is either in the rules-based international system, or it is not; I wonder whether that information has been conveyed to India in the most robust terms by the United Kingdom.

China is a concern. We in the west need to develop a narrative that goes beyond cultural differences, that is not open to interpretation and that lays out extremely clearly to Beijing that, if it were ever to make the miscalculation to supply Russia with arms, munitions and other supplies that would help it to prolong this egregious invasion of Ukraine, that would be met with very significant consequences from the west. I would be interested to know what the United Kingdom Government are doing in that respect.

I will get on to air power in a minute, but the threat of escalation by Russia is material and we should concentrate closely on it. Over the last 12 months we have, perhaps understandably, mithered over the definition of whether something is lethal or defensive, whether it is tactical or strategic, and now, we have moved that on to air power. Ukraine has received an extraordinarily large amount of financial support and military assistance, but there is a pattern perhaps coming into view whereby Ukraine gets the weapons it was previously asking for while it is asking for the next set of weapons. We should redouble our focus on what, whether or which we can do to support Ukraine with air power.

In terms of logistics, as I have mentioned, the west, or certainly the United Kingdom, is running out of surplus or even stores in ready use and further equipment purchases will need to be made. However, I do not have confidence that the supply chain of the defence procurement apparatus as it exists currently in the United Kingdom is up to that job. I would welcome any reassurance that the Secretary of State can give me in that regard.

We should commit to a multi-year spending package of ringfenced money to support Ukraine; again, that would provide the clearest possible message. I am pleased, to a certain extent, that the United Kingdom is training combat pilots for Ukraine, but I am left wondering to what end. I also wonder what is happening to the combat pilots in training with the Royal Air Force, some of whom—I am not making this up—are having to wait eight or even nine years to become qualified. What is the knock-on effect of training Ukraine’s combat air pilots? That is not to say that it is not the right thing to do, but every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and we should see the whole picture before we celebrate perhaps prematurely.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The fast-jet training programme that the hon. Gentleman is referring to, which is known as the military flying training system, is broken and everyone involved in aviation knows it. But we also have some tranche 1 Typhoons that have a lot of time left in their airframes and are sitting in a warehouse having been taken out of RAF service. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if given to the Ukrainians, a squadron of those could do a lot more to defend freedom, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) suggested a few moments ago, than it could sitting in a warehouse gathering dust?

[Dave Doogan]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. He asks whether I agree with him, and I am afraid that I do not. My understanding is that although tranche 1 Typhoons may have hours left, by the time the penalty factor for what they did when they were flying is applied, there would not be many hours left. They may look like Typhoons, but their combat air systems are very old, and they are perhaps not exactly what Ukraine is looking for. That is nevertheless a valid point, and it leads me directly to my next point.

Not a single Typhoon in the United Kingdom is available for use by Ukraine, which makes me wonder what we are training its pilots on—unless we are training them on NATO combat air standard protocol. That is all we can do, because they will not be getting Typhoons—mark my words—and they do not actually want Typhoons. People talk about getting pilots for Ukraine, but pilots are just the tip of the arrowhead. They need maintenance crews, avionics specialists, refuellers and armourers. The logistic tail for a fourth-generation combat aircraft is enormously long, and none is quite as long as the Typhoon’s. What Ukraine actually needs is something more akin to the Gripen or the F-16, and the United Kingdom does not have any of those. That means that the United Kingdom is just part of the puzzle of working with allies in NATO and in Europe. The Gripen in particular is ideally suited to the types of facilities that Ukraine will be able to operate from.

The Secretary of State said that Ukraine must “take back more land.” I wonder how he intends for Ukraine to do that without exercising air superiority. There will be a spring offensive, as I think most Members agree. We need to make sure that that offensive belongs to Ukraine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to follow the excellent speech of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), as well as that of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy).

I will add three points to the debate: first, on the importance of how we break the balance of force that we see arranged on the ground; secondly, on how we choke the oligarchs of war who are helping to supply Putin’s war machine; and thirdly, on how we commence the pursuit of justice. There is more to say about that, because I was unhappy to hear the Foreign Secretary, who is just leaving his place, not row in behind the Vice President of the United States and say that our Government had also arrived at the conclusion that Russia was committing crimes against humanity. One has to ask, how much more evidence do they really need?

We have heard the call loud and clear from two former Prime Ministers about the need to supply what Ukraine needs now. The truth is that both sides of the conflict will find it difficult to summon the 400,000 to 500,000 troops necessary to make a breakthrough one way or the other, so the challenge that may lie ahead is that Ukraine continues to suffer the pattern of more and more troops being thrown into infantry attacks under artillery fire in the east of the country and endless missile strikes on population centres. That is a grinding, terrible waste of life.

We have to leapfrog out of this bad habit that we have gotten into where first we say no, then we say yes, with an extended time period in between. On air defence, we said no to Patriot missiles until we said yes. On tanks, we said no until, months and months later, we said yes. Now, can we please just short-circuit the process and send the F-16s as fast as possible, with trained pilots? It is great to hear that we are training pilots, but at last week’s Munich security conference there was a clear consensus among Democrats and Republicans to send a very clear message to the President of the United States that it was time that fast jets were sent to support our allies in Ukraine. We heard directly from President Zelensky, just a few yards from this Chamber, that the wings of freedom are needed today, so let us jump out of the no and get to yes as fast as possible.

[Mr Francois]

We gave 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. Those are very capable tanks, but in and of themselves they will not change the whole course of the war. What they did do, however, was help unlock the delivery of hundreds of Leopards. What the Ukrainians really want are MiGs, which they are familiar with using, and F-16s. By the same argument, if we gave one squadron of older Typhoons that then unlocked hundreds of MiGs and F-16s, that would be worth doing, would it not?