Countering Russian Aggression and Tackling Illicit Finance

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and John Baron

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baron]

I told the House yesterday that I think we should have stronger sanctions. And it is not just about stronger sanction, as we also need stronger defence and more defence spending.

In the absence of any knowledge about the calibration of our response—that is not to say it does not exist—the sanctions were pitifully woeful. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have been very underwhelmed by them.

We need to do everything we can to provide the Ukrainian Government with all the means required to defend themselves. That means economic support and additional supplies of lethal weapons with which to protect their sovereignty, primarily and hopefully to act as a deterrent but also, if it comes to it, for use in battle. If Russia does invade, there will be an ongoing resistance to support. NATO must also continue its programme of beefing up deployments across eastern Europe, the high north and the Black sea. We must show to Russia that NATO is serious about protecting its members, and we must remind Russia of our article 5 undertaking.

There are people in this country who say this is overly aggressive, but we should make it absolutely clear in this place that we do not seek conflict. I was a soldier back in the 1980s, and I remind the House that I have consistently voted against our military interventions over the past two decades. I opposed war in Iraq, believing that we went to war on a false premise. I opposed the morphing of the mission in Afghanistan after we had got rid of al-Qaeda in 2001. I was the only Conservative MP to vote against our Libyan intervention. And I opposed trying to arm certain sections of the rebels in Syria, as I felt that we underestimated the task at hand and that those weapons would have fallen into the wrong hands. I was opposed to all of that, but, as a former soldier, I also recognise that strong armed forces are the best way of deterring aggression.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

On deterrence after the fall of the Soviet Union, this political state, along with a range of other western states, gave opportunity for finance through oligarchy yet ignored ordinary Russians. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that if we had supported ordinary Russians to get the benefits of freedom and liberty in the west through golden visas for them, we would not now have 190,000 Russian troops on the borders of Ukraine?

[Mr Baron]

That is a bit of a tenuous link. Let us be clear: an aggressor is going to consider invading a country regardless of what visas have been given in a third country. Having said that, I agree that we need to look at this, and I made that point clear when I first stood up.

We need to be clear that we need strong defence. One reason I opposed those recent interventions over the past 20 years is because I felt that they distracted us from the real business of countering traditional state-on-state threats. War should always be a means of last resort, once all other avenues have been exhausted, but the real danger was state-on-state threats, including Russia and, increasingly, an assertive China. We all know that jaw-jaw is better than war-war, but jaw-jaw is most effective when supported and backed up by strong armed forces, because potential adversaries then listen. After a decade of hollowing out our defence capabilities and cutting the number of soldiers, we need to get serious about defence and reverse those trends. The Prime Minister is right to say that we have had the largest increase in the defence budget since the end of the cold war—we are standing at about 2.4%, if we believe Government figures—but I suggest that we need to do much more. We still have the smallest Army since the Napoleonic times, if not before. We still have too few ships able to guard our aircraft carriers, and our air defences are thin. As a former soldier, I can promise the House that there is no substitute for boots on the ground. I buy the technology argument—everything about drones and how we have to be up to speed with cyber and all the rest—but there is no substitute for boots on the ground if we want to dominate ground. That is a simple fact.

I ask the Government to seriously think about this, but I also ask the Opposition to do so. For 20 years I have been in this place and I have banged on, together with others, on both sides of the House, about the need for increased defence spending. That has largely fallen on deaf ears. Some Opposition Members will remember that in 2013 I led the revolt from those on the Government Benches on the Bill that became the Defence Reform Act 2014, which was cutting regular troops and trying to replace them with reservists. With the help of the Scottish nationalists and Labour, we tried to get the Government to think again. Unfortunately, I was unable to carry a sufficient number of Conservative Members, but we came close. So I am not standing here being a hypocrite and suggesting this in a way to try to make party political points. I am asking the Labour party, the official Opposition, to do something. The establishment in this country still does not get it on defence. We need a substantial and sustained increase in defence spending, to act as a deterrent, not to be used in an offensive manner. Deterrence is the best way.

The Labour party has a very proud history in this area. It was a Labour Government who signed us up to NATO and who were determined that we had a nuclear deterrent. I suggest to the official Opposition that we need to start at 3% for defence spending but not tie this to a particular percentage of GDP, because GDP fluctuates. We need to start at 3% and then build on it, because we are entering an era where there is a battle for democracy yet to be had. I hope I am not being too dramatic when I say that. We need strong armed forces for that, and the Labour party, the official Opposition, has a role in this.

Having these debates is great, but we have had them so many times before about defence spending and other issues and interventions. If the Labour party was to say, “We are going to commit to a substantial and sustainable level of defence spending”, it would move the dial in the debate. The official Opposition would be surprised at just how much support there is on the Conservative Benches for a substantial increase in defence spending—well above the 2.4% figure we heard bandied about by the Prime Minister yesterday. The official Opposition have an opportunity to move the dial on this, and I encourage them to take it. This is an important issue on the doorstep, contrary to what many people suggest; people are proud of their armed forces. There is also an opportunity to be a force of good for the Union, as we are proud of our armed forces across the four nations of the UK.

I am conscious that others wish to speak, but may I briefly return to this point about the new era we have now entered with regard to the battle for democracy? We believed that democracy would sweep the field after the cold war, because it was blatantly obvious that it was the right thing, but democracy is a fragile concept. We fundamentally believe in it in this place, but let us never underestimate the number of oligarchs and totalitarian individuals out there—states, even—who want to overthrow democracy. We have to nurture, encourage and protect it. But what are we doing? We have a weak foreign policy when it comes to potential aggressors, and not just potential ones; when there is an invasion of a sovereign country we are debating quite petty sanctions. We need to step up to the plate.

I also suggest to the House that this is not just about hard power—quite the contrary, as the cold war was won largely because we won the soft power battle. We need to further finance our diplomatic sources and our diplomacy generally. One reason why I voted against the Libyan intervention, when I was the only Tory to do so and was very unpopular with my own party, was because we simply did not know what was happening on the ground. We did not have the diplomats there kicking the tyres and feeling the dust. We used to have great expertise in this area but we have hollowed it out, through cuts, and those cuts can be counterproductive. They can be a false economy. If we do not know what is happening on the ground, these decisions are much riskier. Satellites and technology take us only so far; we need experts on the ground.