Salisbury Incident

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I totally reject the suggestion that we were somehow putting out lines similar to those of the Russian state. With regard to implications that the hon. Gentleman is trying to make about the Leader of the Opposition, I have looked carefully at what the Leader of the Opposition and his spokesperson have said about this in recent weeks, and it is pretty clear. His spokesperson has said:

“very strong evidence points to Russian state culpability, and obviously Jeremy condemns the Russian state for that culpability.”

How much clearer could that be? The Leader of the Opposition said on 26 March:

“Based on the analysis conducted by Government scientists, there can be little doubt that the nerve agent used in this attack was military-grade Novichok of a type manufactured by Russia.”—[Official Report, 26 March 2018; Vol. 638, c. 559.]

He said on 5 September:

“The use of military nerve agents on the streets of Britain is an outrage and beyond reckless.”

He also said:

“No Government anywhere can or should put itself above international law. The Prime Minister previously outlined that the type of nerve agent used was identified as having been manufactured in Russia. The use of this nerve agent is a clear violation of the chemical weapons convention and, therefore, a breach of international law.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2018; Vol. 646, c. 170-171.]

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman believes it was sensible to suggest that we send a sample of this material to Russia, as if Russia would receive it and say, “Oh yes, it’s a fair cop—this is one of ours. We did it.”

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

What is an entirely sensible suggestion is to follow the procedure set out by the OPCW, and in doing it ourselves and by ourselves adhering to those rules, we are setting an example to the rest of the world about how to deal with the suspected use of chemical weapons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) and a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who made an excellent speech. I will not be attempting any of the Russian language in mine. It is also a huge pleasure to follow my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), whose remarks about the Vostok exercises should be very sobering for all of us in this House. The issue deserves a lot more attention than it gets in our 24-hour news media cycle.

One interesting idea in politics is that of the Overton window. As everyone knows, it is the idea that, when people start to say things that were previously considered unacceptable and unsayable, they move the boundaries of the debate. It seems to me that the people who run Russia today are trying repeatedly to hammer away at the norms of the international rules-based order to normalise what should be outrageous and make us think that actions that should be unbelievable to us are just par for the course.

Other Members have already mentioned these things but to recap, in recent years, the Kremlin has invaded Georgia, occupied the Crimea, fomented war in the Donbass, shot down a passenger jet full of innocent civilians, launched cyber and disinformation attacks across the west, and violated the airspace of a number of countries. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling, I was struck by the shooting down of a passenger jet over Ukraine and profoundly sad to see the “Rough Guide” in the wreckage. These were people just trying to go on holiday.

In this country, the people who run Russia have killed a man in the middle of London, attempted murder and killed one person in Salisbury, and put many more people’s lives at risk by deploying military-grade chemical weapons on the streets of a quiet cathedral city, and that is just what we know about. I was very glad to see the former Home Secretary launch an investigation into the 14 other suspicious deaths linked to Russia in recent years. It seems to me that we can never be too sceptical about the actions of the Kremlin, which is now in the hands of people who are almost unimaginably cynical, ruthless and gangster-like.

As other Members have pointed out, it is important to always talk about the people who run Russia or the Kremlin rather than “the Russians”, to quote the shorthand that people occasionally use. It is impossible for those of us who have been there not to be charmed by Russia and the Russian people. In fact, it is hard not to feel very sorry for a people whose wealth has been systematically looted by Mr Putin and his cronies. To give just one example, I read in the Financial Times that the wealth of Mr Putin’s closest friend, Sergei Roldugin, has been estimated at $130 million. That is somewhat surprising, given that the man is a cellist. Perhaps we should all go busking in Russia, as it is clearly lucrative, although perhaps he has other sources of income, because the Panama papers revealed his involvement in taking money in and out of Russia and various other shady places.

I was incredibly grateful for the Minister’s update on progress and congratulate the Government on achieving international co-operation and the largest mass expulsion of Russian diplomats. I wonder whether I can press him on the next steps, including in building an apparatus and a campaign to combat Russia’s sophisticated disinformation campaign, in which it has invested a lot of time and money. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely) has already made this point, but we know that Russia has made a huge investment. Russian disinformation comes from all kinds of sources, from fake news outlets to TV channels, and operates on all kinds of different levels, from buying up influential people, ranging from celebrities to politicians, to creating networks of bots on social media.

The strategy that Russia is implementing is enabled by the rise of social media. A couple of hon. Members have referred to this, but the strategy is always the same: to sow so many different lies in so many directions that the waters are successfully muddied. They include, in this case, “We never had Novichok,” “We had it, but we got rid of it,” “It exists, but maybe it was stolen or leaked out of the country,” “Maybe it was terrorists,” “Maybe it was the British Government,” or, “Maybe it was the ‘mysterious gentlemen’,” whom the Minister mentioned earlier. And of course, no lie is too big. If a man is killed with radioactive polonium in the centre of London and there are radioactive footsteps leading all the way back to Russia—“Well, maybe he was a dealer in nuclear material around the world. Maybe he effectively killed himself.” Literally, the comparison is with Hitler: no lie is too big, too outrageous or too audacious to be told. I am therefore profoundly sad whenever I see credulous, nice people in Britain being used as useful idiots as part of a sophisticated strategy by people who are not nice or naive, but incredibly ruthless.

Although the techniques—the botnets and so on—are new, the strategy is not. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Aldershot referred to Lord Palmerston. I am also reminded of the words in George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” of 1946. The strategy is to

“disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defence, to increase social…unrest,”

and

“to stimulate all forms of disunity.”

That is the strategy—disunity internationally and in each country in the west. The Russian state has invested incredibly heavily in this disinformation apparatus, and we need equivalently strong mechanisms, and credible sources, to help us to fight against it across the west. Will the Minister update us on what is being done on that?

Will the Minister tell us a bit more about efforts to build a common sense of purpose across liberal democracies to uphold the international rules-based order? I commend the Government for securing the large mass expulsion and action in all the main international forums. The Minister mentioned the G7, the EU, and NATO—the NATO cyber-centre, in particular. Will he update us on what further actions he will be taking in all those international forums and, in particular, whether these issues will be put on to the agenda for their future summits?

The strategy of the people who run Russia today is, in effect, to walk through the gaps in our attention. It is to do something terrible, wait a while until we lose interest and are distracted by something on Twitter, and then do a new, terrible thing in a new place. It is to exploit the weakness of democracy, as our attention can easily be distracted by other things, and to constantly probe it. If they find resistance, they will fall back for a bit, but they will probe and probe again until they are convinced that the cost of that probing is too high to continue.

Let me reflect for a moment on how far we have fallen back since 1989. The spirit of that period was that we would all be friends—that Russia would become a liberal democracy with the rule of law, join all the relevant major international institutions and be part of the community of nations. Even at the point where Mr Putin attained power, we still hoped that, after the rather chaotic period under Boris Yeltsin, he would be a strong man, but a strong man who believed in the rule of law. Gradually, it has become apparent that that is simply not the case. We have seen liberal opposition leaders shot on the streets of Moscow and a constant probing of the west in every possible way.

This is profoundly sad. I have a happy memory of standing on an ice floe in the Neva in St Petersburg in the 1990s, having an ice cream and talking to a Russian professor. We remarked on how wonderful it was that we could have that conversation, which, only a few years before, would have been impossible. It seemed then that our countries were guaranteed to become firm friends. There are still a lot of people in Russia who want that to happen. The only depressing part of the speech by the hon. Member for Aberavon was when he said that he thought that Russia might never become a liberal democracy. There are still a lot of people in that country who do want that to happen, but it never will unless it becomes clear to the people who run Russia that there is no future in gangsterism, and no possible way to gain any advantage in continuing to outrage the norms of the international community.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Aldershot talked about peace through strength. Funnily enough, we will also get democracy and liberal reform in Russia through strength. Only by having a firm response of the kind that the Government are now leading can we not only keep our citizens secure but help to build a brighter future for people in Russia.