Russian Interference in UK Politics

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. As Mr Speaker said, there are a number of colleagues wishing to contribute to this debate and to the later debate, so I am afraid I am going to have to impose an immediate five-minute time limit. I would urge colleagues to be very aware that, if they take interventions, it is likely that that will reduce the time for others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. I really believe it is important to be aware of beginnings. I celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall, having lived in cold war Germany and I hoped that Russia had changed, but when I went back to Russia only a year ago, people told me that, unfortunately, Russia was facing the same threats and problems that it faced during the cold war, so—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. When the hon. Lady makes an intervention, she needs to be brief, because there is a lot of pressure on time.

[Mike Gapes]

Yes, absolutely. There is an idea that there was a fantastic, miraculous transformation in 1989-90, but, sadly, that was not the case. There is an authoritarian kleptocracy—that word was used earlier—and a regime under which opposition leaders are locked up, journalists disappear or are killed, and polonium is used to murder people on the streets of London. The Russian system of government is not a democracy in any sense that we would understand. Everybody knows that Vladimir Putin is going to be President until 2024 and that this regime will continue, and that is not democracy.

There are very serious flaws in that society, but even more serious is the attempt to undermine cohesion and to sow discord among Europeans in our societies. In the time I have left, I want to mention the kind of tweets put out by the Russian embassy. It put out a picture of a European Union stockade on fire, with a giant Russian bear, and the flag flying over the EU stockade was the LGBT one. That tells us all we need to know about the ideology of the Russian Government and the Russian state. These are not fringe elements; this is the core of the Government.

I refer hon. Members to the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the last Parliament, which was published in March, and the Government response. We must look seriously at these questions. I do a lot of tweets, and I get quite a lot of trolls. Some of them can be identified by the fact that there are eight numbers after the name, because they are produced by algorithms and come at very odd times during the night. I often tweet back, “What’s the weather like in Moscow?” The fact is that we all need to recognise that they are trying to interfere in our politics and to create discord. We need to be vigilant, and the Government must do much more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Due to the large number of interventions that colleagues have taken, which always has implications for others, after the next speaker I must reduce the time limit to four minutes.