Relationship with Russia and China

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am very pleased to be here. I pay huge tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for his prescience and timing in securing this debate. He is absolutely right: this is something that we have needed to discuss for a long time. The fact that he has got the House together to do so today is important.

This is really a debate about the future—a debate that challenges us all to think about the world in which we wish to live. We have already heard cited the kleptocracies that govern so much of our world and the threats to independent sovereign communities, such as Ukraine, that are being so violently and vilely challenged today. We have already heard about the ways in which that affects the very lives that we have here: the price of heating gas going through the roof; the price of petrol going up and up; and now, sadly, the price of wheat and therefore of basic food commodities rising higher and higher, hitting the families, the communities and the homes that we here are so privileged to represent. This is a debate not about a foreign country, not about foreign relations, but, fundamentally, about the British people and how we live our lives.

That is why I want to start by saying very clearly that this is not a time to live in fear. This is not a time to think that arrayed against us are some enormous armies against which we can do nothing, or that we should bow down, scrape and grovel, as I see some people doing today, praising Putin’s intellect, worshipping Xi’s ability to influence others through force. This is not the time, as others say, to compromise and accept the instructions of evil dictators and say, “No! Free people in Ukraine are expendable. They can suffer because they don’t matter.” That is cowardice. Worse than that, it is betrayal. It is betrayal not just of the people who are fighting for their freedom, but of the British people whose security depends fundamentally on freedoms around the world. We should call this what it is; it is treason and it is wrong.

This country can organise itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight described it exactly. Collecting alliances, building up partnerships, is exactly what we do. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Asia and the Middle East has been doing a huge amount of work in getting us in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. She has been building up alliances in Asia—with free countries that want to be part of the rule of law, not the rule of force. This country can do it. We can build the infrastructure that keeps us safe, that protects the weak, that ensures that small countries are not just steamrollered by larger ones, and that large countries trade freely and on the basis of equality with each other and do not succumb to the bullying ways of evil tyrants. All this is possible. Not only is it possible, it is exactly what we are doing.

Failure to do that would be a betrayal of the legacy of those heroes who fought, defended and won our freedoms, who landed at Anzio and Normandy, and who fought through Belgium into Germany. It would also be a betrayal of those Soviet armies who, in 1946, handed over criminals to the trials at Nuremberg and charged them with the crime of waging aggressive war. What an irony it is that the last time Kyiv was under attack by a foreign army it was a Nazi force doing it, and the Soviets were there to help and protect. What an irony it is to watch what is happening today.

We have in this place, in this country and with our partners the courage to do this if we choose. We can make the commitment. We can build up the partnerships and the alliances that keep us strong. Today though the question is not just about alliances, but about ourselves. We need to call out the corruption in our own city. We need to evict those who have done so much to undermine the rights and liberties of the British people. We need to seize their assets, freeze their goods and expel them.

What Russia has done today is an act of war. There is no question about it, no equivocation, and no possible excuse. The naked aggression that we have seen—the paratroopers landing, the helicopters launching, the tanks rolling—is the beginning of the first war in Europe that we have seen since 1945. [Interruption.] Yes, the first state-on-state war in Europe perhaps. We have a choice. We can turn a blind eye; we can pretend that incremental sanctions make a difference—they do not. President Medvedev laughed at them three days ago, saying that we know how this play goes: they sanction us, we ignore them and then they come crawling back for business, which, sadly, is true from 2014 and 2008. Alternatively, we can take clear action. Given that a hostile state has launched an act of war, we can act now. We can freeze Russian assets in this country—all of them. We can expel Russian citizens—all of them. We can make a choice to defend our interests, to defend the British people and to defend our international partners, or we can do what, sadly, we have done too often in the past, which is to watch until it is too late and the British people have to pay a much higher price.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I will have to introduce a six-minute time limit to protect this business and the next business.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for securing this debate which, although timely, I do not believe is the debate that he or any Member of the House would have hoped to have when he applied for it. I agree with almost everything that has been said this afternoon. I also agree with many of the solutions that have been brought forward, but I cannot help but regret the fact that it took bombs falling on civilians in Ukraine to get us to this position in the first place.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is an act of naked aggression that all right-thinking people must, and do, condemn. But let me be clear: our fight is with Putin and his cronies, with oligarchs who have become billionaires by having plundered Russia’s resources and hidden their obscene wealth in the west, and with those politicians close to the Kremlin who have encouraged and enabled this appalling attack on an independent sovereign state. They are the guilty ones in all of this, not the Russian people. As the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said, the Russian people are not our enemy, and I believe we have a duty to ensure that the language we use does not in any way convey that we believe they are. I am sure that they are just as fearful of the consequences of a war in Europe as anyone on the continent is—indeed, given their history, probably more than most.

Of course, there are close ties, friendships and bonds that were forged during the second world war between Scotland—indeed, the whole of the UK—and the then Soviet Union. I am reminded of the actions of the people of Airdrie and Coatbridge who, when Hitler laid siege to Leningrad in 1941, organised relief packages and sent an album, letters of support and cards from churches, factories, co-operative societies and schools. Somehow, that album got through the blockade, and it was greeted enthusiastically by the women of Leningrad. They were so delighted that their allies—people on the other side of the world—had not forgotten about them in their time of greatest need. Despite struggling daily with hunger, disease, death and the consequences of a siege, the people of Leningrad managed to put together their own album containing letters, watercolours and prints and somehow got it back to Scotland, arriving in Airdrie in 1943. That album has been preserved ever since in the care of the Mitchell library in Glasgow. That is an important example of the solidarity and friendship that can and must exist between our peoples.

It is so important that, when we speak today, we do not speak of the Russian people as our enemy; we must make our remarks specific to the leadership in the Kremlin and those who support him. In so doing, and at the same time, we must also point the finger at those much closer to home—those among us who have facilitated the kleptocracy and grown fabulously wealthy by hiding Russian plunder for those people behind a cloak of respectability.

It is clear that the facilitation of what has been called criminal capitalism and the emergence of London as the money laundering capital of the world has infected not just our financial institutions but our politics, too. That can be seen in the oh-so-cosy relationship that has been allowed to flourish between Russian oligarchs and the UK’s governing party. Everyone can see that, for more than a decade, in return for everything from access to Ministers to priority visas, lunch with Ruth Davidson and tennis with the Prime Minister, very wealthy Russians have been throwing money into British politics.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Brendan O'Hara]

Very briefly, because I am on a strict time limit.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The whole point of the debate was to bring the country together to help to support free people who are being oppressed. While the hon. Member mentions all those things, and many of us have condemned several of them, the idea that they are in any way relevant is appalling, particularly when his former party leader—someone with whom he sat on those Benches—is a propagandist for Putin. It is really shameful.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I utterly reject what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If we cannot shine a mirror on ourselves and say where we got this spectacularly and appallingly wrong, we are bound to make those same mistakes again. Let us not gloss over those mistakes. This is not a propaganda exercise. We are complicit—the British political system is complicit—in where we are right now. He spoke on Radio 4 this morning about the weakness of the sanctions regime put together on Monday. He recognises and has gone on record as saying that it was far too little, far too late.