Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat.

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

I pay enormous tribute to the United Nations Secretary-General and all those who have been working on opening up the ports in southern Ukraine, and to the British Government for the work they have been doing alongside the Turkish Government to ensure that those shipments have flown. However, what work is the Minister doing with sub-Saharan Africa? Many of the countries we are talking about—not just Pakistan, which the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) rightly named, but many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa—are suffering very severely from the rise in food prices. The World Food Programme has done an enormous amount to make sure that food gets out there, and I pay tribute to its Nobel prize-winning efforts, but Her Majesty’s Government can do more too.

[Vicky Ford]

As ever, my hon. Friend is absolutely correct, and I thank him for raising the situation in sub-Saharan Africa. The ship that arrived in Djibouti last week with grain from Ukraine going to Ethiopia was welcome, but the situation in east Africa in particular is catastrophic, affecting more than 40 million people. We are a major donor to east Africa: we are expecting to spend £156 million this year, and we have already spent half of that. That money is going into the most urgent priorities, providing food, water, shelter and medicines for millions of people, but we are also leading efforts to bring in other donors, such as the $400 million that we helped to raise through the UN, and pushing the World Bank and others to do more too.

NATO Accession: Sweden and Finland

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat.

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

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for announcing this to the House. It has been an important negotiation and conversation over recent weeks and months. My own meetings with the Prime Minister of Finland and the Foreign Minister of Sweden have been important in assuring me that their commitment is real and that this agreement is fundamental not just to their security, but to ours.

Let us not forget what this is about. NATO is not an overseas adventure; it is fundamentally about the defence of the homes we are lucky to live in and the neighbours and friends we are lucky to live beside. It is about defending the whole of the United Kingdom, all of our coast and, especially in the case of Finland and Sweden, the high north and the Scottish coasts and islands that are so important to the integrity of the United Kingdom. It is fundamentally about defence of the realm.

I pay enormous tribute to my hon. Friend and the whole Foreign Office team who have got this negotiation over the line. Will she now, however, engage in conversations with our Swedish and Finnish partners to ensure that our interoperability goes much deeper, not just into equipment purchase, so that we can end the war in Ukraine quickly and before the winter starts putting extra costs on families across our country?

[Vicky Ford]

Madam Deputy Speaker, could I ask you a favour? One of the Finnish Ministers is actually in this place and is trying to get access to one of the Galleries, but because we have been rather full they have not been able to get through the House authorities. I am sure all my colleagues would like to welcome the Minister to come and listen. Could you possibly ask for that?

Ukraine

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will be entirely mindful of the time, because I agree with many of the points that have already been made. However, it is worth making a few subsequent points.

In many ways, the first stage of this war—or the latest stage of this war because, of course, the first stage started many years ago—is coming to a conclusion. That conclusion is the end of the direct assault on Kyiv and the focusing of Russian military efforts in the south and east. We are therefore seeing a very different kind of conflict in the south. We are seeing a much more focused attempt by Russia to unite with the areas it already occupies in Moldova—the so-called Transnistria—and we are already seeing a much more acute effort by Russian forces to drive a wedge along the Black sea coast.

We are not seeing very much more Russian success, because the extraordinary courage of the Ukrainian people in the north is mirrored in the south, but we must repeat the points about how we move from this stage to a stage that leads us to victory. The Foreign Secretary and the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is sitting with her on the Front Bench, have already set out various elements of military support. We have already talked about introducing various elements of artillery and offensive weaponry to make sure that not only are the Russians stopped but that the occupied areas are liberated. We know the cost of that occupation, because the rape of Bucha will stand in the annals of history, like so many tragedies and horrors of humanity in years past. Sadly, as many of my Russian friends have said, the name of Russia will be dirt for generations because of the violence done in those communities and the abuses done to those innocents. So how do we move this forward?

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

Reports that post-mortem examinations have found evidence that women are being raped before being executed by automatic guns are incredibly concerning and indicative of war crimes. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the international community must be doing everything in its power to protect women and girls left behind?

[Tom Tugendhat]

There is no question but that what we are seeing too often, sadly, not just in Bucha, but in many other areas, including Kharkiv and Sumy, are war crimes. They are crimes against humanity in some cases as well. The sexual violence used against women and girls is truly horrific, and it is clearly not incidental but deliberate; it is clearly an ordered attack—an absolutely vile one.

Let us look at what we need to do. We need to move from the current phase into what this is going to be, which is a campaign, in the sense that it is now going to last. I am afraid that we do not see an easy resolution, a sudden ending of this conflict, peace breaking out and liberation being achieved. Instead, we see a grinding push back of those Russian forces and the need for all of us to be able to sustain this operation to push back the Russians. That will not be achieved if we rely on ex-Soviet equipment—on the stocks left behind at the end of the cold war and the fall of the iron curtain. We need to look at a Finlandisation of Ukraine; we need to be assisting it with the full conversion of its military to a NATO standard, which we can sustain, because we have the weapons, the industry and the factories that can then supply Ukraine. We have the ability to do that because we have the mass and the firepower to sustain the Ukrainians. But we can do that only if we make a deliberate effort and choice to change from where we are now to a proper campaign footing. But this is not just about Ukraine. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary have spoken a little about how this is fundamentally not just a battle for Ukraine; it is a battle for all the world and, very particularly, it is a battle for the UK.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

Were Russia to be allowed to succeed, would Moldova not go next, with Georgia after that? Is it not therefore crucial, in the western interest, that we make sure that there is no success for Putin?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that this is one of those domino moments where we can hold the advance and prevent the next one from falling, or we can watch a series of them going down.

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend spoke of victory. I wonder what he thought victory looked like. Given that it is unlikely that Putin is going to capitulate, how do we provide an off ramp for him to secure some sort of peace? Does it mean, for example, insisting that he gets out of Crimea? Does it mean insisting that he gets out of Donbas? Does it mean providing a guarantee that we will not entertain Ukraine’s membership of the European Union or NATO?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend knows extremely well that we have no say either on anybody’s membership of the EU or on how the Ukrainian Government decide to assert their sovereignty over their sovereign territory. That is a matter for European Union members, of which we are not one, and for the Ukrainian people, of whom we are not some. So it is essential that we leave that to them to decide. On the NATO question, again I would argue that free countries and free peoples can associate freely with whoever they like. They can choose to make alliances or not to make alliances as they wish. We exercised that sovereignty only a few years ago in changing an alliance position, in changing a relationship with a large bloc, and it is for the Ukrainian people to have the same right and sovereignty to make those choices. It is not for me to tell them how to do it, and I am sure nobody in this House would make that choice for them. I did not actually use the word “victory”, my right hon. Friend did, but I am very happy to address it, because what he is touching on is: where does this end up? That is a very difficult question to answer. However this ends up, Putin already could, if he chose, sell this as victory at home. He could easily turn around and, using his propaganda machine, say that the dysfunction and disturbance he has caused in Ukraine—undermining the west, the disruption to our lives and the incredible violence he has brought to the people in Ukraine—has already, as he would put it, ended its move to the west. He could claim that as victory. The fact that he chooses not to do so should not mean that it is up to us to construct a story for him to lie to his own people. It is up to him to construct his own dishonesty. It is up to him to deceive his own people. It is not up to us to help him to do it.

Our job is to stand by those free people who are showing remarkable courage under the extraordinary leadership of President Zelensky. What is up to us is to decide where our line is. Today, for the people of the United Kingdom, we should be very clear—I am very glad that the Government are—that the people of Ukraine are on the frontline of freedom. What they are doing is defending fundamentally not just our interests in defending the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of alliance and the sovereignty that we pride ourselves on so much on in our own country; they are also defending the rule of law and the freedom of trade and commercial agreement that defends fundamentally our economy, our people and our interests.

This is the final stage—forgive me, I have taken a little longer than I hoped—that we need to be looking at. Three great revolutions have happened in the past few years: Brexit, covid and the Ukrainian war. Each has pointed to the need for us to have greater resilience. Each has taught us the absolute imperative for us to look at our own country and see what lessons need to be learned here at home. The lessons on resilience are clear. They are about being able to produce and manufacture the essential items we need, whether personal protective equipment or weaponry, here at home. They are about the essential need to be able to support our own domestic agricultural economy, whether that is growing more of our own food or producing more of our own fertiliser. They are about the need to make sure that our economy, our country, is resilient—through education, economic output, manufacturing and agriculture—and reliant on itself as much as possible and with partners we can rely on and trust. That is a lesson the three revolutions have taught us and it is about time we learnt it. The very clear lesson from Ukraine is that we may not get a fourth lesson. The fourth lesson could come in a way that surprises us all and leaves us all exposed.

It is said that it is only when the tide goes out that we know who has been swimming naked. Let us hope the tide does not go out too soon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat.

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

I welcome enormously my right hon. Friend’s words on sexual violence in conflict. We have seen the rape of Bucha, sadly, and the rape of so many other towns and cities around the world, most notably in places such as Ethiopia and Mali. However, will my right hon. Friend also talk about sexual violence not in conflict? There is forced genital mutilation of young women and girls around the world, and an extraordinary level of violence in ordinary life outside conflict. The work that her Department can do in helping communities to defend themselves is not just transforming them, but transforming countries’ economies and futures.

Iran Detainees

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Tom Tugenhat.

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

I am hugely grateful for the extraordinarily welcome news that my right hon. Friend has brought to the House this afternoon. It is the most wonderful moment for many of us who have been campaigning. In particular, I pay huge tribute to not only the two hon. Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) and for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), but our friend Ann Clwyd, who spent an awful lot of time campaigning for this as well when she was in this House.

May I ask whether the Government have looked at some of the implications of the last time a ransom payment was made to the Iranian Government? That ransom payment was made by the US Government a number of years ago. About six months after they were paid, the Iranian Government took another six American dual nationals hostage and merely started the whole process again. Furthermore, sadly, the money paid was then spent on murdering hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims in Syria. Can my right hon. Friend assure us that that will not happen this time, that British citizens will be carefully warned of the dangers they face in visiting Iran, and that none of the payment will end up in weapons and ammunition to kill Syrians?

[Elizabeth Truss]

First, it is important to note that these are two parallel issues in our bilateral relationship, namely settling the IMS debt—a legitimate debt that the UK Government were due to pay—and settling the issue of the detainees. I am very clear that we need to work with our international partners to end the practice of arbitrary detention. In fact, we are joining a group with the Canadians and others to do just that, so we have a strong international response to countries using the practice of arbitrary detention to get their own way. I completely agree with my hon. Friend that we must end the practice, but we need to do so working with partners. That is a key point that we are discussing as part of the G7 Foreign Ministers track.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat.

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

I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for bringing us on to International Women’s Day. Today is obviously an important day for celebrating the actions of so many courageous women around the world. Will my right hon. Friend speak today about those who have been made particular victims, those who have been chased out of their homes, the young women who have been sold into trafficking and not supported as refugees, and those women who are even now being brutalised in north Africa as they are forced over the border as slaves into southern Europe? Will she please speak about the action that her Department is taking to defend those women and girls?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point about how many women and girls are suffering, and covid has made that situation worse. That is why we are restoring our humanitarian budget, why we are restoring the women and girls budget and why we are working on our preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative to stop that happening, as well as increasing the amount of development spending we are using to tackle human trafficking, working with the Home Office. We are working on our international development budget, and we will be announcing it fairly shortly, along with our overall humanitarian strategy.

Sanctions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat.

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

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment. She has been working literally through the weekend, night and day, to get these sanctions right and to get them in place. Will she join me in assuring the Russian people that the moneys frozen—the moneys seized—which are, let us face it, very often stolen from them in the first instance, will be held and returned to the Russian people when this criminal conspiracy that laughably calls itself a Government falls and they actually have a proper Administration to which it can be returned? Will she also join me in urging many other countries around the world to join together and create a single fund from which a repayment mechanism can be created for the damage done to Ukraine and the rebuilding of Russia in due course?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right. Our issue is not with the Russian people, many of whom are now protesting against this appalling regime; it is with Putin and his cronies. That is who we are targeting with our hit on oligarchs. My hon. Friend is right that that money should be protected. I will look into the idea that he puts forward.

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.

Sanctions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me make it absolutely clear: our aim is to prevent further aggression, for Russian troops to withdraw from where they have advanced, and for them to move away from the Ukrainian border and remove that threat from the Ukrainian people. It is a series of events that I will explain further if the House gives me the opportunity.

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

My right hon. Friend will know from his career in the Army that the principle of “clout, don’t dribble” is an important one to ensure that the opposition understands that we are serious. Does he agree that the ratchet could be misinterpreted as giving a free pass at an early stage, rather than drawing a clear line that needs not to be crossed?

[James Cleverly]

My hon. and gallant Friend makes a point I fully understand, and I can assure him the Government fully understand it too. The pace at which we ratchet up our sanctions response in conjunction with our international partners is very much to not just send a message, although sending a message is important, but to ensure the sanctions are meaningfully felt by the Russian leadership and those people around Vladimir Putin funding him and propping him up.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I welcome the Government’s plans for sanctions and increased action to try to clean up the mess in which we find ourselves here in the UK. This is certainly a welcome step in the right direction, and my right hon. Friend the Minister will remember that the Foreign Affairs Committee set out various options for how we should begin to think about this in May 2018, when we published our “Moscow’s Gold” report.

I welcome the direction we are taking but, along with many others on both sides of the House, I am afraid that I find myself asking, “Why not more? Why not further?” In many ways, we are using the actions of a hostile state in eastern Ukraine to justify something we should have done years ago. The UK, sadly, has for too long been an avenue for money laundering by despots and criminals around the world. For too long and on too many occasions, we have seen our institutions, our City and our service sector used to hide the gains from corrupt practices and criminality abroad.

This has now come to a head because those criminals, those thieves, who raped and murdered the Russian people for 20 years, who did not replace the oligarchs that rose up in Yeltsin’s day but merely nationalised them, have been using those same vehicles and avenues to hide the profits of their crimes—most tragically the theft of an entire country.

That act of naked brutality, that act of violence against an entire nation, an entire culture and an entire people, has sadly been allowed to profit a small number of individuals. That is an absolute tragedy. It is a tragedy for the people of Russia, who have lost so much, but it is also a tragedy for her neighbours, who are now under such pressure and such threat. It is not just Ukraine but the people of Belarus, the people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the people of Poland. It is a tragedy for those who are being weaponised in the human trafficking that we are seeing from the middle east, through Belarus and into the forests of eastern Europe. It is also, sadly, a tragedy for the people of these wonderful islands, the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—the people of the United Kingdom.

It is a tragedy for us because this marks what my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) mentioned only a few hours ago in this Chamber. We are seeing not just the aggression against Donetsk and Luhansk—not just a raid, an invasion, an opening salvo of a war that President Putin is trying to bring to Europe, in many ways for the first time in 80 years, although of course there was an exception in 2014 when he invaded Crimea and another in 2008 when he invaded Georgia; what he is doing to us, to the people of these islands, is unpicking the values and principles that our grandparents fought for 80 years ago.

President Putin is unpicking the principle that we embedded into the constitutions of the United Nations and the Council of Europe. He is unpicking the principle that the rule of law, that the debate among sovereign peoples, should be the way disputes are settled in this world. He is replacing the rule of law with the rule of force. Sadly, he is demonstrating that it works not only on the ground, but in the wallet; he is demonstrating that a leader can profit politically and personally from the abuses he conducts against his own people and his neighbours. That is why when I asked my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister, who served with distinction in the Royal Artillery, about the classic gunner phrase “clout, don’t dribble”, what I was actually asking about—and he recognises it—is why do we not say immediately and clearly that what we are seeing today is wrong.

It is wrong for the people of the UK to have corrupt money flowing through our systems. It is wrong to have the profit of crime being laundered through our City and through jurisdictions overseas that depend on us. It is wrong to see the wages of war—quite literally—profiting a small cabal of thieves in Moscow. It is wrong because it undermines our security, it makes us more vulnerable and, sadly, it exposes the people we are privileged to represent to the dangers that we have, thank God, kept at bay for 80 years. It is wrong because it threatens the people of the United Kingdom.

We have set out ways to address that. We have spoken at various points about a foreign agents registration Act and about the exposure of beneficial ownership, not just in our own estates, but in the jurisdictions around the world. We have spoken about cleaning up the Companies House register and giving powers to the enforcement agencies, which could actually start to take action on this. We have spoken about all those things for many, many years, yet still we see names such as Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler in the list of directors in Companies House. Still we see the toleration, sadly, of fraud in too many of our institutions. Sadly, we still do not see the resources going into the policing of these different institutions.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend is making a superb speech. One thing that often gets missed in this debate about how we crack economic crime is the role of whistleblowers. They are the most likely people to identify wrongdoing in the banks he mentions and bring it to light and to the enforcement agencies. Does he agree that whistleblower protection, and potentially remuneration, should be included in this context?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that. He is completely right, as usual, in highlighting that the protection of whistleblowers is an essential part of the exposure to justice of those who have committed crimes. We need to think again about crime. We need to look again at the institutions, law enforcement bodies and agencies that are charged with protecting us and think really hard about their budgets. They are not simply ways of stopping the taxman from getting his hands on a little bit more loot; they are fundamental to our national security and to the protection of our people. We need to think of them as agents of the state in the same way as we think of the armed forces or the intelligence services. We need to think of them on the frontline of the protection of the people we are lucky to represent. Frankly, we need to put the money where so often our mouths have been when we have passed Acts in this House that have not had the resources to make them not just law but actionable law.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am going to bang on about the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill. I served on the prelegislative scrutiny Committee on the Bill with several colleagues from different parties. We agreed a set of amendments and the Government accepted them, but they failed to bring through the Bill and the powers for Companies House and the Land Registry. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is about not just money but the fact that the Government have been sitting on their hands in respect of powers for the relevant organisations?

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[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Member is right that more legislation would help, but fundamentally we need the resources for the agencies.

Let me close by saying that I welcome the direction the Government have taken. I welcome the commitment to do more to defend the people of Ukraine, which the Foreign Affairs Committee was privileged to visit only a few weeks ago. I welcome the fact that we are standing in defence of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. But I urge my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister to look again at the sanctions, many of which were introduced four or eight years ago by the United States Government—I was just reading the United States Treasury document that listed the subjects of sanctions in, I think, 2014—because we can go further. There is so much more that we can do.

It is of course right that we act in concert with our partners and in tandem with our allies, and that we make sure we do not expose division by acting alone, but one of the great strengths of this Government, this House and this nation is that we have running through the sinews of our economy so much of the world’s finance that it puts a particular responsibility on us to stand up and defend the economic liberties that keep our people safe, enable our prosperity and build the rule of law around the world.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I associate myself with everything that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has just said; I completely agree with him. Democracy is a very tender flower. We thought it was very robust and it would survive all weathers, but the truth is that it needs watering, care and tenderness. All too often, it is very easy for authoritarian regimes to trample on it and kill it.

I associate myself, too, with the comments of the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith). We have no beef with the people of Russia. The people of Russia are fine people with not only a strong culture and history, but many strong democratic traditions and understandings of what it is to be a human being and to work in solidarity with others. Our beef is with the regime; it is with Putin.

I agree that we have been recklessly naive for far too long in relation to our relationship with Vladimir Putin. It pains me—I understand why Tony Blair was doing it—that we gave him a state visit so early in his time. We wanted to press the reset button, as did Obama, and it gained us absolutely nothing; it just showed us to be weak. We have been pitiful. We have been puny. We have vacillated. We have been spineless. Quite often we have looked craven because we just want Russian money to prop up our banks, pay our lawyers and keep our consultancy firms going.

Maybe we could forgive the fact that Putin is a thieving kleptocrat—after all, most off the theft is done against his own people. It leaves his own people poorer than they were when he came to power, though. It is maybe just a matter for the Russian people that he has enriched himself beyond the wildest dreams of Imelda Marcos and Muammar al-Gaddafi put together. But three things make him truly dangerous: his territorial ambitions, his excessive use of force, and his lies and misinformation.

Just look at Beslan, where 334 hostages were killed in the end by Russian state actors, including 176 children. Just look at the Moscow theatre siege, where 130 hostages were killed by Russian state actors. Look at Chechnya—I could go on for ages—and look at Georgia. They compare the situation in Donetsk and Luhansk with the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Of course, it is exactly the same playbook: “Set up a pretext and then move in.” Look at the downing of Flight MH17. Look at the murders of Boris Nemtsov, Sasha Litvinenko, Dawn Burgess, Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Magnitsky and so many others.

Yes, I am angered by the naivete that I sometimes see in this country. I have seen it often in this Chamber, and I have seen it also from the left. Stop the War said:

“We oppose the deployment of British forces to the borders of Russia as a pointless provocation.”

What utterly stupid naivete. Where on earth is the condemnation of the 190,000 Russian troops on the border, the annexation of Crimea, or the snipers shooting at Ukrainian forces now? This is not just naivete; it is monumental and dangerous stupidity, and we should call it out.

I confess that I was absolutely sickened by Putin’s speech last night. The Minister cannot say it, but I can: the man is deranged, unhinged and a danger to his own people, as well as to the people of Ukraine. I said in this House in March 2014:

“A Russian friend of mine says that Putin is not yet mad. That may be true, but what will our surrendering and our appeasement do for his sanity?”—[Official Report, 18 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 679.]

We can now see what his madness has done. I am reluctant to use the word “appeasement” too often, but sometimes what has been done has felt like appeasement.

Putin’s argument about Russians and Ukrainians being one people—again, I understand that the Minister cannot say this, but I can—is the same as Hitler’s about the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938. Hitler said then that he only wanted to protect the Sudeten Germans. It was a lie. Some people said so in this Chamber in 1938. Some of them laid down their life in the ensuing slaughter, and they have their shields up here. However, Chamberlain bought the lie, and the following spring Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia without so much as a by-your-leave. Be in no doubt: this is not a Russian peacekeeping mission; it is an annexation, an invasion and a declaration of war. Putin knows that it will lead to significant bloodshed on a massive scale because the Ukrainians are more determined to fight now than they ever have been. If anything, Putin’s behaviour over these years has reinforced the Ukrainians’ sense of solidarity.

Putin is not just interested in the parts of Luhansk and Donetsk already in separatists’ hands; of course he is not. He wants Avdiivka, which is metres across the demarcation line, where the Foreign Affairs Committee saw Russian snipers pointing at Ukrainian troops just three weeks ago. He wants Kramatorsk, where we met community leaders, including the local priest. He wants Mariupol, and of course he wants Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odessa—the whole of Ukraine. He wants to reshape the contours of Europe by force because he thinks that that is to be his legacy.

Of course, I support the statutory instrument and I am glad we are doing this, but today’s sanctions—the ones that have been announced today, which rely on this instrument—are wholly inadequate. I think that is the message from the whole House, and I hope the Government are hearing it loud and clear. They do not match the rhetoric of what the Government are saying, and when actions do not match rhetoric, we undermine that rhetoric and put ourselves in a worse position, not in a better one.

The banks are the small change of the Russian economy, they really are: they are shrapnel down the back of the sofa. The individuals have already been sanctioned for four years by the Americans. This really is netting in the minnows while letting the basking sharks swim freely. As somebody else said, it is taking a peashooter to a gunfight. Putin, frankly, will beat this feather duster away. He will just laugh at us. In effect, Medvedev was laughing at us yesterday, even before we announced anything, because he said that the Russians will be able to wear whatever we throw at them. It is a beautiful irony, is it not, that one of the people who will be sanctioned, when the Government are able to bring their measure in relation to Members of the Duma, is Andrey Lugavoy, who was one of the murderers of Alexander Litvinenko? Incidentally, can I just say that, if anybody has not met Marina Litvinenko, she is one of the most wonderful people who have ever walked the face of this earth?

I think a sanctions regime in this context has to go hand in hand with, first, a proper public register of beneficial ownership of property. I do not understand from the Prime Minister whether it is his intention now to introduce that, because it keeps on being conflated with various other forms. I hope that is the plan, but it has been promised for a long time, so some of us are beginning to get a little bit cynical.

Secondly, there has to be complete reform of Companies House, so that it actually has some powers to interrogate the information given to it. As the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has said, at the moment anybody could say that they are Tom Tugendhat, or Mickey Mouse—or Vladimir Putin, no doubt—with impunity.

Thirdly, there has to be real openness about the review of the tier 1 visa scheme. The Home Secretary has cited “security concerns” about

“corrupt elites who threaten our national security and push dirty money around our cities.”

That is about people who already have tier 1 visas. As I understand it, this review is complete—it was completed some time ago—and it must be published soon. We need to understand what these tier 1 visas did, and where the vulnerabilities are in the British economy. I really hope that the Home Secretary will come to the House to do that very soon.

We need a foreign agents Act, as has been mentioned, and of course we need to reform the Official Secrets Act. We have no means of tackling spies in this country. It is almost impossible to send somebody to prison for spying in this country for the Russian Government.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Do we not need an update of the Treason Act? A treason charge can be laid only in relation to the person of the monarch, and this Act from 1351 really does need updating.

[Chris Bryant]

I agree, and on all these promises of legislation, which I think it is being suggested will come in the next Session of Parliament, frankly, we need to get a bit of a bloody—sorry, we need to get a bit of a move on, because all of this should have been in place years ago. Our report came out in 2018, the Intelligence and Security Committee report came out in 2019, and we still have not done any of this. I say to the Minister that we all stand ready to help in that process. We do feel a bit as though we are dragging him to be chased, so do not run away from us, but be chased and help us to bring in the legislation that will put us in a better place.

My final point is that I do not understand the Government’s ratchet decision at the moment. It is a complete mystery to me. There has already been an invasion and incursion, and we said prior to the incursion that we would hit Russia hard with sanctions. That is not what is on offer today. When the Prime Minister resigned as Foreign Secretary, he said that his greatest failure—his biggest mistake as Foreign Secretary—was his relationship with Russia. I think he has a long way to go to rescue what has happened today. We want tougher action and we beg the Government to introduce it.

UK-Taiwan Friendship and Co-operation

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. China believes it is in the ascendancy and needs simply to wait it out until the UK and the US lose their ability to maintain an international rules-based order, and then it can occupy Taiwan. He puts it very well when he says that we too are watching and we too will wait, and we will stand by our allies. He is absolutely right that we need a cross-party approach, and I believe that under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) we see exactly that on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The current tensions in Taiwan must be seen for what they are: the direct result of the emergence of democracy and the Chinese Communist party’s own insecurity about a modern, successful and democratic Chinese society. When people ask why we should care about an island on the other side of the globe, the answer is simple. Taiwan represents the best of democracy, and the United Kingdom must always take the side of democracy and our friends who are trying to uphold its values.

Over the past few years, we in this House have watched with dismay as the Chinese Communist party has stripped away the freedoms and liberties of our friends in Hong Kong. The implementation of the national security law has transformed a vibrant and open society into a repressive, Orwellian nightmare, where a teenager faces prison for voicing slightly critical views on social media. While we all mourn the loss of those freedoms, I urge hon. Members not to fall into a state of resignation; our friends in Taiwan need more than that.

Therefore, I will discuss three areas that bind the interests of the United Kingdom to Taiwan: further economic co-operation, international recognition, and security and regional stability. The UK and Taiwan already enjoy a fruitful trading relationship: £7.2 billion of goods and services were exchanged in 2020 alone. Taiwan, as we all know, is the leading producer of semiconductor chips, the micro-engines of our modern world. From mobile phones to the fighter planes that make up the Royal Air Force, the importance of those chips cannot be overstated, but there has been a shortage in recent years, leading both the European Union and USA to implement strategies to maintain their access. We must do the same.

Sensing an opportunity, the Chinese Communist party is already moving to try to dominate this market, although I suspect it will not be able to because of the high-quality workmanship needed to create the chips. Only last year, China purchased the UK’s largest producer of semiconductor chips, Newport Wafer Fab. I opposed the takeover, as did the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I urge the Government to continue to do more to protect industries of special national interest. We cannot be selling them off. We must seek to produce, to protect our own production capabilities and to foster trading relationships with democracies that will protect supply chains.

A trade deal with Taiwan would not only ensure access to semiconductor chips, but help the UK to achieve our net zero targets without compromising on our morals. In my Rutland and Melton constituency there is a 2,175-acre solar plant proposed on good agricultural land, which is being developed by a de facto Chinese company with supply chains reaching into Xinjiang, the site of the Chinese Communist party’s genocide. I will not see Rutland’s soil tainted by mass human rights atrocities. I urge the Government to pursue a bilateral trade deal, because we know Taiwan produces quality solar panels free of Uyghur blood labour.

Taiwan is a country committed to net zero by 2050, producing high-quality green technology, and it shares our democratic morals. What better partner for a trade deal? Let us strike one and begin to develop the alternative supply chains we need to free Taiwan and to a lesser extent ourselves from economic reliance on the Chinese mainland. Let us focus on high-quality technologies and renewables. There is opportunity for us and for them.

The UK is also in the process of joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. We have recognised the shift in global wealth and power towards the Indo-Pacific, and global Britain is rightly stepping up to that. As we pivot towards Asia, however, we must have someone to lean on. Taiwan could play an important role there.

We are all aware of the limitations placed on Taiwan globally: despite having the 21st largest economy and a population of 24 million, it is still barred from meaningful participation in much of the international order. Although tens of millions of passengers pass through its airports, Taiwan has not been represented at the International Civil Aviation Organization since 2014. That is illogical, and the UK must support its readmittance to that body.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for Taiwan’s place in the international community and its role in international bodies. Does she agree that this is not just about Taiwan, but about us as well? What we have seen from the absence of Taiwan’s voice on the World Health Organisation is a worse performance against covid, the Wuhan virus that emerged under Chinese tutelage. Does she agree that we are seeing a damaged response and a worsened ability of the British people to protect themselves because China has decided, for its own selfish reasons, to bully and silence Taiwan?

[Alicia Kearns]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is no question but that the Taiwanese response to covid was transparent. It was one of friendship, education and reaching out, yet the international community somehow closed their doors to it. Not only is Taiwan barred from the World Health Organisation and World Health Assembly, but it was expelled from its observer position. That is not acceptable for a country that had impressive contact tracing and border controls, and a rejection of the Orwellian restrictions that other countries put in place.

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

I am very lucky to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma)—I do call him my hon. Friend—as they both covered so many of the issues that I would have covered. I am freed to speak on a slightly wider area, because this is not just about the immediate proximity of the relationship between the United Kingdom and Taiwan; it is about the relationship that we have sadly had with Beijing in recent years.

A few years ago, I was privileged to be elected by the previous Parliament as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. One of the first things I wanted to do was to look at our relationship with China, to see how we could develop it, what we could improve, what we could make better and perhaps what we could put aside. I reached out to the then Chinese ambassador, was invited to meet China’s Potemkin Parliament and the Committee was invited to Beijing.

We did what we usually do and put in our visa requests, having already been told that, as guests of the National People’s Congress, they would go through. One of our members, my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell)—I am glad to see him here today—was with us and China stopped the visa process. I was told that I had to demand that he apologise for being a member of the all-party parliamentary group on Taiwan. I know many people have ideas that Committee Chairs are getting too powerful, but even I did not think I had the power to silence him. Indeed, many Prime Ministers and many greater people than me have found that no one has the power to silence him.

I am delighted to say that the politburo and the chairman of the Central Military Commission, from which the man who claims to be President derives his real power, discovered that they do not have the power to silence my hon. Friend, either. He did not apologise and visas were issued. For me, it was a very important first lesson that we have to stand up for what really matters. We have to stand up for ourselves, for our democracy and for our freedom, and we have to be absolutely clear why we are doing it. Of course we wanted to visit Beijing, and of course the Chinese Government have the right to issue or not to issue visas to the Foreign Affairs Committee—that is absolutely fair, as they do not have to issue visas to us—but they do not have the right to decide who sits on the Committee, as that is the privilege of this House and of our people.

That was my first lesson on the kind of relationship we have with Beijing at the moment. It hugely reversed what I hoped would be a constructive direction, and I am very sorry that it did so. Many of us who have been to China on a few occasions think incredibly highly of the Chinese people and of the culture and civilisation that has developed in different communities—some Han, some Mongol, some Tibetan, some Uyghur. We know that the Hui people have harboured Islam in their hearts, and we know there are Christian communities that go back 1,600, 1,700 and maybe even 1,800 years in different parts of China. We know this is a culture that is expressed in many different ways, and it is not always in a single unitary state. This is an area that has given the world such enormous wealth, richness, diversity and innovation.

[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that many of these peoples do not want to be Chinese? They want to be Tibetan, for instance. They are forced to remain within China’s boundaries against their will, and China refuses them the opportunity for self-determination, which is shameful.

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[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman will know very well that this country recognises that peoples in our community have the right to self-determination. In China, sadly, that has been taken away from people. I agree entirely that there are many peoples who the Chinese state calls Chinese, but who call themselves something else. We have always recognised that people choose their status, not Governments.

Let me come back to Taiwan and why the debate is so important. Many of us are focusing, understandably, on what is going on in Moscow. We are focusing on the journey that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary took today to see her opposite number, Mr Lavrov. We are focused on the fact that we are seeing physical threats to borders in Europe for the first time since 2014—and that was the first time that had happened since 1945. We are seeing genuine aggression against free and sovereign people in a way that we have not in 60 or 70 years, except for in the case of the annexation of Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and, of course, Donetsk and Luhansk.

We are also seeing dictatorships trying to undermine democracies. We are seeing it because they have shown it to us. The relationship between Mr Putin and Mr Xi is extremely concerning. They have advertised it to us; they met in order to demonstrate their commitment to each other, and to undermining democracy and freedom around the world. That is why we are talking about Taiwan today. We are seeing a real moment in global politics—a point when we are more vulnerable than we have been for a long time. We see, sadly, a diversion of attention in Washington, confusion in Brussels, and a proliferation of different ideas, thoughts and challenges in Paris, Berlin and Rome.

We are seeing steel in Vilnius and Warsaw, and among many partners and friends. But sadly we are not seeing it as widely as we need to. That is exposing us to a double-edged risk—perhaps not just the risk that Russia may invade Ukraine. It may; 125,000 troops on the border suggests that it is possible. But Russia may also use this opportunity to demonstrate that there is confusion and division in the west, and use that to convince friends and allies that the deals that it has made in the last 20 or 30 years are no longer valid, and that they should bow down to Beijing and Moscow instead. That would be much more damaging to our long-term future, our peoples’ liberties, and our economic prosperity than many other decisions that could be taken. What is worse, the decision to do that in Ukraine would open up an opportunity to think about doing the same in Taiwan.

It is certainly true that any military invasion of Taiwan would be extremely difficult. The Chinese military—the People’s Liberation Army Navy, as it is somewhat bizarrely called—has been developing an amphibious capability that it thinks puts it in with a chance of a successful landing on Taiwan’s shores. I know—we all know—that is what it is doing; it is not a secret.

[Alicia Kearns]

I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend when he is making such a good point, but does he agree that, very concerningly, some of the research, intelligence and information that underpin some of those new technological advances that China is making are coming from British universities, British researchers and British companies, where espionage is at large? It is funding them quite openly, yet there seems to be no accountability in academia for the selling of what should be state-protected secrets to somebody who is clearly at odds with our own interests.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend and I will come back to that point, because she will not be surprised to hear that I wish to build on it.

Those of us who have some experience of fighting in mountains know that it is a lot harder for the attacker than the defender. Those of us who have sadly spent too much time reading stories of Operation Overlord will know that even the short straits that separate us from northern France provided an extremely difficult obstacle for our forebears to get over. So 100 miles of really difficult water to cross on the straits of Taiwan really does present an obstacle. Indeed, the sea state there is often so difficult that only for very short windows is it possible to truly cross. The landing positions that the Chinese forces would need to assault are narrow and therefore likely to afford Taiwanese forces the ability to defend.

I do not think that we should really be looking at the military threat in the classical sense. Instead, we are looking at the military threat in the sense of what we see from Russia in Ukraine and, sadly, from China in other parts of the world. We are seeing an erosion—an erosion of the will to fight, an erosion of the nation state to hold together, and an erosion of the integrity of a society to resist pressure—and that is coming in many, many different ways.

The first, sadly, is in what has become known as fake news: the disinformation campaigns that we are seeing around the world, the extraordinary assaults on our intelligence, our intellect and our ability to talk to one another as equals by spreading the hatred and lies that we see, sadly, too frequently here in the UK, in the United States and in many other countries. We are seeing that being absolutely industrialised in countries such as Ukraine and Taiwan. They are not the sole aim of these targets, but merely the roadblock on the way to the rest, because this is intended to change the way in which the global economy works and the way in which our people—the British people—are able to live their lives and enjoy their futures. It is intended to erode our liberties so that a few rich men in Beijing and Moscow can enjoy their stolen goods and make sure that they sleep at night.

That is not acceptable. We were not elected to this place and charged with being here to sacrifice the freedoms of the British people to a couple of despots in Beijing or Moscow. Standing up with our allies and friends around the world is exactly what we should be doing, but again, this is not just about them, because the techniques that we are seeing in Taiwan and Ukraine are spreading here.

Today, like every day, businesses and individuals in Taipei and across the island will be the subject of quite literally millions of cyber-attacks. They are under such intense assault that it is very difficult to understand how many routine operations can continue, and yet they do. We are seeing the same type of assaults here in the UK—not the same volume, but the same type—and we therefore have a lot to learn from Taiwan in how it resists. The same is true in Ukraine, where we are seeing Russia learning a whole new way of doing warfare by interrupting everything from the electricity grid to the communications networks in order to undermine the capability of the state and society to hold together.

But we are also seeing that here in the UK and that brings me to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton so rightly made. We are seeing an erosion of our own freedoms here in the UK, and not just through the dirty money that the Foreign Affairs Committee has been so clear in calling out since 2018. Indeed, I see on the Opposition Front Bench the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), who was on the Foreign Affairs Committee at the time—promotion for some!

We have been calling this out for a long time because it is fundamentally undermining the prosperity and happiness of the British people. We are seeing properties being over-inflated in value. We are seeing assets being used to undermine us, not to support us. We are seeing assets of community value—football teams and businesses—being used effectively as a piggybank from which cash can be removed on future occasions for pay for operations on behalf of a state that thinks nothing of attempting to murder the Prime Minister of Montenegro, actually murdering a citizen in the United Kingdom using a nuclear substance, using chemical weapons on the streets of Salisbury, blowing up an arms dump in Prague, and threatening literally thousands of people with cold and famine by trafficking them and forcing them into the forests around Belarus to use as weapons against the people of Poland and Lithuania. This is not a co-operative state; it is a hostile state and these are its actions. Here, we need to do more about it. We need to stop the dirty money, which we have called for, but we need to go further, because we are also—this is the tragedy—seeing the erosion of the liberty of some British people. The freedoms that we value are the freedoms that we need to stand for.

Yesterday, sadly, for the 100th or 200th time—I cannot remember how many—I spoke to some students who told me that their debates in their universities were silenced. They said that people were not willing to speak out or to stand up for what they knew was true because they would face the pressure of the Ministry of State Security, China’s enforcement arm, in silencing them in debate here in the UK. I spoke to them about the nature of this interference and they said that sadly it often comes from a fellow student or from a teacher or lecturer who is connected in some way to the state. We are seeing the erosion of the liberty of British citizens and of those who have come here seeking that liberty, whichever country they come from, because we are sadly not robust enough in standing up for it.

We need to close down the Confucius Institutes. They are agencies of a hostile state through the United Front Work Department—an organisation that we in this House have grown used to in recent days because of the works of Christine Lee, who we were all warned about. We have got used to the actions that it has been taking in seeking influence, in the most extraordinary propaganda operation that the world has ever seen, and we have got used to the pernicious effect on our own community.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton spoke about the theft of intellectual property—some of it, sadly, intellectual property that should remain secret. She is absolutely right. Defending state secrets is, after all, an essential role of government. But defending the liberty of British people to study and learn ideas of any kind, of any form, in a free environment at a university or a school, is surely even more fundamental than that. We must maintain absolute freedom of our people to express their views, whether on Tibet, as my hon. Friend did, on the status of Hong Kong, or, as officials in Beijing did only the other day, on the status of the Falkland Islands. They can express their views however they wish. Silencing debate undermines us and erodes freedom. It also erodes our path to the future.

Let me tell the House why I am still optimistic, despite that catalogue of crimes that I think have been committed against us. When I look forward, I see beacons like Taiwan as a demonstration that, actually, free people choose freedom. I see an example showing that Chinese society and culture, in different forms, are intrinsically at home with liberty. I see the writings in the universal declaration of human rights—written by an ambassador from China, P.C. Chang—and I see the rights that are literally encoded in the fundamental documents of the international community. I therefore see the hope that the attempts of the Chinese state—the Communist party—to silence these people will eventually fail, because they will.

What we are seeing coming out of Taiwan is another example of why those attempts will fail. Many people will know that TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor chip manufacturer, constitutes an extraordinary demonstration of innovation and capability on the island. It is a fantastic example of the meeting of science and craft, in that it brings together the skills of innovation and the skills of creation. I think it fair to say that it is now one of the keystones of the global economy. Delays caused to its output by various water issues and other problems had a direct effect on the manufacturing of cars and kettles, even here in the UK. It is essential to our global economy, and it is telling that its extraordinary success is based on the free ideas and the creativity that are needed—or, rather, can only be achieved—in a free society. This is a very good reminder that liberty does not just feed the soul; it feeds the pocket, and it feeds prosperity for everyone.

We see people around the world making choices. We see the migrant routes out of various parts of the world, and we see where those migrants go. There are not that many who think that China or Russia is a good idea, but there are many who choose freedom in countries such ours. When I see the threats that are ranged before us, I feel that what we are seeing coming out of Beijing today, and what we are seeing coming out of Moscow today, is much more in keeping with Shakespeare’s King Lear than with Henry V.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am reluctant to intervene on a substantial speech in a field about which my hon. Friend is very knowledgeable. May I suggest, however, that the principal challenge for any Government when it comes to foreign affairs is fundamentally to deal with the world as it is, while also working for the world that we would wish for, and without inadvertently making it worse in so doing?

If my hon. Friend agrees with me on that point, does he also agree that the status quo in the constitutional position of the Republic of China, i.e. Taiwan, has actually enabled it to flourish in its evolution as a peaceful and successful democracy, within which its relationship with us has strengthened considerably over recent time? Does he agree that in all of this, our shared values help to shape that relationship—and the fact that we are at the scoping stage of a Westminster Foundation for Democracy programme in Taiwan is one example of this—but that we should do nothing that might inadvertently trigger a reaction by China that would be good neither for the Chinese nor for us, and considering changing the name of their representation in the UK would be precisely such a measure?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I entirely respect my hon. Friend’s position. As he knows, we have had many discussions on a similar basis and on a similar note outside this place. He is right that we have to deal with the world as it is and gently encourage it to be the world that it should be—it is safe to say that neither of us is a revolutionary. The work that my hon. Friend does with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy is so important, because it builds on the essential liberty of people and on the fundamental principle that P. C. Chang embedded into the universal declaration of human rights: that of respect for individual choice and that a community should be able to choose its own destiny.

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is not for me to tell the Republic of China (Taiwan) how it wishes to name itself and what it wishes to choose, but nor is it for Beijing. It is for the people on the island of Taiwan to decide for themselves how they wish to shape their future. We here recognise that principle not just in overseas jurisdictions such as the Falkland Islands; we even recognised it in 2014 in respect of part of our integral United Kingdom. Although my hon. Friend and I were on the same side of the argument then and some on the Opposition Benches were on the other side, we all recognised the sovereignty of the people of these islands to choose the shape of their liberty and the way in which they expressed the community to which they felt they belonged. If we recognised that freedom even when it hurt us most and when it cost us dearest, why should we not recognise it for people who have absolutely the same inherent rights as anybody on these islands and have, indeed, demonstrated time and again that they have not only the capability but the will to express their freedom through democracy and to choose leaders whom we sometimes like and sometimes do not? Surely it is up to them, not up to Beijing.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but of course it is important to realise that Taiwan’s excellent President has deliberately avoided making any call for independence. The House should reflect on that in terms of our own position.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why I repeat my statement: it is not for me to change the name of the representative of the island here, but it is for me to recognise that the people of that island have the right to choose.

We can, at this point, get into a different debate about Lithuania. I pay huge tribute to Mr Landsbergis, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, for his courage in standing up against the bullying of Beijing. He has demonstrated that many larger countries that currently bow down and pretend they do not have a choice actually do have a choice. Lithuania may have a great past in which it was a huge grand duchy, but the reality of the size of the state today is that it is not one of the P5. Yet Lithuania has taken the courageous decision to defend itself.

I will close my speech with this last point: over the past four or five years we have seen an evolution of pressure on us and others around the world that is undermining democracy, that is eroding our freedoms and that imperils our economic future. This is a choice for us all. The decision to stand with free peoples in Taiwan and Ukraine is about standing up for our own liberties and freedoms. That is why the House is right to push for it and the Government are right to back it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

As the chair of the British-Taiwanese all-party parliamentary group, of course I have become concerned at the growing intimidation that the country is experiencing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) outlined so well. Taiwan is one of the UK’s most stalwart supporters and trading partners, and it donated more than 1 million masks to our NHS during the covid crisis, which is a very decent thing to do.

We have already heard that about 23.5 million people live in Taiwan. We have also heard that it is a fully functioning democracy. It has a very good record of holding free and fair elections and there has not been much time since it started doing so. When those elections occur, and one party loses, the transfer of power is pretty smooth, which is not often the case in many other countries in Asia.

We have also heard that, diplomatically, Taiwan is banned from United Nations membership. We chucked it out—it was us. We effectively chucked it out of the Security Council; that is the end of it. I understand why it happened, but we were part of that movement. It has also been expelled from the observer status it held in the World Health Organisation. Again, the medical teams it sends out when there is a disaster are world beating. Those teams are first rate.

China consistently opposes anything Taiwan does. For instance, it refuses to accept Taiwanese passports and denies entry to any international forum where it has influence—and that is quite a lot of them now. Economically, China is perfectly willing to accept Taiwanese money to invest in the country, but it refuses to accept or allow any other commercial activity from the island. At the same time, we have heard from many other hon. Members that Taiwan is under constant and unmitigated cyber-attack from China, reaching into every aspect of Taiwanese society.

There is now a large British business presence in Taiwan; UK investment in Taiwan reached £450 million in 2020, covering a wide range of sectors, from financial services to pharmaceuticals, from information and communications technology to offshore wind. As we have Scottish representatives here, I must say that Taiwan whisky was voted the world’s best three years running: there is currently Kavalan in my office and I very much enjoy it. [Interruption.] Is that an intervention from my good friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)? No? Let me carry on.

Currently, I gather, British companies are investing in 1,307 projects in Taiwan. We have also heard that in September last year, Taiwan submitted its application to join the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. We are planning to join that too, and I very much hope the Minister will confirm that we would support Taiwan’s membership.

Militarily—I have looked at this quite a lot over the past few years—the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is having its defence expenditure increased by about 10% a year, year on year. It is reorganising. My hon. Friend the Member for—

[Tom Tugendhat]

Tonbridge and Malling.

[Bob Stewart]

Dear me, I am so sorry. I should know that. It is not far away. He made the point that the army is reorganising for expeditionary warfare, meaning amphibious landings, even though Taiwan is 100 miles away. I am particularly worried about the way the islands and atolls, which we have not mentioned, in the South China sea are being colonised—and I do use that word, colonised. They are being occupied, expanded and militarised. In truth, they are well outside China’s traditional area of interest. The Chinese intention is clear: to make the whole South China sea national waters of China.

In the air, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force crossed the median line of the Taiwan strait 950 times in 2021, a 150% increase in air activity over the previous year. Since 1 January, I gather there have been 143 intrusions in just over a month. It particularly worries me that the No. 1 openly expressed aim of Chinese policy is to take back Taiwan. Indeed, Peter Dutton, the Defence Minister of Australia, has openly declared that he believes the Chinese will be going into Taiwan very soon. What does “going into Taiwan” mean? To me, it could mean a military invasion. So there is a growing and present threat to Taiwan from mainland China, and of course that should worry us. It worries us because 40% of the world’s trade transits through the South China sea. What happens in those crucial trade groups must be of great concern to us.

As a soldier I served in Hong Kong. I thought it was a great place, fabulous. It used to share our values of civil liberty, democracy and the rule of law, but recently all that is fast disappearing. In the region, Taiwan remains a beacon of democracy. It also has huge strategic importance. I believe it is in the frontline of the global struggle to resist authoritarian efforts to undermine human rights, the rule of law and freedom of speech, which my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling outlined much better than I could. I agree that it is very good news that Taiwan that has now legalised LGBTQ marriage. It is the only country in Asia that has, by the way.