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.

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[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.

Russia: Sanctions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

First, may I thank the shadow Foreign Secretary for his constructive approach? It is vital that all Members of the House demonstrate their support for freedom and democracy in the face of severe aggression by the Russian regime, not just on the borders of Ukraine, but through Belarus, into the western Balkans, and across the world. I will take forward the united message that I have heard from the whole House to our friends in Ukraine, who very much welcome the support that they have been offered by the United Kingdom—the economic support, the support in terms of defensive weaponry, and the support in the face of Russian aggression.

The package that we are putting forward in legislation will be in place by 10 February, which means that we are able to enact wide-ranging sanctions in broad categories that really target anybody who is providing strategic or economic support to the Russian regime. There will be nowhere to hide, and I am very clear that we will apply those sanctions without fear or favour.

We have already taken steps to tighten up our regime on corruption and illicit finance through the Criminal Finances Act 2017, the global anti-corruption sanctions regimes that we have put in place and our review of all tier 1 visas granted before 5 April. We will also be introducing the economic crime Bill. The Prime Minister committed to that at the summit for democracy with President Biden at the end of last year. Let me assure the House that our priority is the defence of freedom and democracy. That comes before any short-term economic interest not only for our country, but for the whole of Europe. We must wean ourselves and others off dependence on Russian gas. We must target the criminal and corrupt money, and that is what we are determined to do with this extension of our sanctions regime, the most radical that we have put together yet.

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

It is a pleasure to hear from my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary about the tightening of the sanctions regime. She knows that the Foreign Affairs Committee has called for that for four years. It is extremely welcome that she is looking hard at dirty money, and here I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). The need to clean up the dirty money in our economy is not just about doing the right thing and standing up alongside the people of Ukraine, but about standing up for the British people, defending ourselves against the corruption that flows through our system, and making sure that our houses, our homes, are not being exploited to pay murderers on behalf of a dictator. This is not a foreign problem; this is a problem for the United Kingdom to deal with at home. The strongest thing that we can do to defend Ukraine is to defend ourselves against filth and corruption in our City.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Lady makes the very important point that, as well as the risk of an incursion into Ukraine, there are efforts by the Russian Government to destabilise and undermine democracy. That is why we released intelligence to expose Russian attempts to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. We will continue to expose their playbook, including false flag operations, disinformation and cyber-attacks.

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

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments. She will know that the Foreign Affairs Committee was in Ukraine last week. I would like to place on record my thanks to Ambassador Simmons and her impressive team in Kyiv, who are serving our country extremely well. We are off to Sarajevo tomorrow. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we are seeing an arc of instability from Moscow, designed to put democracies on the back foot and make Putin’s regime look normal in a world of corrupt thieves? Will she reiterate her stance in the defence of freedom and promise to speak to our German friends about their decision not to support Ukraine with the sale of military weapons from Estonia, which was so recently denied?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the undermining that Russia is seeking to do of European democracy, including Ukraine, and Russia’s activities through Belarus and its activities in the Balkans. That is why we have appointed Sir Stuart Peach as our envoy to the Balkans and why I hosted a meeting of all the Balkans Ministers to discuss this issue. We need all our allies to step up. The UK is providing defensive weapons to Ukraine, we are supporting Ukraine economically and we are helping to train its armed forces. We need all our allies to get behind that, because ultimately, we do not want to see a Russian incursion into Ukraine, which would lead to huge loss of life and a huge quagmire, and we need to make Russia absolutely clear about that.

UK Government Recognition of Somaliland

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member’s predecessor and the many people who live in his constituency. In his constituency is a very established Somaliland community that has been there probably far longer than he or I have been on this earth. This country has deep links with Somaliland that go back not just many decades, but a century and more, with many Somalilanders calling Britain their home, as well as Somaliland itself.

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

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has secured this important debate. Many of us have been supporting Somaliland as an independent state, and we very much welcome the fact that he is here. On that point, he will know no doubt that many of Her Majesty’s naval ships for 100 or more years have had lascars from Somaliland—stokers and others—who built the first mosques in this country. Does he not agree that recognising the Somalilanders here in the UK is also about recognising our own past and our own future together as investors in a new Africa? It would demonstrate that independent states that govern themselves well in democracies can succeed, and we can partner with them.

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee is absolutely right. By taking the brave step to recognise Somaliland, we would not just be opening up opportunities for Somaliland itself, but opportunities for British investors and British business to go there and work, very much creating the gateway to the whole of the horn of Africa.

Afghanistan: Humanitarian Crisis

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s comments about co-operation with international organisations, particularly the Nobel prize-winning World Food Programme, which has done so much important work not just in the region, but around the world. What work is she doing with others in the region, including countries such as Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and even Iran, to get support together for those who are in the most vulnerable position that we have seen in generations?

This is not just about the misery that we are seeing in Afghanistan, where some people are even forced to sell their children. It is about a humanitarian response from the most generous country—from the United Kingdom—to people who are in desperate need and whom I hope will be supported not only to stay in their own homes and have a future, but to turn to opportunities that will build an economy and build the future that has been so cruelly torn away from them in recent months.

[Vicky Ford]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs for his close interest in the subject and for mentioning the plight of children. We are deeply concerned by the forced marriage practised in Afghanistan, particularly for children, and we are very aware of the risk that more women and young girls could be sold into marriage as the humanitarian situation worsens.

My hon. Friend asks what we are doing about international engagement. Since August, our international engagement has been focused on securing a co-ordinated humanitarian response, agreeing a co-ordinated approach to the Taliban-led regime and, as far as possible, preventing economic collapse. We have played an active role in seeking to build a shared new international approach since the Taliban takeover, working with the UN Security Council, the G20 and the G7 and engaging with other countries in the region. For example, the Foreign Secretary recently travelled to India, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where she discussed Afghanistan and the importance of international co-ordination.

In October, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon—the Minister of State for south and central Asia, the United Nations and the Commonwealth—attended the annual open debate on women, peace and security at the UN Security Council, where he made it clear that the rights of Afghan women need to be front and centre. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and many other Ministers discussed Afghanistan with world leaders in the margins of COP26. We all urge the need to address the acute humanitarian situation. We are continuing to work very closely with countries across the world and across the region.

Russia

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs.

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

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement—her clear statement that this country and this Government stand against the Russian aggression that we see not just in Ukraine but in Georgia; against some of the Baltic nations; and, via Belarus, against countries such as Poland, Latvia and Lithuania through the use of migration as a weapon against free people.

Among the conversations that my right hon. Friend has had—I welcome those she listed—has she spoken to our German and French colleagues about training teams in Ukraine? Has she spoken to those who are part of the Normandy process about involving a British representative in that process? Has she spoken to Secretary-General Stoltenberg about the fact, which we all recognise but needs to be stated more clearly, that NATO is a free association of free people to defend freedom? It is not an aggressive alliance; it is a defensive alliance. There was no agreement by any party or any nation to prevent any free people from joining the NATO defensive pact in 1991 or, indeed, at any time. Let me be clear: President Putin is lying when he says that there was. It is not true.

Will my right hon. Friend please work with NATO partners to make sure that free countries and free peoples who wish to guarantee that freedom through a defensive alliance can do so as part of NATO, whether they are threatened by Russia today or, like Sweden and Finland, have been threatened in the past?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his points. I have been working closely with my French and German counterparts to tackle this issue. Tomorrow, we have a virtual meeting of the NATO Foreign Ministers at which, again, we will be co-ordinating ahead of the meetings next week—namely, the meetings between Russia and the United States, but also the Russia-NATO meeting.

We are all very clear that NATO is a defensive alliance. Joining NATO is a sovereign decision for NATO and relevant applicant states; it is not a decision for Russia, which has no auspices over it whatsoever. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the disinformation that has been coming from the Kremlin on this subject. Jens Stoltenberg, with whom I have also been co-ordinating, will make a very strong statement about NATO and its purpose and reaffirm the fact that it is a defensive alliance to support the countries within it.

FCDO Staffing

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Foreign Secretary, or rather the Minister in his place, about staffing cuts in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

[The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa (James Cleverly)]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for the question. Let me start off by saying that the Foreign Secretary has made it clear—and, indeed, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister also made this clear at questions yesterday—that there will not be a 10% staff cut to the FCDO.

Internal work has taken place that has not been signed off by Ministers, but I remind the House that we are still investing massively in our overseas aid. At £10 billion this year, the UK remains one of the largest ODA spenders in the world, as well as being well above the OECD average. The FCDO must continue to promote a positive, confident, outward-looking global Britain, deploying its diplomacy and development expertise to advance freedom, democracy and sustainable enterprise around the world.

We remain a highly ambitious Department, supporting the integrated review and the aspirations set out within it. To do this, the Department needs to ensure its resources—both its funding and its most valuable resource, its people—are aligned to its priorities. Over the next three years, some areas of the Department will see staffing resources of course increase, reflecting the need to align our people to the nation’s priorities. The FCDO will continue to retain one of the largest overseas diplomatic networks of any nation, while also ensuring value for money for the taxpayer. There will not be a 10% staff cut and Ministers will make the final decisions on workforce changes in the spring.

[Tom Tugendhat]

May I first pay enormous tribute to my right hon. Friend for the work that he has done in his own part of the world as a Foreign Office Minister? The bilateral relationships that he has helped to build, along with his impressive command of Arabic, have transformed some of the relationships and moved them to a whole new footing, and that is enormously welcome. In that work, what he has seen is some fantastic envoys of this country representing what is best about us and achieving what we really need to see, which is a transformational attitude following the revolution that Brexit put into our foreign policy. That is enormously welcome. I am sure the Minister will agree with me that, looking around the world and trying to find staff cuts—even if not 10%, even if only a few—is still going to be challenging, because the reality is that we need more people now, not fewer.

We have found that the policy we had before 2016 of over-centralising on international institutions such as the European Union or others around the world that have caused such challenge has not always served Britain’s interests best, and we have decided—quite correctly, in my view—to invest very hard in the bilateral relationships that matter. This is indeed the policy of the integrated review that the Minister has so rightly cited. It is also the policy of the Foreign Secretary, who has spoken about BII—British international investment—to challenge China’s belt and road and to secure more opportunities for British trade around the world. But that means more staff in Kenya, more staff in Nigeria, more staff in capitals around the European Union—not in Brussels—and more staff around his own network in the middle east that he has done so much to transform. This is not just a question about a 10% cut. This is a question about what investment is going to be made in staff numbers in high commissions and embassies around the world to achieve the aim, interests and ambitions of the British people and the stated aim of this Government. Surely that is not fake news.

[James Cleverly]

To respond to my hon. Friend’s kind words about my command of the Arabic language, shukran jazeelan. Actually, I will accept his compliment on behalf of the members of the FCDO across the network in my region and beyond, who are of course the primary means by which we deliver both diplomacy and development. He is absolutely right that the Government’s foreign policy, as set out in the integrated review, remains highly ambitious. Diplomacy and development are delivered primarily through people. While we are very proud of being a top tier ODA-donating country, with the commitment to go back up to 0.7% set out in the spending review announcements, the integrated review does mean we will need to ensure that our posture globally reinforces that. So changes are inevitable. I absolutely take the point he makes about the value of the people as part of that. When Ministers make the ultimate decisions about this, we will absolutely take the points he makes, with which we very much agree, into consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady about the terrible atrocities that are taking place in Xinjiang, and I raised that with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, on the phone last week, as well as our concerns over Hong Kong, which I have also raised publicly. It is important that we trade with China, but we need to ensure that it is reliable trade, that it avoids strategic dependency and that it does not involve the violation of intellectual property rights or forced technology transfer. I urge China to respect the rules of the World Trade Organisation. Of course, the United Kingdom is not yet a member of the CPTPP, so we do not have rights over decisions, but I am clear that any country that enters the CPTPP needs to follow its high rules and standards, including high environmental and labour standards.

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

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend to her place at the Dispatch Box. Given her past experience and her former jobs, can she tell us how she will build on the economic power of the United Kingdom to develop our strategic influence around the world? This country grew rich not on the force of arms, but on the force of law and the different ways in which we have traded and travelled around the world. It would be fantastic to hear from her how she will use the office she now holds to defend the place of law both at home and abroad and to shape our alliances to promote our interests.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that developing our economic ties with like-minded allies is vital to developing our influence in the world and also the influence of free enterprise, freedom and democracy. That is why we are pursuing trade deals with the likes of the CPTPP, India and the United States, which are all democratic and free enterprise-based. We now have a unique opportunity, as post-Brexit Britain, with all the tools at our disposal—development, trade, diplomacy and security—to build those links that I describe as a network of liberty across the world.

Arrest of Sudanese Prime Minister

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

In last week’s meetings of the dialogue between the UK and Sudan, we worked on a number of issues including the support that we have been giving the Sudanese for their transition towards democracy and support for their constitutional arrangements as well as on economic matters. During that visit, I had the opportunity to meet both Prime Minister Hamdok and General al-Burhan as well as other key Government members. I stressed to all parties the importance of supporting the civilian-led Government and upholding the constitutional declaration and Juba peace agreement as well as continuing to progress the transition. I also reaffirmed our commitment and strong advice for them to continue to work with the International Criminal Court and to respect that process. I also urged the Government to increase their efforts to end the blockade of ports and transport links in eastern Sudan.

The UK has taken a leading role in supporting Sudan to hold to account those responsible for past crimes, including our support for the ICC and for investigations into the 3 June killing of protestors. It is vital that those in Sudan should continue to work with the ICC to hold those responsible to account. Those responsible for today’s action should also be held to account.

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

I welcome the Minister’s words and the urgent question called by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). The reality is that this is a situation over which we have little control. What conversations has the Minister had with Governments in the region who have traditionally supported the Sudanese military? What conversations has she had with neighbouring states such as Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland, and, over the other side of the Red sea, Saudi Arabia, on whom so many people in Sudan rely for economic support and, in many cases, much more than that?

[Vicky Ford]

I thank the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee for his questions. As I said in my response, we are working with international partners and expect to make a public statement later. On the African Union’s response to the situation in Sudan, we welcome the statement of dismay at today’s event by the chair of the AU commission, Moussa Faki, and we will work with all of Sudan’s international friends to apply pressure on the military to return Sudan to the path of democracy.

We are actively calling for a briefing at the UN Security Council to ensure that the situation gets the highest levels of international attention that it deserves. The UK welcomes the statement by the UN Secretary General condemning the military’s actions. As I said, I will also speak to my US counterpart later today.