Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) I beg to move, That this House
calls on the Government to develop separate but aligned
cross-Government strategies for both Russia and China; and further
calls on the Government to support the international order, working
with allies across the globe to develop an approach to Russia and
China that, whilst recognising their separate legitimate interests,
ensures a robust defence of both UK interests and democratic
values. I will speak...Request free
trial
(Isle of Wight) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House calls on the Government to develop separate but
aligned cross-Government strategies for both Russia and China;
and further calls on the Government to support the international
order, working with allies across the globe to develop an
approach to Russia and China that, whilst recognising their
separate legitimate interests, ensures a robust defence of both
UK interests and democratic values.
I will speak for 15 minutes, if I get that far, as I am mindful
of others.
As of this morning, offensive war has once again broken out in
eastern Europe, as Russian artillery and armour rain down on a
peaceful neighbour. We have all seen the reports of columns
moving from Crimea, of Kharkiv and Kyiv potentially being under
threat and of bridges being blown up in Chernobyl as Ukrainians
defend hearth and home.
This is arguably the first conventional war in Europe since 1945.
The intentions of Vladimir Putin have long been clear: to control
or destroy Ukraine, to shatter western unity, to build a new
sphere of influence on the foundations of the USSR and to present
the west as a decadent, mortal enemy of the Russian people and
Russian identity. It is an agenda that is both febrile and
dangerous, but sadly it is also very real. We have needed to
understand it for some time, and we urgently need to get our
heads around what is happening.
According to polling, the majority of Russians see war—and
nuclear war—with the west as now more likely than not, which
should be a sobering realisation for all of us. Russian state
propaganda has prepared the population for conflict for years.
The immediate news is clearly shocking, but I will still try to
look more broadly, to talk about tactics rather than strategy
and, where possible, to bring in China as much as Russia. People
will forgive me if I do not always succeed.
Russia in the west and China in the east present differing but
overlapping and increasingly significant threats. However
imperfect our current global system, we have avoided major
conflict, but that order is now under threat: in Ukraine today;
potentially in Taiwan and the South China sea; and potentially in
the Baltic and the Black sea in the weeks, months and years to
come.
I lived and worked in Ukraine and the former USSR from 1990 to
1994, and I was fortunate enough to travel through the country
for much of that time. I lived in Kyiv, but I well remember many
of the places we are talking about now. I went down coal mines in
Donbas, I visited Soviet dachas in Sevastopol, and in Moldova and
Georgia I witnessed the first of the proxy wars engineered,
probably, by the KGB. Many of my formative experiences as a young
man were spent there, and I am deeply fond of the place and its
people. What is happening pains me, because a KGB placeman will
now pit Slavs against other Slavs to fulfil a fantasy about the
Soviet Union and the world. The cold war was not a good world. It
died 30 years ago and should remain dead. Tens of thousands are
likely to die.
I would like to argue the following: the risk of direct conflict
with Russia and China is growing and, in some senses, we are
already in indirect conflict with both, in different
ways—importantly, I am not directly comparing Russia and China.
We are midway through a 20-year crisis with Russia that we are
woefully ill-prepared for and have done our best to ignore.
Frankly, this is now returning with a vengeance. We are at the
beginning of a significant and potentially damaging change in our
relationship with China—there may be greater opportunity there,
but there may also be greater threat. Therefore, for the next 20
years the primary foreign policy goal for this country must be in
old-school state relationships and the avoidance of direct
conflict, and the establishment of working relationships with
both, where we can, that are as productive as possible, while
resolutely defending our values and our allies. I do not believe
we are there yet by any means; and the coherence and integration
of our foreign policy, and our policy in both cases, is not
there.
Secondly, we need to understand the new world and the new styles
of conflict being practised against us, and the new forms of
covert and overt influence. Thirdly, as a result, we need to move
to an era of “smart” containment, which is not only
geographically based, but is a protection of our values, and of
our IT property, our universities and law firms, and our City
institutions and others. That includes things such as a national
strategy council to complement the National Security Council,
because frankly—the more I speak to people, the more I feel
this—we need to relearn the arts of strategy and deterrence. We
need to relearn how to use power properly—I believe we have
forgotten that.
We also need to make provision for laws that we should have put
in place years ago: a foreign lobbying Bill—my God, how many more
scandals do we have to put up with before we realise we need
one?; an updated espionage Bill; an economic crimes Bill; and
changes to the libel and data protection rules to protect freedom
of speech and to protect journalists from becoming peripheral
victims of Russian oligarch intimidation to our freedom of
speech.
(Rhondda) (Lab)
I wish to add to this list, although I share in everything that
the hon. Gentleman is saying. He is very intelligent and
foresighted on these issues. Should we not also be looking at
those who have dual nationality—Russian and UK, or Chinese and
UK—reassessing and making them choose a nationality? Secondly,
should we not be looking at everyone from China or from Russia
who has a tier 1 visa and reassessing whether those should not be
withdrawn?
The hon. Gentleman make sensible points. I look forward to
working with him on them and I thank him for his
intervention.
Both the Russia and China leaderships see themselves as being in
conflict or intense competition with the west. That may sound
“hawkish”, but it is not designed to be so. It is designed to
avoid conflict in the future by being clear about the times we
live in. Let us face it: who of us today will claim that
deterrence has worked in Europe? Let me remind the House that the
best wars are not those that are won, but those that are
unfought. Our greatest victory in world war three was that it did
not take place, not that we destroyed our civilisation in order
to destroy another.
In Russia, the security elites have believed for the past 20
years that they are in conflict with us—in a conflict of values
and of information, with spheres of interest. President Putin
alludes to a “western plot” that destroyed the Soviet Union and
he sees “colour revolutions” in the same light. Security Council
Secretary Nikolai Patrushev regularly warns that the west wants
to destroy Russia because we fear it and are jealous of it. The
Kremlin’s confrontational strategy to change the post-cold war
order began with a reassessment of military art in the early
2000s, which was played out somewhat in national publications
such as Voennaya Mysl, or Military Thought, and
Voenno-promyshlennyi kur’er—or Military-Industrial Courier. The
result of that debate was a strategy that has, in effect, aligned
Russia’s two ways of war, the conventional and the
non-conventional, and seen the west as a psychological, spiritual
and physical threat. It is not fundamentally a military
doctrine—the Gerasimov doctrine—as some people falsely claim; it
is actually a strategic art, not simply a military one. These
ideas have formed in Russia’s military and national security
doctrines, written by those around Putin, where the west is the
existential threat, spiritual and physical. Swedish academic
Maria Engström has discovered that at its worst there is a
disturbing narrative among Russian ideologues that links Russia’s
nuclear arsenal and Russian Orthodoxy, known as “Atomic
Orthodoxy”, as the “sword and shield” against the Antichrist—the
US and NATO. We are the Antichrist. The sword and the shield are
also the symbols of Putin’s old KGB and now the FSB. We made the
mistake of dismissing fringe Russian philosophers as neo-fascist
nutjobs in the 1990s. Given what has happened since, it is unwise
that we do the same again. In China, party document No. 9 lays
out quite clearly that the Communist party seeks a dominant
position of its socialism over western capitalism. The language
of win-win is for an external audience, for us. The language
domestically is to win and to dominate, and again we should be
under no illusion about that.
Whereas Russia is a declining power, China is rising one. They
present different but related threats, and both, to a greater or
lesser extent, use the tools of hybrid conflict. The principle
behind this is not just war plus information ops; it is much
more. It is to see state competition as Darwinian, with war as an
extension of politics—as set out by von Clausewitz—and politics
as an extension of conflict. The latter idea was peddled by
German world war General Erich Ludendorff in his book, “The Total
War”. China believes in something similar, as readers of
“Unrestricted Warfare”, published in the late 1990s, will know.
Our opponents are harsh, harsh realists. Their secret police
disappear people. They are not liberal internationalists.
Although they share legitimate interests, and we need to work on
those legitimate interests, their mindset is different from
ours.
Putin is a product of the KGB; an organisation involved in some
of the greatest crimes in human history, but one that, unlike the
SS, has never had to collectively accept responsibility. He is
both deeply rational and highly irrational. Russian integrated
strategic decision making is years ahead of the west. Its general
staff is probably the last Prussian organisation on earth. This
war has been planned for years. He knows that EU dependency on
energy is worsening and he has built up tens of billions in
reserves. I suspect he laughs at the ad hoc tactics of the west,
where we ask, “Do we do a no-fly zone? Do we do this? Do we do
that?” From him, this is, as Sun Tzu would say, “tactics before
strategy”—it is “noise before defeat”.
Putin is also fuelled by a bitter and cold anger at the loss of
the USSR—at the loss of Ukraine—which he cannot abide and refuses
to accept. This is the third stage of the Ukrainian conflict. The
first, between 2004 and 2014, involved economic and political
tools. The second stage, between 2014 and 2022, involved those as
well as paramilitary violence. In their hybrid tools, both Russia
and China seek elite capture in this country. We know about
Huawei and about the academics and the universities. Twice in
this House I have heard the claim that Huawei is a private
company. Anyone who knows anything about one-party states and
about communism knows that that is an incredible and bad claim
for a Minister, or for an official putting words into a
Minister’s mouth, to be saying. Both countries use covert
military force. Both use an intimidating conventional military
presence. Both use culture. Both use covert control of the
media.
So what is our response? First, it is to understand our
adversaries and potential enemies, because they spent a great
deal of time understanding us. We need to keep reaching out to
their leaders, however futile that now is in the case of Russia,
and to their people. We also need to have a conversation in our
own house about how we clean up our own house—about the Bills we
need to bring in, which I have mentioned: the foreign lobbying
law; the data protection law; and the laws on economic
crimes.
That is just a start. If Confucius Institutes wish to remain in
this country, they must stop spying on Chinese students, and be
willing to discuss Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square. If not, they
should be shut down. Military dual-use work should be banned.
Work for Chinese military universities should be banned.
Recruiters for the Chinese secret agencies need to be exposed and
prosecuted. Front organisations such as the Chinese Students and
Scholars Association should be banned. [Interruption.] I am aware
of the time, Mr Deputy Speaker. We need to become significantly
less strategically dependent on industry and manufacturing from
China, not least because of the environmental damage they do to
our state. Globalisation has in many ways been a force for good,
but we need to have a conversation with ourselves about whether
offshoring so much of our industry is a good thing.
The military dividend—the peace dividend—is over. Spending 2% on
defence is not acceptable. To put it crudely, we need a bigger
Navy and a bigger Air Force. We need to rebuild our alliances
throughout the world. If there is one thing unique about British
strategic culture—one of the greatest things this country has
done in 200 years, arguably more than any other—it is our ability
to build alliances throughout the world. We need to be at the
heart of the building of new alliances. Potentially, our second
carrier should be part of the CANZUK—Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and UK—fleet. Potentially, we should put a physical NATO
base in the Suwalki gap between Kaliningrad on one side and
Belarus on the other.
I could go on but I am mindful of the time, so let me sum up.
There are two courses for humanity in the 21st century. The first
is the western model of a law-governed society with politicians
under the control of the people. It is incredibly imperfect, as
we all know, but it is the best hope for mankind. The second is
the new militarism of high-tech authoritarianism that is
championed by Russia, and a little bit by China. It promises the
data-inspired, artificial-intelligence control of populations. We
need foresight, strategy and resolve to fight to defend our
values and the future of humanity. We should not underestimate
the scale of the task nor shy away from it. The defence of human
freedom, wherever it is in the world—in Taiwan, Ukraine, the
Baltic or the Black sea—is the struggle for our age.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. I inform the House that we will look to start the wind-ups
at around about quarter to 3, with the next debate starting at
around 10 past, so will Members please be conscious of the length
of their speeches?
1.31pm
(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight () on securing this important
debate. His timing could not have been better.
It is clear from today’s events that we live no longer in an era
of change but in a change of era. That has three significant
implications for our strategy on Russia and China, which is why
the hon. Gentleman’s timing today is so fortunate. The three
shifts entail a worldview different from that of UK policy
makers, and they require a shift in our defensive strategy and a
renaissance in creative diplomatic strategy whereby, quite
simply, we in this country need to build a new rules-based order
for the new silk road.
Let me start with the new worldview that is going to be needed. I
generally try to avoid a Manichean view of the world as divided
into black and white, because the world is more complicated than
that, but the truth is that, from Kaliningrad through to
Kamchatka, we are now witness to the creation of an enormous
kleptosphere. Inside the borders of that kleptosphere, the
merciless logic is that might is right: in the old phrase, the
strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. We
have to be the guardians of what we might call the
“canon-osphere”—the space around the world where there are rules,
there is the rule of law and there is justice.
Just as we once rid the world of piracy and slave trading, we now
have to be the place that leads the charge against economic
crime, no matter where that crime is perpetrated. We have to be
the guardians of the new rules-based order for this simple
reason: if we think the scale of global corruption today is bad,
we must think for a moment about the world that is to come. The
World Bank estimates that the value of natural resources in
countries with bad corruption scores is $65 trillion. Imagine the
world of the future, in which those natural resources are
extracted and the profits go to some of the worst people on
earth. That is why there is now an urgency for a very different
kind of philosophy to guide our foreign policy. We have to be the
place, the country, the leader that seeks a world of not simply
free trade but clean trade. That must be one of the defining
features of our foreign policy for the years to come.
The second dimension is that we obviously need new defences. We
in this House have to confront the reality that our strategy of
deterrence has failed. Most of us who spoke in the debate on the
economic sanctions were profoundly disappointed with the weakness
of the package proposed. Frankly, many of us feel that the Prime
Minister was a little late to the party. “Too little, too late”
will be written on his political gravestone, I fear. None the
less, we must now accept that the threat of sanctions has failed
and we must now offer President Putin the iron fist. That has to
take aim at Russia’s key strategic weakness, which is its 20 km
border.
We must now envisage a different security environment along the
Russian border. That means that we should have proactive talks
with Finland and Sweden about how they partner with NATO; it
means further reinforcing our presence in the Baltics; it means
new kinds of conversations at the other end of the border, in
Georgia; it means thinking about how we take on and equip those
fighting the insurgencies in places such as South Ossetia and
Transnistria; and it means that we have to take a completely
different approach to the Balkans, and step up and accelerate the
path towards NATO membership for Bosnia-Herzegovina.
We now have to start to roll NATO forward in strength across the
border, so that President Putin’s tactical advance results in
what is ultimately a strategic defeat. I am afraid part and
parcel of that is that we will have to consider the deployment of
intermediate ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe. The truth
is that the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty broke down
because President Putin was breaking the rules and deploying
SSC-8 missiles, which were prohibited by that treaty. Russia has
built very effective anti-access and area-denial systems that
safeguard it against air and naval attack. A defence against
ground-launched cruise missiles is much more difficult. The
Secretary-General of NATO has been right to rule out arming those
missiles with nuclear warheads, but we must now think more
aggressively about our defence posture, given the security threat
President Putin now poses to this great homeland of Europe.
The final point I wish to make clear is that it is time for
British grand strategy to go through something of a renaissance.
This is not an original point of mine but something that people
such as have been writing about for
some time. If we look back over history, we see so many examples
of how, when Russian and Chinese leaders feel strong at home,
they advance into the periphery—into the borderland. That was
true under Tsar Nicholas and under the Qing empire, and it is
true today. That means that a corridor of chaos is potentially
going to stretch from the Baltic to Ukraine, down through Syria
and Iran, through Kashmir, into Myanmar, into North Korea and
into the South China sea.
We have not only to think creatively and imaginatively about how
we provide a security environment for that space but to think
anew about creating a Marshall plan for that space, just as we
did in Europe after world war two. Then, we created the OECD to
foster Europe’s economic development; we now need to do the same
for the silk road. The passage to India, the Pacific and beyond
now needs a British-led institution that looks imaginatively at
how we create new infrastructure. China will be spending
something like $1.5 trillion on infrastructure across this great
border zone. What are we spending? We do not know, but we could
be using our skills to identify the infrastructure priorities in
places such as Pakistan. We could be thinking imaginatively about
how we mobilise infrastructure finance. London has been the home
of infrastructure finance since we defeated Napoleon and Nathan
Rothschild created the international bond market in London.
We have the wherewithal to mobilise sovereign wealth funds, which
are growing radically and quickly in places such as the Gulf, and
deploying that money in good strong contracts, with good strong
standards, that avoid the kind of mistakes that we saw in the
early days of the Qatari world cup stadium-building programme. We
could be a force for good in building infrastructure, in
financing infrastructure, and in making sure that there are good
rules around that.
We could be thinking imaginatively about how we create free trade
across this zone. We could be thinking imaginatively about how we
settle disputes. We could be thinking imaginatively about the
legal services and the consulting services that we offer out of
London into this space. The reality is that, by 2050, the
economies of the new silk road will be worth two and a half times
the value of the economies on the Atlantic seaboard. The economic
centre of gravity is moving east. This is possibly where I differ
from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight. In my view, we need to
think imaginatively about offering the welcoming hand of trade as
well as offering a strong shield and a strong sword.
I will finish with a quote from Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of
State after world war two, who famously boasted that he was
present at the creation. He warned us that
“the future comes one day at a time.”
We now do not have a single day to waste. That is why this debate
is so very important.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
1.41pm
(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 () 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 ( )
I will have to introduce a six-minute time limit to protect this
business and the next business.
1.47pm
(Stockport) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight () for securing this important
debate. The eyes of the world may be focused elsewhere at
present, but it is vital that we do not lose sight of other
nations where people face abuses. My thoughts and prayers are
with the people of Ukraine today as they face aggression.
Military aggression in Ukraine is not acceptable, and the House
stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
I thank the Office of Tibet, Tibet Action and Free Tibet for
their briefings ahead of this debate. I thank, too, the all-party
group for Tibet for all the work that it does. I declare an
interest as the vice-chair of the said all-party group. I was
pleased to have the opportunity to meet the Office of Tibet in
London last year at the Labour party conference where I heard
about the experiences of the Tibetan people.
Since it was annexed more than 70 years ago, occupied Tibet has
been closed off to much of the rest of the world, preventing us
from witnessing the repression against the people that live in
the region. According to the Free Tibet campaign, the Chinese
Government have been orchestrating a deliberate and systematic
elimination of Tibet’s distinct and unique cultural, religious
and linguistic identity through a sinicization of Tibetan
Buddhism, its culture and its language.
Worryingly, those sinicization measures are reported to have
increased in intensity over the past decade, reflecting the
Chinese Government’s further attempts to subdue the Tibetans, who
continue to resist the occupation. This process includes the
Chinese Government’s bilingual education policy of replacing the
Tibetan language—the common language of all Tibetans—with
Mandarin. In the words of the Free Tibet campaign, this
“strikes at the very root of the Tibetan identity”.
It was reported late last year that two teenage Tibetan students
were detained for opposing Chinese-only instruction in their
school. A Tibetan teacher was also arrested after her
Tibetan-language school was forced to close. According to
research by the Tibet Action Institute, as many as 900,000
Tibetan children are estimated to have been separated from their
families, while the teaching of the Tibetan language has faced
further restrictions, with limitations on monasteries that wish
to provide language classes.
Last month, I asked our Government whether they had raised that
exact issue, specifically regarding Chinese-run boarding schools
in Tibet, with their counterparts in China. I must say that the
response to my written parliamentary question was disappointing.
Although I am encouraged to hear that measures are being taken to
urge the Chinese Government to respect the rights of all its
citizens, including those in Tibet, I appeal to the Minister
today to push specifically on this issue to ensure that families
do not continue to be coerced into sending their children to
residential boarding schools.
Nor has religion emerged unscathed from this process, with the
Chinese Government imposing a raft of restrictions that are
almost certainly designed to make Tibetan Buddhism compatible
with President Xi’s vision of “religion with Chinese
characteristics”, as he has described it. In reality, that has
meant limitations on the influence of Tibetan Buddhism in
community life and monasteries repeatedly being placed under
Government control and surveillance. In practice, that means all
monasteries being forced to fly Chinese flags and hang portraits
of political figures on their premises.
The Government are also accused of proactively coercing Tibetans
into renouncing any allegiance to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a
process that also extends to outlawing the portraits of His
Holiness and arresting Tibetans who carry out seemingly small
acts of resistance such as calling for his return to Tibet or
singing songs that wish him a happy birthday. In the past three
years alone, authorities have ordered Tibetans to place shrines
to President Xi and other Government leaders inside their homes
in place of religious figures. The Free Tibet campaign also
reports that in some counties, authorities have gone to such
lengths as physically inspecting households to ensure that that
order has been carried out.
Finally, I will focus briefly on Drago county in eastern Tibet.
Since last October the county, which is in Sichuan province, has
been the site of a series of demolitions of sites of religious
and cultural significance, accompanied by arbitrary arrests and
alleged torture. One such example is reports of Government
officials tearing down a Tibetan Buddhist monastic school that
once housed more than 100 young Tibetan students. That was
followed soon afterwards by the destruction of two Lord Buddha
statues, including one that stood almost 100 feet tall, the
construction of which was only completed in 2015 with funds
donated by Tibetans and Buddhist disciples.
Further evidence of Government aggression and destruction
includes the demolition of several monks’ residences, in addition
to monastery prayer flags being removed and burned. It is clear
to those who witnessed those incidents that, as well as lacking
any free or informed consultation with the locals, the
demolitions were carried out very deliberately to cause maximum
distress, with members of the community in some cases ordered to
assist in tearing down schools and statues, and others forced to
watch. I hope the Minister will make a note of those ongoing
events, given that the forced inspections continue to take place
on an almost daily basis, which has led to the lives of all those
involved rapidly deteriorating.
I want to highlight that 10 March is observed annually as Tibet
Uprising Day. In 1959, hundreds of thousands of Tibetans banded
together to revolt, in defiance of the Chinese invasion a decade
earlier. That peaceful protest was violently crushed by the
Chinese Government.
In closing, I urge the Minister to heed the concerns of hon.
Members on both sides and push the Governments of China and
Russia to ensure that all rights are respected, and that a way of
life is not imposed on people that leads to the destruction and
desecration of everything from the heritage to the culture,
language and even the very identity of the Tibetan people. Their
voices must continue to be heard.
1.53pm
(North Somerset) (Con)
The world order is at a pivotal point in history. From Moscow to
Tehran to Beijing, autocratic rulers are attempting to enforce
their undemocratic models not only on their own people, but on
those beyond their borders. What we are witnessing in Ukraine
today is the starkest example of that frightful and frightening
phenomenon.
Almost unbelievably, in the 21st century we are witnessing the
invasion of a peaceful European state by an armed
aggressor—something we have not seen since the actions of Nazi
Germany in the 1930s. Yet, in a warped and perverted view of
history, Putin last night compared Ukraine to Nazi Germany,
painting it as a genocidal state that poses a threat to the
Russian people. That can only be true in the deranged analysis of
Putin’s mind as he unleashes a tsunami of violence against the
people of Ukraine.
How could Ukraine be a threat to Russia? Russia has 4,100
aircraft; Ukraine has 318. Russia has 772 fighters; Ukraine has
69. Russia has 1,543 helicopters; Ukraine has 112. Russia has
12,400 tanks; Ukraine has 2,600. Let us also remember that
Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal at the end of the Soviet era
on the basis of a guarantee that it would not be invaded by
Russia. One wonders whether, if Ukraine had maintained its
nuclear deterrent, those tanks would be rolling across Ukrainian
territory today.
Make no mistake: Putin will continue to challenge the
international order and advance his imperial agenda until he is
decisively confronted. He seeks to reverse the democratic result
of the 1991 Ukraine referendum and resurrect the Soviet empire.
With increased security control in Eurasia over recent years, the
Baltic states and Ukraine stand as outliers—those states that
have stayed beyond Moscow’s malignant grip.
The implications are clear. We must now increase the NATO
presence in the Baltic states, as well as in Poland, Slovakia,
Hungary and Romania, which will now be on the frontline. NATO
countries must be willing now not only to raise the proportion of
their GDP that they give to defence, but to give that money to
NATO rather than making paper promises.
(Swansea West)
(Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman mentions that Russia has 12,400 tanks.
He will know that the Prime Minister mentioned that we had sent
2,000 anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Does he think we are doing
enough to provide assets to Ukraine to defend itself?
No, we have not been doing enough. Since we saw the occupation of
Crimea in 2014, many of us, including some who are in the House
today, have been arguing that the west should be giving Ukraine
the proper capabilities to defend itself. It is clear today that
we did not do so—something that I will come to in a moment.
Since sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2014, it has paid down
state debt, had significant import substitution to make it less
dependent on outside producers, and made large investments in
European metallurgy, energy and critical infrastructure. In 2020,
the inward stock of foreign direct investment in the UK from
Russia was £681 million, and the equivalent EU figure was £112
billion. Sanctions must include restrictions on all Russian
investment if we are to stop Russia from wriggling out of any new
sanctions that are applied because of what it has done today.
To go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Swansea West
(), I hope the House will
forgive me for quoting an article I wrote on 22 February 2015,
which said that an option would be
“to give the Ukrainians the capabilities they most require in
order to defend themselves against the military superiority of
the pro-Russian separatists and their Kremlin allies.
Primarily, this would involve properly encrypted communications,
UAVs for surveillance and targeting and anti-tank capabilities to
deal with the massive deficit which the Ukrainians currently have
on this front.
There is increasing scepticism in Washington that any diplomatic
solution reached with the Putin government will be as worthless
as that achieved in Minsk last September.”
What was true at that time about NATO is true today:
“Everybody wants the insurance policy, but too few want to pay
the premiums.
Western nations are too afraid to reallocate funds from their
welfare addicted domestic populations to their national security
budget and Russia knows it.”
National security is the first duty of all Governments. Today’s
shocking events should be a clear reminder of that to all of
us.
The challenge of Ukraine is likely to be faced elsewhere, as
despots start to believe that the west is weaker than it has been
for many a long year. It will be a challenge to our values, our
democratic way of life and our security. All of us in politics,
at whatever level, should remember this: politics is essentially
binary. Either we shape the world around us, or we will be shaped
by the world around us.
I believe that the values we hold and the history and culture
that we defend are worth not only protecting for ourselves, but
extending to those in the rest of the world who should have a
right to enjoy the same freedoms and benefits we have. The
gauntlet was picked up by previous generations. The question is
whether we will have the courage to do so today.
1.59pm
(Orkney and Shetland)
(LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North
Somerset (). I was reflecting as he spoke that it is now almost 40
years since our paths first crossed at the University of Glasgow.
It is fair to say that our shared history has not always been
characterised by broad agreement, but there was very little that
he said today with which I would disagree.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight () on securing this debate. As
others have said, it is timely in a way that I suspect even he
would not have imagined when he made the application to the
Backbench Business Committee.
The House knows of my interest in our relations with China—I am
co-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Hong Kong and
on the Uyghur population—but today I want to focus my remarks on
our relationship with Russia. Before I do so, I pose a fairly
basic question to the House: if we acquiesce in Putin invading
and occupying Ukraine on the basis that it is ethnically and
linguistically Russian, which is his purported basis, what would
we say to China if it were then to take the same action in
relation to Taiwan? Consistency matters.
(Caerphilly) (Lab)
Equally, if we acquiesce in what is happening now, the same
argument could be deployed by Putin with regard to many other
parts of eastern Europe.
Mr Carmichael
That is exactly the case. We know that this is how Putin works.
He will take so much, consolidate, bank it and let time pass,
trade continues and then he asks for more. It is not just Putin;
it is despots throughout history. The parallels with other
despots in European history are there for all to see and I fear
that we cannot ignore them for much longer.
I have to place on record my frustration that this debate is now
the only opportunity that we will have to discuss this—as
distinct from the Prime Minister’s statement, because a statement
is not a debate—until a week on Monday. If nothing else, the
opportunity for this House to debate specifically what is
happening in Ukraine would be a very important signal for us to
send to fellow parliamentarians in Ukraine that we stand with
them in defending their democracy.
We may be shocked by what we have seen happen today, but we
should not be in any way surprised. It has been obvious for weeks
and months—some might even say years—that this day was always
going to come. It grieves me more than anything else that our
Government’s response to this challenge so far has been, bluntly,
pusillanimous. The scale and nature of the sanctions that have
been brought forward is wholly inadequate. We also have to get
real about the opportunities that economic sanctions will bring
us. Because of the way in which we have pursued our trade policy
in the past decade or so, Putin has built up a reported reserve
in the region of $640 billion, so it is clear that he will be
able to withstand economic sanctions for some time, and we should
not overestimate the opportunities that they bring.
With Putin, and others like him, it is always important to see
that we have sent the right signals. What signals have we sent—by
“we” I mean western Europeans—since 2014? We allowed Germany to
go ahead and negotiate the construction of Nord Stream
2 a project that was designed specifically to take Ukraine
out of the equation and allow a continued supply of gas from
Russia to Europe.
I, like many people, find myself in a difficult contest between
what my head and my heart tell me. My head tells me that we have
seen all this before. My head tells me that despots using foreign
policy to distract attention from problems at home is nothing new
and only ends in one way. My head tells me that the proposition
that national boundaries should be defined on ethnic or
linguistic grounds is a dangerous road for any country to be
going down. My head tells me that history tells us that
appeasement never works. But at the same time my heart says that
this risks taking us to a place where we have armed conflict on
continental Europe. As somebody who was born in 1965 and brought
up through the ’70s and ’80s, I believed that that was impossible
and unthinkable, but now we need to confront that very real
possibility.
I said that the Government’s response has been inadequate. That
has been illustrated to me today by calls and emails I have
received from constituents who tell me that at Sullum Voe oil
terminal in Shetland, the oil tanker NS Challenger—which is owned
and operated by Sovcomflot, a company wholly owned by the Russian
Government—is, as we speak, loading oil for export out of
Shetland. What does that tell us? It tells us that everything
that the Government have said this week has been heard in Russia
and has been understood, in simple terms, as saying that it is
business as usual. “Why on earth”, my constituents ask me, “are
we currently exporting as strategically important a commodity as
oil out of Shetland in Russian-owned and operated tankers?” I do
not know what answer I can give them other than that we have
continued, even at the 11th hour and 59th minute, to send the
wrong signals. We need to return to this in the days and weeks to
come, but for now the challenge that we have is to the post-war
rules-based international order. If we acquiesce in the face of
that challenge, frankly, we do not end anywhere that is a good
place.
2.06pm
(Harwich and North Essex)
(Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Orkney
and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who stands out as the only Scottish
Member of Parliament who voted for the renewal of Trident in
2016. That is a great credit to him and to his prescience,
because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset
() said, if there was ever a demonstration of the futility
of nuclear disarmament, it is the position that Ukraine finds
itself in now. Yet that is the policy of the SNP and of a great
number of Labour MPs, and they are a threat to our national
security.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight
() on securing this debate. As the
dark shadow of war once again falls across our entire continent,
I reflect on the adage attributed to Leon Trotsky:
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in
you.”
Everyone who loathes war and wants peace should reflect on that.
If other people are determined to foment war, we have to take an
interest.
The question in this debate is how we should now see Russia and
China and the relationship between them. In the UK, we see Russia
as an immediate threat, but China as perhaps the much greater
long-term challenge. In the US, it is different. All US
presidents since Obama have seen China as the existential threat
and today’s Russia as yesterday’s problem, Europe’s problem, and
a regional rather than a global threat. There are, to be sure,
specialists in the US who understand that, like China, Russia is
a long-term opponent, but their voices must compete with those
who are effectively advocating appeasement for Russia—resets,
normalisation, and the overlooking of previous illegal
incursions, overseas assassinations, cyber-attacks on NATO allies
and so on.
In Europe, Germany understands the existential nature of the
Russian threat, but has until very recently pursued a policy of
engagement with Russia. This now looks to have been deeply
unwise. It has created serious vulnerability for Germany and for
Europe as a whole. France, historically anti-American, must now
accept that Russia presents the threat. Even this week, the
French were, understandably, trying to use this to their
advantage to prove their global influence and to try to secure
peace. But all of Europe must now be united.
Nor is the United Kingdom beyond criticism. We have a firm
understanding of the Russia problem in our analytical community,
and of China, but until recently successive Prime Ministers chose
to turn a blind eye to both problems. This is now changing, but
the UK finds itself without the necessary tools to tackle the
Russia threat and the China challenge. Our military has lost its
ability to fight a peer enemy. Our legal system allows Russians
and Chinese agents to exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in
democracy. Our own blind reliance on spot markets to obtain
cheaper gas has undermined our energy security. I have spoken
before about how the UK Government lack the capacity for deep
continuous strategic thinking to match the strategy and planning
of our enemies, and I will return to that point.
Putin and President Xi have observed years of western failure to
react to Russian encroachments and Chinese anti-democratic
influence. We have encouraged them to join together in thinking
that, despite our bluster, Putin’s taking Ukraine and China’s
expanding influence are in their mutual interests and will remain
largely unchallenged. That must now change, and it is changing.
Until recently, it seemed that Putin might succeed, as he did in
Georgia and Crimea, but Putin has miscalculated. His bullying has
mobilised Ukraine’s resistance, is galvanizing support for NATO
in previously neutral nations such as Sweden and Finland, and is
rekindling Washington’s concern about Russia’s threat to global
peace.
The hon. Gentleman will have seen a map drawn by Putin of
Ukraine, where a lump is given to Ukraine by Stalin, another lump
by Lenin and another lump by Brezhnev. Does he agree that the
implicit plan is to take all that bit, to leave a little bit,
like a doughnut, for the Ukrainians to be corralled in, to have
them like the Uyghur population, to Russify the rest, to finish
off Ukraine and to take the large majority of it?
What is completely clear is that President Putin has repudiated
his own words and security guarantees that were given to Ukraine
on its existing borders.
Last night’s strikes by Russia on Ukraine’s military
infrastructure and border guard units, and the incursions of
military vehicles, show that there can be no compromise with
Putin. We will only find peace through strength. What is there to
negotiate? Putin is now seized by an irrational obsession to
crush Ukraine by one means or another. His performance on Russian
TV addressing his security council underlined how Putin is now
acting out his emotions—his frustration, wounded pride and lust
for revenge. According to him, only great powers count, and if
you cannot bully your smaller neighbours into submission, you are
not really a great power.
President Xi is very different from the usurper Putin. While
Russia represents great culture and history, Putin’s rogue regime
is fundamentally weak, trying to prove its power despite Russia’s
internal dysfunctionality and economic failure. China, however,
represents a far older, more consistent and altogether more
considered philosophical tradition. Putin acts impetuously;
President Xi demonstrates strategic patience. Russia is trying to
distract from its failures; China is building upon its success.
The task of the west is not only to deal effectively with Putin,
but to give a clear message to China and to other countries that
might consider endorsing or imitating Putin’s aggression.
To his credit, President Xi has now backed off from his earlier
strong support for Putin, as he came to realise that a full-scale
invasion of Ukraine will mobilise the west and enable the west to
strengthen its defences and have a more competitive stance,
against not only Russia, but China. China should reflect on the
questions now being asked in Washington and Europe, as raised by
my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset. Why should we
not formally recognise Taiwan’s sovereignty and its right to
self-determination, if China is to co-operate so easily with
Putin in Ukraine? China can use this moment to build trust with
the west. The west will continue to have great differences with
China, but we want to work together with China for global peace
and security and for a sustainable planet. We cannot begin to do
so if China aligns itself with the now rogue regime in
Moscow.
2.14pm
(The Cotswolds)
(Con)
I am grateful to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, in this
important debate. I will concentrate my remarks solely on the
west and Russia today, although I have a great deal of experience
in China.
By invading Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin is imposing misery
on the Ukrainian people and his own people, and economic hardship
on the rest of the world. Using military aggression to annex
sovereign countries is a 19th-century grand power concept in the
21st-century world, where we should be able to settle our
differences in a more sophisticated way. Putin wants to go down
in history as the leader who restored the Soviet Union. He is
tough, he appears not to respect the west or its leaders, and he
will not back down easily now that he has invaded Ukraine. We all
know what is going on even at this very minute, and how the whole
of Ukraine is coming under pressure, and I think it will probably
not be long before Kyiv falls.
It is completely false for Putin to claim that Ukraine, or at
least parts of Ukraine, belong to Russia due to historical ties.
Following such tenuous logic, other well-established European
sovereign states that were former members of the Soviet Union
would also “belong” to Russia, including the Baltics, or even
those countries that have historically fallen under the Russian
sphere of influence, such as Finland and Romania. I imagine many
of the countries that have borders with Russia feel very nervous
at this moment.
The fact is that Ukraine has gained independence and has had
democratic elections for 30 years this month. Indeed, as several
Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and
North Essex ( ), have said, Ukraine gave up
its atomic weapons following an agreement in 1994, which was
backed by a peace agreement by Russia, America, ourselves and
other nations. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North
Somerset () said, it would be interesting to postulate what would
have happened if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons.
While the west has responded with solidarity so far, it is very
much a first step. The annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 was
a first test by Putin of how the west would respond to his design
on rebuilding Russia’s soviet legacy, and we know that responding
weakly and ending sanctions as soon as we could has led to the
situation we find ourselves in today. The decisive western
leadership at the end of the cold war could not have been more
different. The strong alliance between Thatcher and Reagan was
crucial in the diplomacy that took place with Gorbachev, and
their combined policy led to the end of the cold war and the fall
of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
What should our response now be? The two main elements are
military and economic. Regarding military support, I am pleased
that for a number of years the UK has been supporting the defence
and security of Ukraine, helping to train more than 22,000
members of the Ukrainian army, as well as helping to expand the
Ukraine’s naval facilities and capability. There is plenty more
military support that we can provide without sending British
troops. I welcome the Defence Secretary’s recent announcements
about the defensive weapons we have been supplying, including
light anti-tank armour and defensive weapons systems, but there
is plenty more we could be doing, and I look forward to the
announcement that the Prime Minister will make at 5 o’clock this
evening. We could, for example, supply anti-aircraft missiles and
satellite communication intelligence on Russian troop movements,
which would help Ukraine plan its defence. We must continue to
re-supply the Ukraine military with anything it needs. We must
commit to do that until Russia leaves the sovereign country of
Ukraine, so that Russia knows it will not have an easy task in
attacking Ukraine.
What concerns me and many of my constituents in the Cotswolds is
the somewhat limited economic action we have taken so far. As I
have said, it is very much a first step, and we must look to
further economic sanctions. We should, for example, examine the
fact that Putin is one of the world’s richest men, with his
wealth estimated at £200 billion, largely distributed about the
world in dollars. We should go after that money and freeze it,
and we should go after the people who have helped him make that
money.
Furthermore, we should go after the oligarchs who surround Putin.
If we start to make them really uncomfortable in their pocket,
perhaps sooner or later they will start to influence Putin. We
need to do that rapidly, because people have the ability to move
money around the world very quickly these days. We should have
already passed an Act in this Parliament about how we can freeze
the sovereign debt of the Soviet Union, how we can get into the
SWIFT—Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication—system and stop money getting in and out of the
Soviet Union and how we can stop them dealing in dollars. The
right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said
that Putin has an arsenal of £650 billion, but that will soon run
down if we take effective economic measures.
The west must stand together, impose a full set of economic
sanctions and resupply Ukraine in any military way possible
without leading to full-scale troop insertions from the west.
Above all, we must continue to give Ukraine hope. We must keep
morale up. The Prime Minister was dead right to ring the
President of Ukraine this morning at 4 o’clock to keep that
morale up, and we must keep doing that.
2.20pm
(Bolton North East) (Con)
It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for
The Cotswolds ( ). As he was talking,
I was thinking about 1215, King John and his advisers and the
necessity to curtail power. President Putin needs to be put back
in his box. We need to support our Government in everything that
they are doing in the weeks and months ahead. I also thank my
hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight () for securing the debate in the
Chamber today, even though it is a sober one. My thoughts are
very much with my Ukrainian community in Bolton, where I have a
Ukrainian social club and cultural centre, led by Yaroslaw, in
the heart of my constituency.
Essentially, I will say three things to three different groups of
people. I will make a first point to the Minister, a second to
those with slightly more hawkish tendencies and a third to
China—although I do not think it necessarily watches our debates
that often. [Interruption.] Via the embassy, perhaps.
To the Minister, I say do not push China and Russia closer
together. To speak to the motion, that should be the case if the
Government are seeking to align their policy and strategy when it
comes to Russia and China.
To those who are more sceptical and see the threats in the world
at the moment, I say that we should choose strategy over
ideology, because ideology on its own is not a strategy. As has
been mentioned throughout the debate, one of our great advantages
in this country is the alliances that we have built over many
years and decades. We should be proud of them.
To China, I say that it has a chance to show leadership during
this crisis and to show that it can be more sophisticated on the
international stage. It is often the case that Chinese friends or
contacts of mine will say that they ai heping—love peace. When
they refer to Russia on social media, they will often refer to
Russians as a zhandou minzu—more of a fighting people. My call to
the Chinese in the midst of the biggest crisis that we have had
in Europe is that China does not play the game that Russia is
playing. It has a fantastic opportunity to show leadership.
On diplomacy and strategy, this week is 50 years since Nixon’s
detente with Mao Zedong. It is awfully striking that we see the
tectonic plates suddenly shifting again. My right hon. Friend the
Member for North Somerset () spoke articulately about a changing world order. I do
not fear the world order changing, because the only constant is
change, but how it is happening is completely wrong. How Russia
acted in 2014 over Crimea, and how it is acting in Ukraine today,
is completely wrong. There should be processes involved—a
democratic process—and that has not happened. That is why, in
this country, we have to stand by our values in the face of that
regime.
To continue thinking about western policy with Nixon, that week
was all about Kissinger’s foreign policy. Over the last few
years, the United States has had a reverse Kissinger approach to
develop the relationship with Russia as opposed to with China,
but that has failed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and
North Essex ( ) alluded to earlier. Who
will be the British Kissinger? Who will be the honest broker who
brings China on side?
The United Kingdom has a fantastic opportunity. We were a
superpower not that long ago and people in our society still
remember that time. We had a very peaceful transition of power to
the United States. We also have one of the most historical
bilateral relationships with China, which predates the United
States’ relationship and goes back to the Macartney mission in
1793 and touches on Lord Palmerston during the opium wars, which
was a sombre time in that relationship. The Chinese respect the
United Kingdom. They have a huge admiration for our culture and
civilisation. The British Council’s statistics on the perception
of the United Kingdom show that we are always among the most
favoured nations in the world.
I have only a minute left to speak, but I note that we should be
careful about conflating the issue of Taiwan with that of
Ukraine. It was mentioned earlier that the Chinese are savvy when
it comes to strategy. Indeed, Sunzi bingfa talks about shang bin
fa mo, or buzhan ersheng—to win without fighting—as referred to
by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight earlier.
In our Government, our country and our society, we need to be
careful about the short-termism that has come over us. Six months
ago, when we invited the Ukrainian ambassador to speak to the
all-party parliamentary group on Ukraine, three MPs turned up,
but we could see it coming down the line. Everything is too
last-minute and we are spending too much time in this Chamber and
in other parts of this place talking about things that are not as
important as the issue that is at hand now.
Those are the three messages. In closing, I say to the Minister
that she should not allow China and Russia to become too
close—
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
Order.
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I very much regret having
to do this. I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the House
and to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr
Carmichael), because I misconstrued his record. It was in fact my
right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and
Tweeddale () who was the only Scottish MP
who voted for the renewal of Trident in 2016. To the right hon.
Gentleman’s credit, however, he is not actually a unilateral
disarmer.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Thank you for the point of order, Sir Bernard. The record will
now be corrected.
2.26pm
(Congleton) (Con)
The International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance is just
two years old this month. It is a growing group of 35 countries;
I am pleased to say that two more have just joined. Each country
has a Government-appointed representative, such as me, the Prime
Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief. The
UK has the privilege of chairing the alliance in 2022. It is an
active network of like-minded countries that are committed to
advancing freedom of religion or belief around the world.
In 2020, Ukraine was a country that early committed to the
principles and membership of the alliance—a commitment that
cannot be lightly given or automatically accepted. Our principles
are on the IRFBA website. It has been my privilege as chair of
the alliance to work with alliance country representatives, and I
put on record my appreciation of Ukraine’s active commitment to
the work of the alliance, which so often includes working for the
freedom of others in countries around the world.
As our Prime Minister said to Ukrainians today, as Russia invades
their borders,
“we are with you, we are praying for you and your families, and
we are on your side.”
Indeed, we are on their side in their passionate belief that the
people of Ukraine should be just as free to live by the
principles of IRFBA, which Ukraine as a country is committed to
championing for others across the world.
I believe that IRFBA is one of the alliances referred to by the
Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, whom I thank for his
interest in the alliance, as having greater potential to work for
the common good across the world. As the Prime Minister has said
in this place:
“We all know that wherever freedom of belief is under attack,
other human rights are under attack as well.”—[Official Report,
11 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 898.]
Sadly, violations against freedom of religion or belief are
increasing across the world, not least due to the unwarranted
abuse of state power.
In that regard, I turn now from Russia to China. The Sino-British
joint declaration was registered in 1985 with the UN as a legally
binding international treaty intended to remain in force for 50
years. Yet as we all know—we have become all too familiar with
the overt restrictions on rights and the encroachment on human
rights on mainland China—over the past three years, Hong Kong’s
freedoms, democracy, human rights and autonomy have been rapidly
and dramatically dismantled and the rule of law increasingly
undermined. One by one, we have seen basic freedoms destroyed,
with the imprisonment of protesters, legislators and journalists,
the closure of almost all independent or pro-democracy media
outlets and threats to academic freedom.
Until recently, arguably one of the few remaining freedoms not
overtly affected was freedom of religion or belief, but there are
now increasing reasons to be concerned. Over the past two years,
since the imposition of the draconian national security law,
there have been numerous examples of freedom of religion or
belief in Hong Kong coming under pressure. In 2020, the Hong Kong
Catholic diocese discouraged lay Catholics from organising a
public prayer campaign for the city, and the apostolic
administrator at the time, Cardinal John Tong, issued a letter to
all Catholic clergy urging them to be careful in their sermons.
His exact phrase was “Watch your language”. Also that year, Hong
Kong police raided the premises of Good Neighbour North District
church, and HSBC froze the bank accounts of the church and its
pastor.
More recently, just at the end of last month, the pro-Beijing
newspaper Ta Kung Pao carried four articles attacking the Church.
They contained a specific critique of Hong Kong’s bishop
emeritus, Cardinal Joseph Zen; alleged that many of the
protesters in 2019 were educated in Christian schools and accused
churches of being behind the protests; and called for fresh
Government regulations to control religious institutions. As
experts have noted, when the Chinese Communist party regime
intends to launch a new campaign or crackdown, it often trails it
in pro-Beijing media first, so these articles in Ta Kung Pao are
ominous.
Let us also remember that many of those currently in prison,
including several whom I have had the privilege of meeting, are
people of faith—jailed not directly because of their faith, but
because of their courageous struggle for democracy, freedom and
human rights, and often motivated by their faith. While the
threats to freedom of religion or belief in Hong Kong currently
may be much more subtle than those in some other countries and
not today in the same fierce spotlight, that is no reason to be
complacent. Indeed, it is all the more reason to call out these
early warning signs and monitor the situation ever more
closely.
2.32pm
(Gainsborough) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this debate. As
much as anybody in the House of Commons, having been chairman of
the all-party group on Russia and being married to someone who is
half-Russian, I have sought to understand Russia and the mindset
of its leaders. What I am going to say in no way amounts to my
approval of what is going through the mind of Vladimir Putin; I
heartily condemn what has happened this morning. However, in this
country and in the west, we think of the relationship of Russia
and Ukraine in a rather similar vein to how we thought of the
relationship between Germany and Poland before the second world
war. Russian nationalists such as Mr Putin have a completely
different mindset.
In his speech a couple of days ago, Mr Putin said that the Soviet
Union “created” Ukraine, and in a way that is partly true. What
happened was that there was a brief upsurge of Ukrainian
nationalism in 1918 and 1919, following the collapse of the
tsarist empire, but Lenin quickly snuffed out Ukrainian
independence and in effect made Ukraine a vassal state. When
Putin says that Ukraine has always been part of Russia, in a
sense he is right because, following the partitions of Poland in
the 1770s and the 1790s, Ukraine was an integral part of Russia
for nearly 200 years. When we look inside the mind of a Russian
nationalist such as Mr Putin, we can see that he does not
recognise Ukraine as an independent state.
I have heard a lot of criticism of the responses of our
Government and of NATO generally, but I think that nothing we
could have done differently would have changed that mindset or
probably avoided what has happened today. I personally think that
the response of western Governments and of NATO up to now has
been right and proportionate. What we have avoided doing, and
must continue to avoid doing, is playing to the victimhood
mindset of many Russian nationalists. They believe that they were
humiliated by the west following the fall of the Soviet Union,
particularly by President Clinton. They believe that Secretary of
State Baker gave a solemn promise that NATO would not expand
eastwards. Whether or not that is right is not important; they
believe it.
President Putin has claimed, completely wrongly, that we are
trying to make a vassal state of Ukraine, and he has used the
issue of NATO membership to justify his actions. We could not
have said to an independent country such as Ukraine that it could
never join NATO, but the reality is that NATO has never made any
effort to actually move this application forward. Indeed, the
German Chancellor said only in the last week that Ukraine’s
membership of NATO was “not on the agenda”, so when Putin claims
that we are trying to make Ukraine a vassal state, he is
lying.
What do we do now? I know that what I am going to say may not be
very popular with some, but I think we have to continue with the
strategy we have pursued so far. The Government have been
attacked for the so-called weakness of their sanctions, but the
sanctions they imposed earlier this week were only part of the
story. What I am sure we will hear tonight is much stricter
sanctions that will really hurt the Russian state. People will
say that this is weak and that there should be some warlike
response, and people will say that we should have allowed Ukraine
to keep nuclear weapons, that we should arm the Ukrainians and
that Ukraine should join NATO, but this is the path to war.
It is sometimes difficult to speak of a path to peace, but if we
escalate issues and go into a tit-for-tat situation, then war can
result. At the height of the first world war, the German
Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg was asked how the war started, and
he said that he had no idea how it started and no idea how it
escalated.
As ever, my right hon. Friend is making some very sensible
points. I do not think NATO should be asking Ukraine for
membership, which is a 20-year path, because it simply enrages
Putin, and it gives him a chance to respond and to claim that
NATO membership is imminent. However, there is a difference
between NATO membership, which is a red rag to a bull, and
ensuring that Ukraine is too bitter a pill for Russia to swallow.
Arming and training an independent, separate or Finland-like
Ukrainian army is different from getting into a position where we
are in direct conflict with the Russians.
Well, I suspect that is what we have done. However, the German
state simply sending helmets or a field hospital to Ukraine or
our sending a few anti-tank handheld missiles will make no
difference at all. I am not criticising the Government: we have
gone through the motions, but the fact is that nothing we could
have done would have been sufficient to arm the Ukrainian state
well enough to be able to resist Russian aggression.
I want to say to the Government that they have to pursue the path
of peace, and I do not think we should decry sanctions. Putin has
now moved into the dark side of history, but if we cut off Russia
entirely from the rest of the world economically, we can make a
difference. I am sure what is going to be announced tonight will
start the process of proving that the west can be resolute and
determined that we are not playing to Putin’s war game and have
never sought to make Ukraine in any sense a vassal state of the
west. There was no intention—this is a complete lie—that nuclear
weapons or a dirty bomb could have been restored to Ukraine. The
Government have to pursue the path of peace, impose the most
rigorous economic sanctions and not escalate to war.
My last point is that the Government should not hold the Russian
people responsible for this. Most Russian people I know, and
Ukrainian people, are not interested in this warped view of
history and sense of victimhood. All they want is to get on with
their lives in peace. They just do not want war: they do not want
war between Russia and Ukraine, and they do not want war between
the west and Russia.
2.39pm
(Gloucester) (Con)
As chair of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the
all-party China group, it is a great pleasure to speak last—I
think—from the Back Benches in this debate, which has been
brilliantly timed by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight
().
It is an extraordinary thing. No one could criticise the energy
of our defence and diplomatic engagement with Ukraine and Russia
in the past few weeks and even months. It is also true, however,
that a united western approach, whether on defence, cyber, energy
or even legislation, has been lacking, and that is what,
paradoxically, President Putin may be helping to bring about. Our
own analysis has been in the integrated review for a year and a
half: “Global Britain in a Competitive Age” clearly outlines
Russia as the most acute direct threat, and China as a systemic
competitor. Nor do we lack policy goals in either direction. We
aspire to be the leading European ally in NATO, and have the
broadest, most integrated presence of any European partner in the
Indo-Pacific, in support of mutually beneficial trade, shared
security and values.
However, the best plans have to adapt to facts on the ground, so
let us identify the challenge before us which, as the head of the
Security Service put it the other day, is
“a contest of different worlds…between the liberal democrat model
west and the more authoritarian model nations.”
In my view, that is only partly true, because we do—and
should—work closely with nations and societies, whether in the
middle east, Africa or Asia, that could not be described as
following a liberal democrat model, but that may not wish for a
change of global leadership.
In that new environment, we must think carefully about what our
approach should be, and I believe the first thing is to define
British interests, which include a global Britain, not a Britain
decoupled from the world—as the head of the Security Service made
clear, there is no need to cut ourselves off from the world. It
involves understanding autocrats through engagement. In the
context of China, that engagement very much includes forums such
as the UK-China Leadership Forum, which brings British and
Chinese leaders together to talk about issues of strong bilateral
and indeed global interest. It includes the work of a Foreign and
Commonwealth Development Office non-departmental body, the Great
Britain-China Centre, and the all-party China group. That group
has now run its first masterclass for Members of Parliament, so
that we all have a better grasp of some of the issues, whether
that is mainland China, the bilateral relationship, Taiwan, Hong
Kong—whatever. Such courses play an important part in expanding
our knowledge of the autocracies of the world. Engagement has
suffered hugely from this pandemic. It has been terrible for
engagement, as it is effectively impossible to travel to China or
Hong Kong if one has to quarantine for three weeks, and that lack
of physical contact is always dangerous in a more uncertain
world.
Within that, our approach needs to consider a number of different
things. First, careful scrutiny, not blanket prejudice, is
incredibly important. Colleagues across the House have talked
about not having any danger of prejudice against the peoples of
Russia or China, as that would be contrary to everything that
this House and democracies stand for. More trade and investment
is a good thing; it brings countries closer together and ties us
all in, while protecting our national security. Other colleagues
have raised ways in which we can and should do that, and we have
been too slow to do so.
We also need to define our positive interests as much as the
things we dislike. There is sometimes a danger in this House that
while we are good at criticising what we do not like, we do not
make enough of what is positive—what is good about our own
country, what we need to do more of, and how we can engage with
the world more effectively.
Through his chairmanship of the all-party China group, my hon.
Friend and neighbour has probably done more than anybody in this
House to engage with China. One thing he has always done when
engaging with China is to be absolutely frank with the Chinese
where they have got it wrong, as well as where they have it
right. Is that how we should go forward?
My hon. Friend and neighbour is very kind. I have always felt it
incredibly important that we stand up for our values, and for the
past 11 years, as chair of the all-party China group, I have
never accepted mainland Chinese sponsorship of the group. That is
precisely because I knew that somewhere along the line, that
would be perceived as the group being obliged to a nation
overseas, with whose values we do not always align. I have always
felt it incredibly important to speak truth to power, whether
that is our own Ministers, who may not always relish that, or
foreign countries. It is all about the tone and how we engage,
understanding where foreign countries, in particular autocracies,
are coming from. There is no need for us to compromise on our
values, but there is every need to find a way of co-existing
peacefully with countries that will be here for a very long time
to come. Our greatest challenge will be how we balance those two
things.
I will conclude by musing on the fact that the story of the 20th
century is fundamentally a story of how nationalist autocracies
underestimated the resolve of the democratic west to come
together in defence of what we believe in. It would be the
cruellest irony and the greatest shame if the same were now to
happen in our own century. For all those reasons, it is even more
important that we double, triple, quadruple our engagement with
those of different values in different systems, so that we
understand where they are coming from and are better prepared to
unite in a strategic approach together, if need be, to counter
threats to our own future.
2.46pm
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight () 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 ( ) 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 and tennis with the Prime
Minister, very wealthy Russians have been throwing money into
British politics.
Will the hon. Member give way?
Brendan O'Hara
Very briefly, because I am on a strict time limit.
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.
rose—
Brendan O'Hara
No, I will not give way.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. You have had six minutes, Mr O’Hara, so please draw your
remarks to a conclusion.
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I give the hon.
Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) a chance to withdraw
the effective implication that somehow a game of tennis played by
the Prime Minister was responsible for the invasion of
Ukraine?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Please resume your seat. Mr O’Hara, you are coming towards the
end.
Brendan O'Hara
That was a nonsense assertion to make, and I utterly reject
it.
We must be absolutely clear in what we do and what we say. We
must be tough on Russia. There is no room for equivocation at
all. It is time for the Government to get tough on those who have
laundered Russia’s dirty money here in the United Kingdom. That
is why the Scottish National party supports calls for an economic
crime Bill to be brought in now, to unify the House. We want to
see that registration of overseas interests. We want to see far
more robust use of unexplained wealth orders, which have been not
used at all, and a blacklisting of all dubious Russian banks. The
UK Government must immediately ban Russia from the SWIFT banking
system and take proper cognisance of and improve the Scottish
limited partnership system before it gets further out of
control.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I realise that I am running out of time. There
is much more that I would like to say, but I cannot.
2.53pm
(Hornsey and Wood Green)
(Lab)
I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Isle of Wight
() on securing the debate and on
speaking up so clearly for the defence of human freedom. It is so
important and appropriate that you are in the Chair, Mr Deputy
Speaker, as somebody who was sanctioned by China.
We woke up this morning to dreadful scenes on our televisions
that were reminiscent of the 1945 period, with air raid sirens
sounding in a European capital and a full-scale invasion of
Ukraine by Russian troops accompanied by chilling references to
denazification by President Putin. As parents, I am sure all of
us in this Chamber will be thinking of our own children. My own
are 19 and 27. If we were Russian or Ukrainian, they would be
going to that terrible fate. We talk about war in far-flung
places quite a lot, but let us not forget what it is. It can be
the loss of limb. It can be the loss of life. It can be the loss
of your mind. It can be the horror of war, where women are raped.
It can be the loss of a family member or a permanent disability.
Let us not forget the price tag of President Putin’s fantasy, as
a Select Committee Chair called it. It is the coloniser’s fantasy
that he owns another place, which is not his and does not belong
to him.
I am so pleased with the tone of the debate. We have been united
in our response to the provocations and hostility on display by
President Putin to date. It is critically important that we
remain united and rise above the partisan fray to speak with one
voice in complete condemnation. I am so pleased that, as we
speak, outside in Parliament Square the Union Jack and the flag
of Ukraine are unfurled together. There are many pictures on
social media showing that strength of purpose.
We know that Ukraine is an emerging liberal democracy,
democratically elected and leaning towards Europe. Putin’s
attempts to alter its course down the barrel of a gun is
completely unacceptable and should be resisted. By his own
comments, we know that he has designs not just on Ukraine, but on
other nations which, under the Soviet sphere, were under the
influence of Moscow. They have chosen a different path and we in
this House support their right to choose. We know it is right to
bring in sanctions—we look forward to the 5 pm statement, when we
will hear more from the Government on strengthening those
sanctions—so there can be nowhere to hide economically from the
ramifications of the decision to take a country to war.
The situation we face today has ramifications beyond Ukraine.
With his invasion of Ukraine, President Putin has put Russia on a
collision course with the international system that the world has
relied on since the end of the second world war. Many of the
speeches today touched on the possibility that we are heading
into a new chapter. Not only are we seeing the battle for
Ukraine, but the battle for liberal democracy itself. Earlier in
the week, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) spoke
of
“a wider worldwide trend of authoritarian states trying to impose
their way of thinking on others”.—[Official Report, 22 February
2022; Vol. 709, c. 177.]
She is right. Nations across the world will be watching events in
Ukraine with a sense of foreboding and anxiety. If the
international community fails to hold President Putin to account
and abandons Ukraine and her people to President Putin and his
warped notions of historical revisionism, then the system we rely
on and treasure, and which has largely kept the peace in Europe
since 1945, will fall away.
In my remaining minutes, I will briefly address the question of
China. We all know that in the China picture, as the hon. Member
for Bolton North East () pointed out, there are
differences. We cannot assume that all autocracies are the same.
Like dysfunctional families, they all have different patterns.
However, we do know that President Xi is intent on controlling
Taiwan in some form, and that if President Putin can pull off his
attempt to rewrite Europe’s borders without serious consequences,
then President Xi will feel emboldened to do as he sees fit,
particularly as he goes for a third term towards the end of this
year. It is up to us to hold the line to defend our democracy and
defend freedom over tyranny. I know that is a challenge the
Minister recognises and is alive to. The UK’s relationships could
and should be pragmatic and warm to the people of China and
Russia, but we must hold their Governments to account when they
challenge our values and our allies’ right to
self-determination.
The immediate sanctions announced in response to President
Putin’s renewed hostilities and invasion of Ukraine are welcome,
as I said earlier, but obviously we seek reassurance on certain
issues, such as a new computer misuse Act, a new foreign agents
registration Act, a refreshed official secrets Act, the
long-awaited reform of Companies House, a register of overseas
entities Bill to deal with the buying up of expensive property in
London and the south-east, and now across different regions, and
a confident China strategy. The Minister and I have discussed
that with her team. I believe that we need to flesh out the China
strategy from the FCDO point of view and articulate that in a
more confident way that crosses different Government sectors; for
example, education in universities, our defence approach and
trade and business. Is it safe? Are we ensuring that human rights
are being observed? My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport
() gave an excellent speech
about the Tibet situation, for example. All of us across the
House have a commitment to opening up and understanding the
allegations with regard to human rights and crimes against
humanity in the Xinjiang region as well. As my right hon. Friend
the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill () Hill said, we are dealing with
a kleptosphere. That is perhaps clearer in the case of Russia,
but it is certainly present in the in-flows of renminbi to the UK
economy.
Our issue will never be with the people of Russia and China. As
parents, we think of the young people; we think of the fear of
war. We sincerely hope for a peaceful future, but given the
events of this week, with open conflict erupting on the continent
of Europe, we must be brave and take the necessary steps that we
to protect ourselves, our values and our allies. The world is
watching.
3.01pm
The Minister for Asia and the Middle East ()
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight
() for securing this timely and
important debate. It has taken on a slightly different emphasis
by virtue of recent developments, specifically overnight, and I
will start by addressing some points on the situation in
Ukraine.
The United Kingdom has stood and always will stand for democracy
and freedom. The Government are clear that all nations should be
held accountable for the international obligations and
commitments that they freely signed up to. The UK strongly
condemns the appalling, unprovoked attack that President Putin
has launched on the people of Ukraine. He has chosen a path of
bloodshed and destruction by launching that unprovoked attack.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a flagrant breach of international
law and the Government will stand with Ukraine in the face of
that attack. As the Prime Minister said earlier today,
“we are with you, we are praying for you and your families, and
we are on your side”.
We will work with our allies to respond decisively. As Members
are aware, the Prime Minister will come to the House later this
afternoon to update them on our response.
To turn to how the Government’s strategies help us to respond to
these challenges, our strategic approach to security, defence,
development and foreign policy under the integrated review is a
very important starting point. The integrated review is clear
that we are witnessing a growing contest between international
rules and norms. It sets out a foreign policy baseline that helps
to ensure that there are aligned cross-Government strategies. On
my hon. Friend’s point, in addition, the National Security
Council continues to provide clear direction for the Government’s
Russia and China policies, and in doing so, reflects the
importance of consistency in our foreign policy as well as the
need to take a strategic approach to each country that reflects
the complexities of each state and each relationship.
Since the integrated review was published, the Foreign Secretary
has set out her vision for the UK to use all our weight, as the
world’s fifth largest economy, to build a network of liberty and
advance the frontiers of freedom. Russia’s current challenge of
the international norms and of Ukraine’s sovereignty is a stark
illustration of the importance of implementing that vision with
our partners, as well as responding to the immediate challenges
that Russia poses.
President Putin’s attack on Ukraine demonstrates his disregard
for Ukraine’s sovereignty, for international law and for
diplomacy. The United Kingdom and its allies and partners have
responded with an immediate set of sanctions and have made it
clear that more will follow. The situation in Ukraine today is an
acute example of a security threat that could have disastrous
consequences—in this case, for Ukraine and Russia—as well as
wider global implications. These threats and tests of national
resilience can take many forms, as our integrated review
published last year sets out.
From the outset, let me be clear: there can be no normalisation
in our relationship with Russia while it threatens the UK and our
allies. I want to be clear that, as a number of hon. Members have
said, while there may be tensions between our Governments, we
have no quarrel with the Russian people. But while the Russian
Government continue their aggressive behaviour, we will actively
deter and defend against the full spectrum of threats emanating
from Russia.
I am delighted by what the Minister is saying. I have just
received news that the Ukrainian embassy is putting out a list of
medicines that it urgently needs. Will the Government take that
list seriously and try to do something about it?
As I say, I will leave it to the Prime Minister to update the
House on our response to what happened overnight.
Through NATO, we will ensure a united western response, combining
our military, diplomatic and intelligence assets in support of
collective security. We will uphold international rules and norms
and hold Russia to account for breaches of them, working with our
international partners as we did after the Salisbury attack. In
the context of Ukraine, hon. Members will be aware that the UK is
working intensively with allies to ensure that Russia’s actions
are met with a united international response. We are doing so
through NATO, the UN, the OSCE and our partners in the G7 and
across Europe. We have engaged with the Russian Government at
every level, but Putin has chosen the path of destruction over
diplomacy.
The integrated review identifies Russia as representing
“the most acute direct threat to the UK”,
as well as predicting that it
“will be more active around the wider European
neighbourhood”.
It makes a separate assessment of China, highlighting the
“scale…of China’s economy…population, technological advancement
and…ambition to project its influence”.
It emphasises China’s increasing international assertiveness and
scale as one of the most significant geopolitical shifts of the
2020s. Consequently, our approach to China aims to promote a
positive economic relationship, but one that avoids strategic
dependency and enables us to engage where possible to tackle
global challenges. It also addresses the inescapable fact that
China is an authoritarian state with a different set of values
from the UK’s. We cannot let China undermine freedom and
democracy. We will hold it to account for human rights
violations, whether they are in Xinjiang or in Tibet, and for the
erosions of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong.
The Government are clear that in areas of shared interest, the UK
will preserve space for co-operation and continue to engage with
China and Russia, which, like us, have permanent seats on the UN
Security Council. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary
set out in her Chatham House speech in December, we must be
“on the front foot with our friends across the free world,
because the battle for economic influence is already in full
flow.”
That requires a robust diplomatic framework that allows us to
manage disagreements, defend our values and co-operate where our
interests align, but let me repeat that we will not accept the
campaign that Russia is waging to subvert its democratic
neighbours.
As a P5 Member, China has a critical role to play. The UN
Secretary General has said that Russia’s action
“conflicts directly with the principles of the Charter of the
United Nations”.
Just as China refused to recognise the illegal annexation of
Crimea in 2014, we would expect China to uphold the UN charter in
the face of this latest violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and
territorial integrity.
The UK is determined to lead the way in defending democracy and
freedom. We will continue to develop an international approach
that defends UK interests and promotes our values, including with
Russia and China. We will uphold the founding principles of
international peace and security in the United Nations, which all
three of our countries are duly bound to respect and protect.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
For up to two minutes, we will hear the final word from .
3.09pm
I just want to thank Members very much for taking part in the
debate. This is a pretty miserable day for all of us who care
about democracy in Europe, so let us hope for the best.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House calls on the Government to develop separate but
aligned cross-Government strategies for both Russia and China;
and further calls on the Government to support the international
order, working with allies across the globe to develop an
approach to Russia and China that, whilst recognising their
separate legitimate interests, ensures a robust defence of both
UK interests and democratic values.
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