Ukraine

Lord Camoys Excerpts

Friday 26th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Camoys (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is an enormous honour and privilege to make my maiden speech in such an important debate and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

I am delighted to have been elected to this place. I have received the warmest welcome from across the House, for which I am most grateful, and thank the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for his kind words. Not only did so many take the trouble to welcome me but, quite amazingly, the doorkeepers already knew my name on my first day. I am immensely thankful for the help and guidance I have received from them, the Clerk of the Parliaments and Black Rod, their offices and the rest of the fantastic team of staff who work here.

I am also pleased to say that my first day in your Lordships’ House was significantly more auspicious than my first day in the Foreign Office. Keen to make a good impression as a new diplomat, I booked a taxi to ensure that I would get there on time—but while I was bending down to get my wallet at the end of the journey, the seat of my suit trousers ripped wide open. Thankfully, parliamentary security here did not need to spare my blushes in the same way that the security team at the Foreign Office did, finding me safety pins to hide my boxer shorts, which were on full display to Whitehall.

I am making my maiden speech today because much of my career has been spent working abroad. It has taught me the importance for us of looking up and looking out, and never losing a global perspective. During my time in the Foreign Office, I worked in the Afghanistan emergency unit, then in the Middle East on Iran, then in a posting to New Delhi and, finally, I spent three years working on counterterrorism. During that time, I visited Ukraine on a couple of occasions. After the Foreign Office, I set up a financial advisory business focused on China, which led us to move as a family to live in Beijing for five years. My work with China has principally been about building bridges and providing understanding. I passionately believe that the better we understand each other, the more likely we are to have better engagement. I hope I can use my experience occasionally to illuminate our debates on world affairs and Britain’s influence.

I have also been actively engaged in nature conservation for 30 years—I am chair of the UK Trust for Nature Conservation in Nepal—as well as tourism and film. I have been diversifying my family’s tourism business at Stonor in Oxfordshire, which my late father did so much to make possible, and am currently setting up a new film studio in Marlow—but these are subjects for another day. Today, my focus is on Ukraine. Many noble Peers, some of whom are speaking today, have had a much more distinguished career in the foreign service than I had, so I speak with humility and some trepidation as I make the following observations. Some may be obvious, but the obvious merits repeating.

First, Putin’s invasion has changed the world we live in, and we have to accept the changes that have arisen from that. The period of hope after the fall of the Iron Curtain is over. The invasion caused a global systemic shock that ended a decade of low interest rates and low inflation. It threw globalisation into reverse. It has undermined global institutions, the foundation stones of the international order. Russia once again poses a dangerous long-term threat to the West. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that our begrudging acceptance of Putin’s annexation of Crimea was a miscalculation. We pulled our punches to avoid escalation. We did that before, in the 1930s, and it did not end well. We now have no alternative but to make Putin’s invasion in 2022 his own miscalculation. We cannot allow national borders to be changed by force. The impact not just here but elsewhere would be disastrous.

Secondly, we have to commit to support Ukraine for the long term. This will be another difficult year, and the next will probably be the same. Ukraine’s heroic defence at the start of the war, and the early support it received from the UK and other allies, stopped the wholesale capitulation that Putin expected. But the West was too slow to supply the heavy armament and long-range attack capability required. We might well be in a different situation if it had been supplied earlier. Our 10-year commitment to our bilateral security co-operation agreement with Ukraine will help ensure that Ukraine can plan and fight more than just from one year to the next. Helping Ukraine along the path to NATO and EU membership will make the West’s determination clear to Russia. We must keep this going.

The UK’s support needs to be a national effort. Our supply of long-range missiles has significantly changed the balance in Crimea, pushing back Russia’s Black Sea fleet. We really can make a difference, but to do so at scale and over a long duration will require a significant ramping up of our defence manufacturing capabilities and 24/7 shifts in our defence factories. I am delighted that we have increased defence spending, but we have to acknowledge that we are not prepared for the threat from Russia. During the Cold War, we could field four Army divisions at high readiness. Today, we can scarcely field one. We need to accept that we must invest much more in defence. Given that our debt is so high, difficult decisions have to be made on our spending priorities.

Most importantly, we have to maintain the West’s unity and resolve. The nurturing of that resolve must be our number one foreign policy objective. Putin believes he can break our resolve. He just needs to wait for us to find this all too painful. We would pay dearly if that were to happen. Ukraine cannot manage this on its own. Western support and perseverance must be non-negotiable. As others have said, it saddens me that we are worrying about maintaining American support for Ukraine; we must use all our diplomatic skills to keep America onside. Part of that probably involves Europe being prepared to pay more for our own defence.

Putin’s terrible war threatens not only Ukraine but the very values we cherish and our way of life. Defending those values carries a price. It will cost money. The question is very simple: are we prepared to see this through? I very much hope that the answer is yes. We must steel ourselves—or rue the day that we wavered.