UK-Ukraine Credit Support Agreement

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and her committee on securing this debate at such a timely pass, particularly in view of the threat, referred to by many, of the 100,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border.

In my humble opinion, Ukraine is very exposed at present. It also has ambitions; my noble friend Lord Astor referred to the fact that it still wants to be attached to NATO and the European Union. I hope that we can open a door to it at some point in future.

I endorse entirely the report’s conclusion that the agreement before us represents an important sign of support for Ukraine and its territorial integrity. I welcome the fact that the provision of credit set out in it is to purchase British weapons systems and jointly build warships. I also welcome, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, expressed so eloquently, the fact that this represents a welcome shift in UK government policy.

Given the present heightened risk of conflict, I agree that the agreement should be considered in the context of the UK and NATO’s commitment to Ukraine. I welcome the opportunity of this debate to discuss the issues before us.

I confess that I have no recent experience of Russia, but I was a Member of the European Parliament for 10 years. I pay public tribute to my erstwhile aide during one of the elections who, I am sure, secured my majority and the election. Whether it was 36,000 on the first occasion or 3,600—you will notice there was quite a shift—I was delighted to be returned and to serve on two occasions.

At that time, when I was MEP for north-east Essex and, eventually, north Essex and south Suffolk, Essex County Council had negotiated a close working arrangement with the council of the city of St Petersburg. As will not have escaped noble Lords’ notice, a rather lesser-known Putin was strongly associated with the city of St Petersburg then. I took two delegations of small and medium-sized businesses to a number of countries within the European Union and, owing to the close relationship that Essex had, to St Petersburg. That culminated in a major conference, hosted by Essex County Council in its chamber, of an equal number of Essex and Suffolk businesses, and Russian, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian businesses. I was delighted to have the opportunity to host that but, since then, have not had any close experience of Russia—until last autumn.

This echoes the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who I consider a noble friend, about the growing number of cyberattacks on our key infrastructure in this country. I pay tribute to my noble friends Lord Grimstone and Lady Vere for the interest they took then; however, I am sad to report that, in spite of the issues that I and a number of others raised, a company that I will not name—but one well known for its transport links in North Yorkshire—and, I imagine, a number of other transport firms that were also subject to this cyberattack had all their systems closed down for six days. It could have effectively shut down those businesses for ever.

I was appalled that we do not have a fast response to such cyberattacks in this country. I am told that the relevant authority, the National Crime Agency, was informed and I read subsequently that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence is minded to create such a response in Lancashire, in the next two years, to respond to these attacks. But it is evident where the money is raised. I think £140,000 in ransom was raised from this one attack. Perhaps a better-known one is FatFace, as it is common knowledge that the clothing company paid a ransom of millions.

It is unacceptable that companies in this country are effectively funding hostilities by the Russian state, whereby it can pay 100,000 troops to line the Ukrainian border to threaten Ukraine and, possibly, to proceed through Ukraine to the European Union, were they to penetrate further and fulfil the threats they pose.

In welcoming the agreement today, I take the opportunity to pose two specific questions to the Minister. I echo the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes: the Government and the EU need to set out today what our response would be were Russian troops to cross the border into Ukraine. Obviously, we receive millions of pounds from Russian businesses and individuals into UK business banks. The source of that money then has to be checked to ensure that there is no money laundering. We receive that because we are a very open economy. However, we need to express today what our response would be. So my first question is: what would our response be and when are we going to make our response known?

Secondly, could the Minister explain why we are allowing the cyberattacks to which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I have referred? I have first-hand experience of the grief and distress caused to one particular company that I am aware of, and others are now in the public domain; I have mentioned FatFace, which suffered two years ago. It is unacceptable in this day and age that we are wilfully exposing our companies to this sort of cyberattack and this form of ransom. To me, it was unacceptable for the Foreign Office simply to say, “It is best that the ransom is not paid”, without giving them any assistance over how the cyberattack could be shut down to save the business. It is interesting to note that insurance is available for such a cyberattack, but if you do not have the insurance before an attack then you will certainly not get it after an attack has happened.

Therefore, I ask my noble friend Lord Grimstone what our sanctions would be against an invasion of Ukraine but, more importantly, domestically, what rebuttal will we have against these increasingly hostile cyberattacks, which go to fund the Russian state at this time.