National Security and Russia

Debate between Ed Davey and Tom Tugendhat

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend will not be at all surprised to hear that I am not only very glad that we have maintained our nuclear deterrent but that I voted in favour of renewing it. I was very glad that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister used the words she did at the Dispatch Box when she was asked if she would use that terrible weapon. The answer has to be yes, not because she wishes to, but because the point of the nuclear deterrent is that, yes, it should never be used, but it will only deter if it might be. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

This is a debate on security and we have focused, more than I would have perhaps chosen, on the military aspect. I would like to turn to the diplomatic aspect and pay tribute again to the Government for their success. Indeed, I pay tribute to Members from all parts of the House who have used the past two weeks to speak to friends and allies across these islands, across the continent and around the world, and to speak up and remind people why it is that we have called for aid at this moment, why it is that we have cited the attack in Salisbury as particularly important, and why now is the time for them to stand up.

I remember very clearly a conversation I had only a few days ago with a Minister in the French Government when the Select Committee was in France. I pointed out to her that she must be under no illusion, as she talks about European defence co-operation, that as far as we see it this is a moment for that defence to be shown real and for that alliance to be proved true, so that we can move forward and build on it. I am delighted to say that there was no divergence in the Committee, which is made up of Members from Labour, my party and the Scottish National party. There was complete unity. I was very pleased with the message we were able to convey: that the British people are united as one. Whatever our divisions on other issues, we are united on this being an attack on the British people and not just an attack on two people in a park in Salisbury.

This matter is not just about diplomacy either. Too often our intelligence services are overlooked. In the security service, the secret intelligence services and the Government communications headquarters, there are people who are working even now in secret and in silence to keep us safe, and to ensure we are prepared and ready—indeed to ensure that we never know about the next attack because it will not happen. That is so hard to measure, but it is the most essential element of our defence. Without it, we are blind. Without it, we are deaf. Without it, we cannot speak. Like the three wise monkeys, we would be left merely as an ornament and not as an actor.

Britain is nothing if not an actor on the world scene. We have been so because we have played our part in the last 70 years in building the international order that has kept us safe. In the post-war era we have been instrumental in building the United Nations, an organisation with many flaws but without which we cannot imagine modern life. We have been instrumental in building NATO, another organisation that asks for many improvements but still guarantees that we can sleep safely in our bed. We have been absolutely fundamental in writing some of the rules that underpin it, including—I know that on this I do not have the universal support of my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches—the European convention on human rights, which has reflected British law around the continent.

The tragedy is that throughout that journey—well, most of it—we have been partnered by the Russians. In the 1940s, the Russians were part of building that new world order. They were a part of writing the universal declaration on human rights. The Soviet diplomats at the UN were not our friends—they were already rivals—but they understood that the rules-based international order was something for all of us. In it was the guarantee that we could all have a future and that we could all have a safe idea of where we were going. They challenged us on what that future would be—their view of the future was actually Soviet despotism—but they still understood that there were rules that had to be applied.

What we see today is the reverse. What we see today is a Russia that does not believe in the rules. In fact, it actively believes in no rules. What it is doing is seeking out every tie that binds, every alliance—everything that we hold dear and true—and trying to break them. That is why the repetition of lies by useful idiots, the propagandising of untruths by adjuncts, is not just a foolish thing to do and not just unwise but is actually and actively harmful. That is why we stay away from Russia Today and Sputnik: not because they show an alternative vision, but because they deliberately undermine the truth.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful speech with which I fully agree. When we were putting sanctions on Russia after it annexed Crimea, I was privy to information on discussions with the European Commission about how the octopus arms of the Russian state were all over the energy sector across the European Union and how it was using devious means to get its way. May I therefore invite him to take on the logic of his speech that we use not just military but diplomatic means, so that we can use energy policy to take the money away that is fuelling Mr Putin’s military and intelligence?

[Tom Tugendhat]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that I of course agree with him. Energy policy is essential to playing our hand properly. From this House, I urge my German friends, as I have done face to face, to not bow to the Russian idea of a pipeline straight to Germany. That would effectively remove the diplomatic and political leverage that countries to the east otherwise have. It would weaken Germany and it would weaken all of us, because we are stronger when we stand together and weaker when we are divided. We must look at eastern Europe not as a sphere of influence, and not, as some do, as an area in which the west has provoked Russia, as though the Ukrainian people are some sort of slave adjunct to the Russian empire. That is not true. They are free people, as we are free and as any country is free, and they have the right to determine their own future. Energy policy is being used as a weapon against them.

I must make some progress. I hope the House will forgive me as I speed through and point to a few of the violations and the lies that have been used. We have heard Crimea cited—the first time a border has been changed by force since the second world war. We have heard about the occupation of Georgia—I wish that Her Majesty’s Government would refer to it as such, because it is one—and we have heard time and again about the attacks in Montenegro, the lies in Berlin and the fraudulent electioneering in France and possibly even in the United States. We have heard again and again about these deceptions, and we must now hear much more actively about the response. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out some good starts and very strong ideas and I welcome them, but I now want to see them being used.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said the other day in the Committee that he was looking forward to seeing the Magnitsky Act being used, but that it was not a political tool. Technically, he is right: it is a legal tool and therefore for the police, but it will demand that our embassy staff, our intelligence officers and others put forward the cases, so that the police know who the human rights abusers are and who the people are who should be caught up in this. It will also require the tools of our diplomats and intelligence officers, so that we know who the oligarchs are who are part of the Russian/Kremlin/mafia-controlled kleptocracy. We need to know them and identify them, and by doing so, we need to act against them.

If I may, I will ask for one last thing: that we look at Russian sovereign debt being traded here in London even now. We hear again and again about the importance of London’s capital markets, and they will find few greater supporters than me, but through the London clearing house—an absolutely essential element of world trade that underpins in so many ways the debt markets that allow us all to prosper—we have links around the world. One of them is to Russian sovereign debt. The Russian Government, unlike other Governments, do not use Russian sovereign debt merely to finance themselves; they are now using it to sanctions bust. They are using their sovereign debt to refinance and capitalise organisations that have otherwise been banned. One of them is VTB Bank, which we heard about a little while ago—it has been reported on and I must pay tribute to Emile Simpson, who has done extraordinarily well to expose so many of these issues. We can use sovereign debt here too, as a tool and a weapon, because we are being fought on every single level in a cross-spectrum battle by an organisation that does not work for the Russian people, but feeds off them. It does not work for prosperity, but feeds off it, and it does not work for stability, but destroys it.

I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has set out, and I look forward to supporting her as she enacts those policies.