Ukraine

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow both the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), who really brought this back down to the individual experience of a terrible war, for which I am grateful.

I am going to spend the next few minutes arguing that we should provide for war and prepare for peace. We in the UK should increase seriously our industrial production for defence—Ukraine’s and our own—while also isolating Russia and seizing diplomatic opportunities when they arise. We could characterise this as better preparation and jaw-jaw. I would also like to identify a couple of events from the last century or so that can shine a light on the situation that Ukraine finds itself facing and that Ukraine’s partners find ourselves facing: the 1915 shell crisis in Britain, and the 1999 withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo.

First, however, let us recall NATO’s role in this war. In Russian propaganda now, Moscow is characterising this as NATO’s war. The Kremlin suggests that the Government in Kyiv is a puppet and that NATO is pulling the strings, but that could not be further from the truth. The provision of arms by Ukraine’s partners, such as the UK, is often a reactive response to requests for support. I give credit to the British Government and credit to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Ministry of Defence for repeatedly stating that this is Ukraine’s war. Ukraine is our close partner and we are supplying Ukraine with equipment and support, but contrary to Russian propaganda, this is not NATO’s war and there is no sense in which NATO is threatening Russia.

However, we are not in the business of subcontracting policy to the Government in Kyiv. We should not be answering each and every request on this reactive basis. There are times when we should be supplying equipment proactively. For example, the British Government announced they would be supplying Warrior infantry fighting vehicles when asked, though the Liberal Democrats had been calling for this in the months prior to that announcement. We should anticipate requests by Ukraine, rather than wait for them to land. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) suggested that there is a pattern of saying no until we say yes, but the UK is rightly stepping up its provision at a time when we know that our allies have moved or are ready to move.

[Liam Byrne]

We may as well try to round out the cross-party consensus that I think is emerging. Would the hon. Member agree that we should be doing everything we can to send fast jets to Ukraine?

[Richard Foord]

I suggest to the right hon. Member that if we send fast jets to Ukraine, it is going to be a symbolic gesture. When he and I visited Kyiv last September, Minister Reznikov was asking for Gripen aircraft, as we have heard in this Chamber today. If we are to do so, it would not be because we have a capability that is particularly useful to Ukraine, but because it would be a symbolic first mover gesture that others can follow.

Another example of this is the provision of main battle tanks once we knew that other countries were at least considering or almost ready to provide them, but we must have greater anticipation of what demand will arise before it takes Zelensky to visit us to make such requests.

We have heard that Ukrainian forces are firing up to 5,000 artillery rounds per day. Ukraine’s partners will struggle to maintain supply at that level from our existing stockpiles, and we are going to need to procure artillery rounds quickly. Just-in-time acquisition might play well on spreadsheets, but it has not played well in relation to our inventories.

There are times when matters of supply really are crucial. Britain found itself short of high explosive rounds in 1915. David Lloyd George was appointed the inaugural Minister for Munitions—a position that, when he became Prime Minister, he gave to his fellow Liberal Winston Churchill, who became Minister for Munitions in 1917—and the creation of a Ministry for Munitions indicated just how serious Britain was in prosecuting the war. I am not for a moment suggesting that we need to promote the Minister for Defence Procurement in such a way, but we do need to co-ordinate the purchase of munitions with our allies, given that we are drawing on the same western suppliers in many instances, and we need to do it on an enduring basis.

We see now that Russia is moving increasingly towards a total war footing, where it is increasingly mobilising the resources of its society and its economy to the war effort. It may have sought to play down the so-called special military operation last February, but it is increasingly having to recognise what it has created following the full-scale invasion. The time will eventually arrive for Ukrainian negotiation, and it should come from a position of strength for Ukraine. When the time comes for negotiation, we should be open to the leverage that Beijing will have with Moscow that NATO nations do not.

To illustrate that, recall how the orders were eventually given for the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo. Yugoslavia conceded when it realised that it was isolated. If we think about the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring and summer of 1999, NATO was bombing military sites across Serbia and Montenegro in pursuit of the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces. This followed ethnic cleansing that Yugoslav security forces had perpetrated against Kosovo Albanians. The NATO bombing campaign had gone on for more than 10 weeks, but there was no sign that Slobodan Milošević was prepared to concede and to withdraw Yugoslav military and paramilitary personnel from Kosovo.

The NATO enforcement action seemed to be stuck, and NATO bombing sorties were striking the same targets repeatedly. President Yeltsin played an important role in persuading Milošević to withdraw Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo. As Boris Yeltsin’s Balkans envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin communicated to Milošević that Belgrade could no longer depend on diplomatic support from an ally. Chernomyrdin was later to become a dreadful Russian ambassador to Ukraine, and he is rightly very unpopular in Ukraine, but he was successful in persuading Milošević that he had no ally to whom he could turn for support. Milošević chose to consent to the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces only when he realised just how isolated he was.

So let us not be too dismissive of China’s offer before we know what it is. Of course, we should pay careful attention to the speech by President Xi coming up on Friday. It will probably be full of platitudes, and it may offer nothing except a ceasefire based on the current possession by Russian forces of Ukrainian land, in which case it would clearly be completely unacceptable. However, the current statements made by China relate to the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity. We are not there yet, but China may have a role to play in pressuring Russia into its eventual withdrawal from Ukraine.

We would have such a discussion while not being naive about China’s motives. Russia and China have been adversaries, so it might suit China to have Russia and the west depleting their weapons stockpiles in a conflict taking place far away from the Asian Indo-Pacific. However, it does not suit China to have the west threatening consequences against China, as Blinken has warned would result from the supply of arms by China to Russia. Russian people need to know that this is Russia’s war. It is not NATO’s war, nor is it China’s war. We in the UK do need to prepare UK defence now as if this war is our own. We must supply Ukraine so that it can capture more of its territory before it seeks to enter into a ceasefire. At that point, we should be open to recognising the value that Russia’s partners can have in persuading Putin to pull back.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend speaks about the compassion and support of his constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme for Ukrainian refugees. Other families in the region and across the UK have offered that, too. That is their important contribution to Ukraine’s war effort. Our contribution is that military aid, the economic aid and reconstruction aid, but also to ensure that we rouse our friends in the international community to provide the Ukrainians with the tools that they need to liberate themselves from Russian aggression. We were there at the start and will be there at the finish. We will continue to support the Ukrainians in their self-defence.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Russia is seeking to expand its sphere of influence in Africa and Asia. Ukraine is seeking for partners such as the UK to persuade other Governments of the justice of Ukraine’s course. How much more difficult is it for the British Government to exercise such influence since their decision to cut total international development spending?

[James Cleverly]

The hon. and gallant Gentleman is right to say that Russia has made a concerted effort to fracture the international coalition of condemnation, particularly in the global south and in Africa. My ministerial colleagues and I, and in particular the Development Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), have been doing very focused work on countering Russian disinformation in the global south about the war in Ukraine, highlighting that it is Russian aggression that is limiting food supplies to the global south. We know that will be an enduring piece of work, and I assure him and the House that we will continue to make people understand who is genuinely at fault in this.

Russia’s Grand Strategy

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I think that we are in denial of not just a cold war, but a hot war. The hot war that is being conducted in Ukraine is laced with rhetoric and invective about NATO being the threat and about the United States of America provoking that threat, so NATO and the United States must somehow be defeated in this war. If we do not understand that Putin is now conducting a hybrid and political war against Europe and NATO, backed by a hot war in Ukraine, we are not yet living in the real world.

If the process of reinvigorating Russia’s armed forces and preparing for a further assault on Ukraine is not derailed and Putin is successful, by 2024, the west will face a more formidable Russia that believes that it can establish its place in a future world order by force of arms. This is a long-term strategic challenge that requires a long-term strategic response from the UK Government, all European Governments and NATO.

Putin’s strategy depends on time. We all admire Ukraine’s bravery and agility, which have left the Russian army in something of a quagmire, but it would be an epic tragedy if we now allowed Russia the time to mass its forces, so that its brutal war of attrition could become overwhelming. It is crucial for the west to increase the tempo of its supply of weapons systems to Ukraine, so that Ukraine, rather than Russia, can be first to develop the mobile formations necessary to break the current battlefield deadlock. The reality is that Russia’s whole grand strategy is on a knife edge and the next few months could be crucial.

We should not be deterred by Putin’s so-called red lines. In war and crisis, red lines are political and flexible. We proved that when Russia’s build-up to the invasion last year crossed several NATO red lines, and we did nothing. Likewise, Putin’s incorporation of Donbas into the Russian Federation was intended to set up a red line of Russian territory being attacked, but when Ukraine attacked, it turned out there was no red line.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

On the point about how we in the west might have set some red lines, I thought at the time that the west was not being firm enough in the red lines it was laying down. What we saw in mid-February was the US President and others talking only about sanctions, and how there would be nothing more than sanctions as a consequence of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I regard the United States as our closest and most important ally and personally I love the United States of America, but on its response to this crisis—it has been voluminous compared with that of the rest of Europe and a lot of money has been devoted to it—its signalling has been very weak. What matters in wartime is not what red lines we set; it is what we actually do.

I am afraid our own Government made a terrible error when we set a red line about the use of chemical weapons in Syria in 2013, and then what did we do? We backed off when chemical weapons were used. The effect of that has been to weaken the influence of the United States, the United Kingdom and the whole of the west in the countries that really count in this war as potential allies or neutral states—for example, the Gulf states, which despaired of our lack of resolve in that conflict. Red lines are less important than what we do, and what we must now do is send far more matériel into this conflict to support the Ukrainians, so that the Russians are deterred or fail to achieve what they attempt to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), who made some powerful points. Here we are again debating Russia’s strategy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who held a similar debate a year ago. It was a year ago that I and, indeed, others in the Chamber predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine. Few believed us. That reflects a poor understanding of Russia as well as of Russia’s strategy and what Russia stands for.

When we play the board game Risk, we quickly appreciate how difficult it is to defence the largest continent. It covers 11 time zones and, over millenniums, its sheer size has made it vulnerable to invasion. That has come from the Vikings, the Mongols, the Teutonic order, the Polish, the Lithuanians, the Napoleonic French and twice in one century from the Germans. Russia eventually appreciated the value of choosing a strong, central, authoritarian leader to hold its disparate principalities together, backed by the Orthodox Church, pursing a policy of expansionism. Simply put, Ivan the Terrible pushed east, Peter the Great pushed north, Catherine the Great pushed south and, of course, Stalin pushed west. That is the Russian mindset: if we are not expanding, we will be attacked.

After world war two, perhaps we thought that things might be different. It took the US diplomat George Kennan’s observations of Joseph Stalin’s re-election speech —there were no other candidates—to make Washington realise that America’s wartime ally was going back to its old ways. His “Long Telegram”, as it became known, formed the cornerstone of America’s post-war grand strategy called “containment”, which eventually won the cold war.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we naively hoped that Russia would perhaps again join the international fold. Sixteen years later, when President Putin addressed the Munich security conference in 2007, we did not require another long telegram to interpret his clear intentions: Russia was resorting to type. The west ignored his blatant warnings and, only a year later, Putin began redrawing the map of eastern Europe, beginning with Georgia.

[Richard Foord]

I agree with the right hon. Member that Russia uses its size to bully and intimidate other countries. He may recall that, last May, Dmitry Kiselyov used his Sunday night show to talk about how Russia has the capability to

“plunge Britain to the depths of the ocean”.

With Russia’s approach of singling out the UK, does he agree that we must stand strong with our NATO allies, given that collectively we have so much more strength as 32 NATO countries?

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful for that intervention, which takes us back to the first speech. It is clear that we continue to be spooked by the rhetoric from Russia. It requires political will to stand up, rekindle that cold war statecraft and look our adversary in the eye, conscious of the escalatory ladder. Today, I ask: when will the penny drop?

Today’s conflict is not just about Ukraine. Our post-world war two global order was built on the pursuance of democracy, accountability, freedom and the rule of international law. That has never looked as fragile as it does today as both Russia and China have openly broken away from those objectives, not just pioneering a more authoritarian approach to governance but encouraging other countries to follow their lead.

We should finally accept that the elites in both Russia and China want to see not just America but the west weakened. So it is welcome news that we finally see some serious NATO hardware heading Ukraine’s way, with greater resolve to stand up to Russia. Once again, I welcome the UK leading in that, ever pushing the envelope of acceptable international support for Ukraine, but as I hope the debate illustrates, we continue to limit ourselves to tactics and military assistance. We do not think enough about strategy.

The conflict is not likely to end any time soon. Russia’s ability to endure hardship is far greater than ours in the west. Putin wants to drag the conflict out, so I offer this strategy to help conclude the conflict in 2023. First, let us agree the mission. The ramifications go well beyond Ukraine. Let us all agree what the mission is and what success actually looks like.

Secondly, as I have said so many times in the Chamber, let us secure UN safe haven status for the port of Odessa so that all, not just one fifth, of those vital grain ships can reach international markets and lower the cost of living everywhere. Thirdly, let us establish a major Ukrainian armaments factory in eastern Poland. Gifting kit is absolutely the right call now, but it is not sustainable in the long term, so we should let Ukraine develop its own equipment, whether it be the Leopard or anything else, in eastern Poland.

Fourthly, let us list the Russian state-sponsored Wagner militia group as a terrorist organisation. Fifthly, let us directly sanction President Putin. He is responsible for the war, so let us freeze his personal assets as well. Sixthly, as Ukraine will not be joining NATO any time soon, let us invite Ukraine to join the joint expeditionary force, which is the critical security umbrella that will help deter Russia from attempting to invade in the future.

Finally, to further leverage our leadership and support for Ukraine, let us appoint a senior UK-Ukraine envoy, answerable directly to the Prime Minister, who would help co-ordinate Whitehall support and align our efforts with those of our international allies. The first duty would be to organise a major Marshall plan conference in the spring and begin post-conflict assistance planning. Those are seven strategic objectives to help put the fire out and stand up to Russia.

I will conclude by shining a rather sad light on our own defence posture. We are heading into another cold war, more dangerous than the last, and it saddens me to say this, but we are ill-prepared militarily for the threats coming over the horizon, particularly when it comes to the British Army. Three critical components that contribute to the quantity and quality of our land warfare capability and more widely to the full spectrum of armed warfare are the tank, the armoured fighting vehicle and the recce vehicle.

Our tank, the Challenger 2, was introduced 25 years ago. Back then, we had over 900; today, we have cut our main battle tank numbers to just 148. Those will now finally gain an upgrade, but that will not be complete until 2030. Our armoured fighting vehicle, the Warrior, was introduced 30 years ago—a competent but now dated workhorse, able to carry infantry and protect them with its 30 mm Rarden cannon. All 700 are being axed and replaced by the Boxer—a wheeled, not tracked, vehicle—and we are choosing the variant that has no turret, so no serious firepower. Those will not be completely introduced until 2032. Finally, there is our recce vehicle, the Scimitar. That was introduced over 50 years ago. It should have been replaced by the Ajax three years ago, but a litany of procurement problems means that it is still unclear when that will happen.

I make it clear that as the European security picture deteriorates, all this is frankly a mess—a dog’s dinner. No wonder the head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, broke ranks last week to say that this is all unacceptable. Our Army is now too small and it is using equipment that is already obsolete. The new integrated review must address the sad state of our land forces and their combat effectiveness. We need a bigger defence budget or we will learn the hard way how our economy is impacted by the failure to invest in and utilise our hard power.

To conclude, my message to the House today is: let us look beyond Ukraine. International storm clouds are gathering once again and on our current trajectory the world is set to splinter into two dangerously competing spheres of ideological interest. What Russia is attempting to do here is just the beginning. There is a worrying absence of international leadership—of strategy—as to how we collectively respond. This is no time for strategic ambiguity and no time for quibbling about our defence posture. Containment, once again, is required. Our actions on the international stage in the past earned us a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Eight decades later, how the world has changed! Let us show that we deserve to keep that seat at the top table and rekindle our political will.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on securing this debate, which has the same title as the debate last January. In preparing for today, I have read what he and other Members said then. I think it is very generous to talk about a Russian “grand strategy” because I regard Russia’s leadership in the Kremlin as an opportunist outfit. Russia loves the idea of a divided west and when it sees us divided it takes full advantage, especially when it can smell western weakness, a lack of will or disinterest.

I am not going to come up with any fine words on this subject—certainly none as fine as those of a predecessor MP for Tiverton, Lord Palmerston. In 1858, he wrote:

“The policy pursued by the Russian Government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when it was met with decided resistance, and then to wait till the next favourable opportunity”.

I would like to draw on a couple of examples from the past 125 years in which we have continued to see imperial Russia or the Soviet Union taking an expansionist approach, only to be pinned back by western democracies and others. I would also say that we should avoid throwing all caution to the wind, because the root of Russia’s approach, in my view, is injured pride—not just in the Kremlin, but among most Russian people. Finally, the House should think not only about a grand strategy for the UK, but about a strategy for NATO. We need to work collaboratively with our NATO allies to ensure that the alliance is working on a strategy.

We all know that Putin’s historical essays have been entirely discredited by historians, but they are useful to us. They are a useful guide to his intent: I think he models himself on some of his predecessors from the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of the 18th century, Catherine the Great is supposed to have said of her enormous land empire:

“I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”

That certainly fits in with what went on during her reign: after she came to power, the country’s westernmost border moved from east of the River Dnipro to west of Kyiv, so we can see that Putin has some stand-out role models from the time of the Tsar and the years before that.

What we have been seeing in Russia in the past 15 years is a restoration of pride following a period of imperial collapse. Of course there is no direct comparison with the UK, but if we want a sense of how Russians feel, some Conservative Members may remember how they felt in the early 1980s when there was, perhaps, a restoration of British pride after having had to manage the economy in the 1970s with the aid of a loan from the International Monetary Fund. It is that feeling that your country has been put down and is coming back—the rising of a phoenix from the flames.

Yet in the Kremlin, Russia is intimidated by the lack of attractiveness of its centralised political tradition: its post-communist neighbours are attracted by western co-operative structures. Before last year, I thought that those in the Kremlin who are responsible for Russian grand strategy knew the difference between coercion and violence—coercion might involve the threat of violence, but would stop short of using force—but we have seen that that is not true.

This debate is so useful for thinking about grand strategy partly in terms of ends: if we think of grand strategy in terms of ends, ways and means, it is useful for us to think today about the Kremlin’s intent. There have tended to be reasons why Russia has on occasion seemed willing to permit Ukraine to be independent of it. In 1918, the first world war having ended, Lenin said:

“We need both hands free”,

and permitted Ukraine to become independent. In 1991, Yeltsin had his own motive for enabling Ukraine to become free: to sideline Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union.

But that is history. I was so encouraged to hear the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, saying in December 2021 that

“that’s the kind of world we don’t want to return to, where big powers had a say, or a kind of right, to put limitations on what sovereign, independent nations can do”.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Surely the key moment was the signing of the Budapest accord. Was there not something of a failing on the part of this country and others? It was an innocent failing, but we signed up to something that was so nebulous that it could never really be enforced, although in theory it looked as if we were guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine, in exchange for which it surrendered its nuclear weapons.

[Richard Foord]

I entirely agree. The Budapest memorandum was not worth the paper it was written on. It had no legal standing; even the word “guarantee” has different meanings in different languages, and the Ukrainians could certainly have interpreted it very differently from the British, Americans and others who drafted it.

During military conflicts in which the UK has been engaged over the last two or three decades, we have heard the claim that we have no quarrel with the people of “X”—insert Serbia or Iran—but only with its Government or, often, its dictator, but I do not think we can repeat that claim in this instance. When we look at opinion polling in Russia, it is pretty staggering to see how much popular support there is for the war in Ukraine. According to what has been said by Ukrainians I have talked to in the last couple of weeks, they regard the fact that we talk in the west about Putin or Putin’s war as successful propaganda on the part of Russia. They would much prefer us to talk about Russia in the round, and attribute responsibility much more broadly than to just one man in the Kremlin. I also think we need to avoid driving our competitors and our adversaries into Russia’s orbit; not least, we need to avoid knocking China into Russia’s open arms.

We need to think of the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in terms of a NATO strategy, rather than the UK’s grand strategy alone. In that context, it is worth recalling a 19th-century musical hall song. You will be relieved to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I shall not attempt to sing it. Members will have heard the lyrics before:

“the rugged Russian Bear

Full bent on blood and robbery, has crawled out of his lair…

We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do,

We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too!”

That is an anachronism today. The UK cannot boast the ships, or the money or, certainly, the men in the Army.

Let me end with another quotation, this time from Winston Churchill. We will all have heard his famous characterisation of Russia as

“a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”,

but it is less well known that he went on to say:

“perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest or safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea”.

We need to bear in mind that Germany is cautious because it has good reason to be cautious, given its history. Instead of criticising our allies, we should come up with a strategy, with our allies, that sees Ukraine defend its borders and defeat Russia.

International Development Committee

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

Yes, I am aware that the Government have condemned the violence in the DRC. One of my concerns is that we perhaps need stronger and more public words, as the Rwandan Government seem to be involved in this escalation.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats warmly welcome the International Development Committee’s report, “From Srebenica to a Safer Tomorrow”. The all-party group on Bosnia and Herzegovina hosted a former president of Bosnia last year. The former president praised the work of the UK 20 years ago, and in particular that of the late Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon as UN high representative. But now we see the separatist president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, refer to “our Serbia” and “our Russia” in the same breath. Does the hon. Member think that the Government’s decision not to accept the report’s recommendation that the Government introduce a cross-departmental strategy for preventing and responding to mass atrocities takes account of some of this worrying rhetoric that we are seeing from Republika Srpska?

[Sarah Champion]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments. The Committee went out to Bosnia—to Mostar. We were genuinely shocked by the palpable tension on the streets and the deliberately inflammatory language and policies that are coming out of Dodik and others. The ambassador at the time and the current ambassador have been working incredibly hard to highlight this, but we need to do more. We need an international condemnation of what is going on over there otherwise it will replicate itself.

British Council Contractors: Afghanistan

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

There may or may not be validity in the political debate on safe and legal routes that the hon. Lady raises, but in this particular respect there is a safe and legal route. That is one we are expediting.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I disagree with the Minister that he is a poor replacement for his colleague at the Dispatch Box—I think he would bring a compassionate, informed and patriotic approach to this portfolio, if it were his. Perhaps he can explain why, instead of sending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to Rwanda with nothing to show for it, the Government do not spend just a fraction of that money on expediting the safe evacuation of those who risked their lives to host and protect UK service personnel and civilians in Afghanistan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

It is lovely to hear that and I know the team in Japan will be very pleased to have welcomed the hon. Lady there. Our bilateral relationship with Japan continues from strength to strength in every possible area, and we will continue to work closely with them.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I was contacted by a constituent from Devon whose sister died in east Africa while working for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. Joanna Toole was serving humanity and our environment when Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed near Addis Ababa. Will the Minister commit to lobbying the Ethiopian Government to release the air accident report so that an inquest in the UK can proceed?

[Mr Mitchell]

I am extremely sorry to hear that terrible news from the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. I suggest we have a meeting outside of the House to discuss the best way forward; I will be very happy to meet him to do that.

Ukraine

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I can assure my hon. Friend that we will consider that. I am very proud that we have supplied a number of AMRAAM missiles specifically to help the Ukrainians defend themselves against attack from the air. We will keep that under constant review.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

In a statement issued in March, the Government said they had created an electricity network support taskforce for Ukraine, bringing together UK commercial suppliers and the Energy Networks Association. The then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), said:

“We will keep the lights on in Ukraine.”

I thank the Foreign Secretary for mentioning the 856 mobile generators, but will he update the House on the role of the electricity network support taskforce in honouring the former Foreign Secretary’s pledge?

[James Cleverly]

We continue to work with the Ukrainians to help them keep the lights on and the water going, not just in the here and now but into the future. This will help their energy resilience. We will ensure that our support to Ukraine adapts to account for its changing needs and circumstances.

Chinese Consulate: Attack on Hong Kong Protesters

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady will be aware that the sanctions regime in question relates to the UN, which is a very effective international co-ordinating body. As I have touched on, we have taken lots of action short of that in responding to the coercion of Hongkongers in Hong Kong. I can also confirm that my officials remain in very close contact with similarly high-ranking staff of our allies around the world.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Reflecting on what we saw over the weekend, the Chinese consulate general justified it by saying that the activists had

“hung an insulting portrait of the Chinese president at the main entrance”.

A spokesperson for the consulate general claimed:

“This would be intolerable and unacceptable for any diplomatic and consular missions of any country.”

I have looked at an image of the portrait and, although I accept that it would be regarded as offensive, I disagree with the Chinese consulate’s spokesperson. Does the Minister agree that if there had been such a demonstration outside the British consulate in Shanghai, we might not have liked the protest—we might even have found the portrait a little insulting—but we would have tolerated it? Is that difference in values being communicated to the Chinese ambassador?

[Jesse Norman]

I think it fair to say that the Chinese ambassador is fully aware of the spectrum of our concerns in relation to Chinese behaviour, whether that is in relation to victims of internationally condemned crimes in Xinjiang, whether it is in Hong Kong or whether it is in this country.

Sanctions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats support the statutory instruments, so my comments will be brief.

First, I heard the proposal that members of the United Russia party be subject to sanctions. That was, I think, proposed back in spring by the President of the European Parliament and should be considered for future statutory instruments.

Secondly, the Minister will know, through his involvement with the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, that the research collaboration advice team in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has been very useful to the higher education sector in enabling universities to support enforcement on sanctions and export control. I hope that in any slimming of the civil service in future months—we hear about the purported cuts of 91,000—the research collaboration advice team in BEIS is not hacked back, because it is doing crucial work on the enforcement of these sanctions.

Strategy for International Development

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling me to speak.

In the past, I worked with the conflict, stability and security fund, so I know how important it is that international development funding of the sort that we are discussing is used well by the UK.

I must admit that, in this new job of mine, I am still learning my way around the maze of corridors, anterooms and stairways—only once so far have I ended up in the scullery. The Tiverton and Honiton constituency, which I am fortunate to represent, is made up of several other significant towns—Axminster, Seaton, Cullompton and Colyton, which brands itself a rebel town—and nearly 100 villages. It stretches from the fringes of Exmoor at Bampton to the Jurassic coast at Branscombe. I look forward to hosting you, Mr Speaker, in Honiton, where we will get to go to Allhallows Museum and see the Honiton lace that your ceremonial robe is made of.

I pay tribute to two of my predecessors as MP for the part of Devon that I will do my very best to represent. One was an MP who took up office in 2010, and the other first came to this place as MP for Tiverton in 1835; they are Neil Parish and Lord Palmerston. In his maiden speech made over a decade ago, Neil Parish said that he wanted to see fairer funding for schools. I know that he tried in earnest to seek that additional schools funding, but we are still waiting for action on that. I think here specifically about Tiverton High School. After the by-election, I was pleased to see the former Secretary of State for Education tweet that he had heard local concerns about that school. Now that he is Chancellor of the Exchequer, he should know that my constituents are still looking for action rather than tweets.

Neil Parish was a strong voice for farmers not just in Devon, but across the country. He led a rebellion of Conservative MPs on the Government’s Agriculture Bill and aimed to prohibit the import of food produced to lower animal health standards and lower welfare standards than those that we use in the UK. Farmers in Devon and elsewhere are struggling to deal with the rising price of fuel, feed and fertiliser. I pledge to continue to work with bodies such as the National Farmers Union to stand up for farmers and ensure that they have a champion here in Westminster.

Every time I walk up the staircase to my office here, I find myself eyeballed by a bust of the former Foreign Secretary and former Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston. Palmerston was the MP for Tiverton for 30 years, and he went on a journey—one recently experienced by a few of my constituents at last month’s by-election. He started out a Conservative but later became a Liberal. I honestly think that is what we are hearing across the country: a groundswell of opinion from people who feel taken for granted. Just yesterday, we saw two senior members of the Cabinet quit, citing a lack of integrity, and I think that it is time for those remaining members of the Cabinet to heed the message from voters in Tiverton and Honiton at our by-election last month and show the Prime Minister the door.

Lord Palmerston was also Prime Minister, at the end of the Crimean war. He spoke about Russian foreign policy in this place 160 years ago:

“The policy and practice of the Russian Government in regard to Turkey and Persia has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go but always to stop and retire when it has met with decided resistance.”

I am much less fatalistic about Russia’s expansionist ways. With a different leader at a different time, I do not suppose that Russia would be bound to invade its neighbour. But the UK is right to support Ukraine for many reasons. For me, the most important relates to the way Ukraine gave up its status as a country in possession of nuclear weapons, in part because of the assurances it received at the time from countries, including the UK, as part of the Budapest memorandum. Under the memorandum, we offered assurances to Ukraine in relation to its security. While they were not security guarantees, I see the support the UK is showing Ukraine as consistent with what we pledged back in 1994.

I suggest that the UK should show the same solidarity and ability to work with European neighbours that Britain showed during the Crimean war. Liberal democracy must be defended and preserved, regardless of who Palmerston’s latest successor might be.