Taiwan Strait

Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and Richard Foord

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman pre-empts much of my speech. I agree with every word he said.

China continues its aggressive sabre-rattling in the Taiwan strait by sending warships and planes across the median line of the Taiwan strait and air defence identification zone. It continues its enormous campaign of cyber-aggression against Taiwan’s public and private institutions, including its critical infrastructure. Earlier this month a report by Taiwan’s Defence Ministry described Beijing as having launched “multi-front saturated grey-zone” tactics to harass Taiwan. The previous report in September 2023 noted that China had

“increased the scale, frequency and intensity of drills and exercises against Taiwan”

in order to strengthen its operational preparation for a future invasion.

China is also deploying civilian assets to press its claims, dispatching civil aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and weather balloons to fly close to and over Taiwan. It is using marine survey vessels and hydrographic survey ships as a cover for its military. It is also deploying a maritime militia, the largest fleet ever put to sea, to advance geopolitical objectives. Those moves are exactly what I mean by trying to establish a new normal, unilaterally changing the status quo across the Taiwan strait and escalating tensions in a region where China’s expansionist behaviour has seen it employ nearly 80 grey zone tactics against neighbouring states. Our inability to deter that kind of aggression is what is emboldening Beijing and its strategic partners Russia and Iran, undermining our security and international security further.

At this point, it is important to consider what the people of Taiwan think. What does Taiwanese public opinion tell us? It is important to stress the value that people in Taiwan clearly place on having an open and democratic way of life. Some 67% of people identify primarily as Taiwanese. Only 3% identify as Chinese. Nearly half support formal independence. That rises to two-thirds if maintaining the status quo were not possible. Only one in 10 want unification with China, but that should not be misread as wanting unification under Communist party rule. That all stands in stark contrast to the view in mainland China, where more than half the population back a full-scale war to take control of Taiwan. It is also important to stress that China has never—never—ruled Taiwan, which is a democracy of 24 million people. When the Minister responds, will she state that the Government are committed to the principle of self-determination, which applies to the people of Taiwan?

Although the UK position continues to be defined by the one-China policy and the maintenance of the status quo, the one-China policy does not equate to, and has never equated to, an acceptance of Beijing’s one-China principle that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, despite what Beijing might say. It is merely a recognition that Beijing makes such a claim. By its actions, China has unilaterally and consciously changed the status quo, and is seeking to create the new normal I have outlined. It has consistently done so along its border, over the Senkaku islands and in the South China sea. My question to the Minister is: why do the Government keep repeating that it is the UK position to maintain the status quo, as the status quo itself is being unilaterally changed and eroded by China?

Part of the reason I wanted to bring the debate forward is the importance of Taiwan to the global economy, as well as our own economy. In a recent report earlier this year, Bloomberg Economics estimated that the first-year price tag of a war in the Taiwan strait would sit at around $10 trillion, equal to about 10% of global GDP, while a blockade would equate to about 5% of the global economy. One company, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, makes two in three semiconductors and 90% of the world’s most advanced chips.

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

The TSMC makes a massive proportion of silicon chips. While the UK has niche strengths in semiconductor design and compound conductors, does the hon. Gentleman share the view that Britain will remain dependent on Taiwan for silicon chips for a long time to come?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. And this is not just a uniquely British issue; this is an issue for the entire western and democratic world. Chips are just one area of a great number where that overreliance is a threat to our economic and security interests. The total market cap of TSMC’s 20 customers is worth around $7.4 trillion. To put that in context, that is over twice the size of the British economy.

Taiwan sits at the nexus of shipping lanes that connects the world to China, South Korea and Japan. Together, they account for 40% of global manufacturing output. Half the global container fleet passes through the straits each year, dwarfing the traffic that passes through the Suez canal. With all that in mind, and given that it is the stated objective of the CCP to unify Taiwan with the mainland—either by force or by some other form of coercion—may I ask the Minister what modelling the Government have done of the impact of a war, or a blockade of Taiwan, on the UK economy? May I also ask her what industries and sectors would be most at risk? Is there a strategy for de-risking, and what engagement has there been with industry on a potential shock in the Taiwan strait?

Climate Change and Human Security

Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and Richard Foord

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I am grateful. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Efford, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing the debate. It was a pleasure to be a co-sponsor—or whatever the correct terminology is—in the application to the Backbench Business Committee. Though the issue is serious, nothing says taking climate security seriously like the acres of empty green chairs before us on a Thursday afternoon in the House of Commons.

Nothing says taking climate change seriously like, after being the host country for COP26—as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), from north of the Clyde; we were only too pleased to host that conference in my home city of Glasgow—a grudging Prime Minister sulking his way to Egypt for the COP27 conference. Nothing says taking climate security seriously like stripping the COP President and the Minister present today of their places in Cabinet. Indeed, if all that was not bad enough, even the King—a man who, in this country at least, is perhaps uniquely credible on the international stage on climate change and the environment—was banned from going to COP27, not just by the former Prime Minister, but the new Prime Minister. Come Monday next week, maybe a new Prime Minister will have changed that. As well as having a practically empty Chamber, I am willing to bet that this debate, which is scheduled to last 90 minutes, will not go the full way and we will adjourn early. [Interruption.] I can hear some challenges to that behind me.

Turning to climate security, I know the Minister takes his portfolio extremely seriously and I do not aim this at him—in fairness, it may have been down to how the application was made—but it would have been good to have an FCDO or even a Defence Minister to respond to the debate.

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

Does the hon. Member agree that the failure of the UK Government to invest properly and sufficiently in renewable energy in recent years has damaged our ability to see security through the lens of human security, rather than what matters to Governments? Does he agree that the £4.5 billion of energy exports to the UK that Russia profited from last year emboldened that country to sustain its traditional state-centric view of security and, in that sense, has exacerbated climate change?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman and will come to some of those points in turn. I want to speak about how I view climate security and where it fits in the broader issue of the security strategy across Government. We can learn great lessons from countries such as Sweden, which follows what is called a total defence concept, where the dynamic and changing threat picture that countries and national Governments face is given commensurate space in their national security strategy. Whether that is the hard military invasion, a pandemic, a shock weather event or a virus, the dynamic threat picture is represented in that national security strategy.

As my party’s spokesperson on defence, I have found it difficult to criticise the MOD over the past 10 months, not least in what it has done to support Ukraine, as have many Members across the House. However, we now have a situation where the integrated review, which can only be two years old, was going to be reviewed and then was maybe going to be reviewed, and I understand that it will now definitely be reviewed under this Prime Minister. We have an opportunity to get this right and give climate change and climate security the representation it deserves in the overall national security posture of the UK. I have an interest in this as a Scottish Member of Parliament. There are unique factors about climate change for our part of the country but, as hon. Members have said, this is a matter for the planet as a whole. In thinking about how we work on that, there are three key areas when it comes to defence and security. Climate change is a threat multiplier. The secretary-general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, gave an eloquent speech earlier this year on how that threat multiplier can and should be taken seriously by NATO member states. Indeed, it runs through NATO’s strategic concept, and NATO is one of the twin pillars of European security.

The second pillar is the European Union’s strategic compass. Traditionally, the European Union has not done as much in the area of defence and security, but it is doing more. When NATO leads on hard security—military security—the European Union absolutely complements it as the second twin pillar for things such as disaster management and resilience, and for dealing with climate change and other shock events that its member states will experience. That makes the case for the British Government to take off the blinkers and pursue a comprehensive defence and security treaty with the European Union in which it can partner with a major role-setter. About half a billion others on our shared continent can partner on a strategy for climate change.

Even more importantly, the European Union can help pursue a strategy that gives the global south its rightful place at the table. For all the experiences we have in this country—whether it is in the high north of Scotland, or the extreme weather in July this year—those in the global south feel ignored not just on climate, but on much else. To see the manifestation of that, we only have to look at the votes at the United Nations in condemnation of Russia and in support of Ukraine. Across the global south, the pattern of abstentions and voting against the interests of European and Ukrainian continental security, or against sanctions on the Russian regime being deepened and widened, is a product of our ignoring the global south for far too long.

I will end by talking about an issue that the hon. Member for Glasgow North rightly mentioned: climate scepticism. I want to go slightly further and talk about climate disinformation. We will all be asking our constituents to do more as we try to achieve our climate goals. We will be asking them to do more now, as the cost of switching on the boiler and leaving on the lights goes up and up and up. What an opportunity there is for climate deniers, sceptics or whatever we want to call them to pursue political strategies, much like we have previously seen in other policy areas in this country and elsewhere, not least the United States. What an opportunity there is to pursue disinformation strategies against what is a major threat to the people on this planet: climate change. What an opportunity there is for those on the extreme right—I certainly do not include the Minister in that—to sow disinformation, increase polarisation and set democratic countries off course in what they have to do on climate change. That is why it is really important that we have a national strategy to counter disinformation on this issue and much else, and that we build as much information resilience as possible across the population.