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  • John Healey – 2022 Speech on NATO and International Security

    John Healey – 2022 Speech on NATO and International Security

    The speech made by John Healey, the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, in the House of Commons on 19 May 2022.

    May I start by paying tribute to the men and women in Britain’s armed forces, who are deployed across the NATO alliance as part of their policing operations, multinational battlegroups and maritime deployments? We play the leading role in some of NATO’s most important missions, both on the frontline and in strategic command, as is the case at the British-led but multinational NATO maritime command, which I was privileged to visit last month in north London.

    The steps the Government have taken to reinforce NATO allies since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine have therefore had, and will continue to have, Labour’s full support. In Labour we are proud that Britain is NATO’s leading European nation. We do not want to see that status damaged or deflected by the Prime Minister’s trumpeting of the Indo-Pacific tilt. The first priority for Britain’s armed forces must be where the threats are greatest, not where the business opportunities may lie, and that is in the NATO area—Europe, the north Atlantic and the Arctic.

    Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)

    The shadow Minister mentioned the Indo-Pacific tilt, which we have been looking at in the Defence Committee. There has been a miscalculation, which has allowed Putin to get away with too much for too long. We cannot make the same mistake again. Does the shadow Minister agree that, although we have to focus on the current threat, we also have to focus on future threats, and that is why the Indo-Pacific tilt is relevant and important?

    John Healey

    Of course the hon. Gentleman is right, but the first and most acute threat, underlined by the brutal invasion that Putin has undertaken in Ukraine, is where our first duty lies. It is where our neighbourhood lies, and it is our primary obligation to our closest allies. That forces us to confront the fact that we can no longer take peace and security in Europe for granted, as we have done since the end of the cold war. We must now face a future of persistent confrontation with Russia.

    Ministers have said to me and to the House in recent weeks that it is perhaps too early to learn lessons from Ukraine, but one lesson I take is that, despite the gung-ho, go-it-alone promotion of global Britain, almost no nation can do anything alone and Britain is a bigger force for good in the world when we act with allies.

    Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    John Healey

    I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman and then underline the point that I have just made.

    Dr Fox

    I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I do not disagree with the fundamental point that he makes, but does he accept that, way back in 2007, in Munich Putin told us what he was and almost what he was going to do? The point is not that we have a confrontation with Russia now but that we had a confrontation with Russia when it went into Georgia and when it occupied Crimea. We simply did not do enough about it at the time.

    John Healey

    No one on our Front Bench or in the House would disagree with that analysis. Our response was too little, and it was regarded as too weak. It was certainly too little and too weak to deter Putin’s belief that he could take the sort of steps that we have seen in the past three months in Ukraine.

    Mr Kevan Jones

    I agree. We took our eye off the ball. But I will not have lectures from the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who was the one who withdrew our troops down in Germany in the rushed defence review. I remember he made a great statement at the time that we would never see tanks rolling across the east German plains again. We are actually back there, ruing the decision that was taken then.

    John Healey

    My right hon. Friend is right. I really do not want to make these sorts of points this afternoon, but the Prime Minister declared in recent months, before the Ukraine invasion, that the period of tank battles in Europe was over and justified the Indo-Pacific tilt and the deployment of defence priorities to areas outside the NATO area.

    The point that I want to make is in part to recognise the role that the Defence Secretary has played. We in Britain are a bigger force for good not when we act alone but when we act with allies. I take this example from the Ukraine experience. Britain’s supply of anti-tank and anti-air missiles to Ukraine is a fraction of the total weapons provided by the west, but we have helped a great deal more by calling donor conferences, co-ordinating the logistics of delivery and reinforcing the will of other countries to help. So Labour’s full backing for the Government in providing military assistance to Ukraine will continue as we shift from crisis management of the current conflict in Donbas to delivering the medium-term NATO standard military support that Ukraine will need for Putin’s next offensive.

    Mr Dhesi

    Will my right hon. Friend give way?

    John Healey

    Before I give way, may I in parenthesis say to the Secretary of State that the House is still looking forward to the figures that he promised to lay in the Library on 25 April about the total weapons delivered into Ukraine and the UK’s contribution to those. I will give way to the Secretary of State because I have addressed him directly, and then I will give way to my hon. Friend.

    Mr Wallace

    I will just, out of courtesy, give the hon. Gentleman an update. The delay is simply the other countries’ willingness to verify their information. As soon as we have the other countries’ sign-off about what they want to announce publicly, we will give an update. That is the only reason for the delay.

    John Healey

    I am grateful for the progress report from the Secretary of State on that commitment, which I think he implies remains.

    Mr Dhesi

    I thank my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Defence. I am glad that he is making the point about closer co-operation. Having undertaken a visit to Norway recently with the excellent armed forces parliamentary scheme, I saw some of the amazing work undertaken by our Marine commandos out in Norway. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need closer co-operation, especially with those Scandinavian nations, in view of the increased Russian threat?

    John Healey

    I do indeed, and I am sure that my hon. Friend also discussed Norway’s contribution to the joint expeditionary force set up in 2015 and led by Britain, which the Secretary of State mentioned. The accession of Finland and Sweden means that there are now a full 10 NATO nations in the force, and that it can become even more flexible as a potential operational first responder in the Baltics and in the Nordic areas.

    Mr Baron

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    John Healey

    I will indeed, but then perhaps I had better get on with my speech.

    Mr Baron

    The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous, and I will be brief. He mentioned weapons systems. Is not one of the lessons from Ukraine so far the speed with which one gets through the systems that are being delivered? It reminds us of the need for deep stockpiles of such weapons and ammunition—and, indeed, security of supply lines—at times like this, which we should not underestimate when we factor in defence spending.

    John Healey

    The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. One of the most useful and effective weapons for the Ukrainians has proved to be the British-supplied Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon missile, but we rapidly ran out of our UK stocks. We have been very slow in getting fresh production under way, and we have had to raid the stockpiles and the production supplies set for other countries in order to continue to supply, as we must, the military assistance that Ukraine needs. I think that the question of procurement—I will say more about this later—is one of stockpiles, sourcing, and speed. Those three “Ss” are a part of the failures of the present military procurement system, which really does now require deep reform.

    John Spellar

    My right hon. Friend has touched on what seems to be the key lesson of the recent procurement issue, namely the maintenance of productive capacity, not just in the main equipment suppliers but right down through tiers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Does that not require a steady flow of orders, and should not the Ministry of Defence focus in particular on procurement from domestic industry to maintain that productive capacity, which can then be ramped up?

    John Healey

    I think that it does. It requires a steady flow of orders, it requires a stronger commitment to design and make in Britain, and it requires a long-term strategy so that defence industrial producers and their workforces are not faced with a stop-go of uncertain contracts and, very often in the recent past, a competition that may put them at a disadvantage with overseas suppliers.

    I am looking around the Chamber momentarily before I proceed, and I will proceed now.

    The bravery of the Ukrainians, civil and military alike, has been extraordinary, and we pay tribute to them in the House again today. Beyond his misjudgment of Russia’s military competence and capabilities, Putin has made two fundamental miscalculations, first of the fierce determination of Ukrainians to defend their country, and secondly of western unity. I believe that the two are linked. Just as Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas region in 2014 strengthened Ukraine’s national unity and resolve to resist Russia, this full-scale invasion of sovereign Ukraine has strengthened NATO’s international unity and resolve to resist Russia.

    NATO is becoming stronger. President Biden has doubled down on the United States’ commitment to

    “defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”

    Led by Germany, a dozen European countries have already rebooted defence plans and defence spending, while Finland and Sweden have overturned decades of non-alignment, with their centre-left Governments now bidding for NATO membership, a move that we, as the official Opposition, fully support. Putin is right to say that this Nordic NATO expansion does not pose a direct threat to Russia—NATO is a defensive alliance—but the man who is waging war in Europe is certainly in no position to demand conditions on countries seeking NATO’s collective security.

    This afternoon the Secretary of State described NATO as the most successful alliance in history, and he was right. It is the most successful alliance in history because of the strength of both its military and its values. It pools military capacity, capability and cash, with a collective budget of more than $1 trillion, to protect 1 billion people. Alongside the solemn commitment to collective defence, the values of democracy, individual freedom and the rule of law are also enshrined in its founding treaties.

    I am proud that the UK’s post-war Labour Government played the leading role in NATO’s foundation, and Labour’s commitment to the alliance remains unshakeable. The Secretary of State, having said that he did not play party politics, then did exactly that. I gently say to him that the position of Labour’s leadership on its unshakeable commitment to NATO and its commitment to the UK nuclear deterrent has been a settled position from Kinnock to Corbyn and from Blair, Brown and Miliband in between.

    The Minister for the Armed Forces (James Heappey)

    You missed one.

    John Healey

    Check the record.

    Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)

    Would my right hon. Friend agree that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, originally conceived in 1968 under the Government of Harold Wilson, was an enormous step forward and is universally supported by most non-nuclear powers around the world, and that Britain could make a very positive contribution to the NPT review conference in August this year? Would he also agree that it would be helpful if the Government did that, so that we could start down the road of ridding the world of nuclear weapons and signing up to a ban on nuclear weapons?

    John Healey

    My right hon. Friend is right in many respects. Some of the most significant arms reduction and arms control treaties have been negotiated and signed by this country under Labour Governments. That was true under Wilson, whom he cites, and it was also true under Blair. He is also right to remind the House that part of our unshakeable commitment to NATO and to the deterrent has been a commitment to leading multinational arms control, reduction and disarmament talks. We may have lost sight of those in recent years—they have certainly commanded little attention over the last decade from the Conservatives—but they are part and parcel of pursuing the fundamental values of NATO, of this country and certainly of the party on this side of the House.

    Mr Kevan Jones

    I concur with what my right hon. Friend has said, but is it not the case that we now need to be making the case for deterrence, so that when Putin is providing maps and threats of nuclear destruction for western Europe, we can say very clearly what the response would be? It is that deterrent stance that has kept the peace since the second world war, and we need to keep reminding him, when he makes those threats, of the reason that we retain a nuclear deterrent.

    John Healey

    My right hon. Friend is right. Clear and consistent communication is part of having an effective deterrent in place. It is not simply about the weaponry at hand.

    Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)

    Would the right hon. Gentleman dare to go a little further and acknowledge the truth, which is that it is the responsible possession of nuclear weapons by responsible democracies that has kept the peace, and that it would be a mistake ever to get rid of nuclear weapons entirely as that would increase the likelihood of the major state- on-state warfare that we saw before nuclear weapons existed?

    John Healey

    I would agree with the contention that possession has helped to hold the peace, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has just pointed out, possession is a necessary but insufficient component of effective deterrence. The communication that my right hon. Friend has just talked about is part of a picture of effective deterrence, alongside political leadership of countries and alliances.

    If the House will allow me, I shall move on to the strategic concept and the weeks ahead. Next month, as the Secretary of State has said, member nations will set NATO’s strategy for the next decade, with all democracies now facing new threats to their security. NATO’s last strategic concept was agreed in 2010. It declared:

    “Today, the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace”.

    It sought a strategic partnership with Russia, it had limited reference to terrorism and it made no mention at all of China. The proximity and severity of the security threat in Europe now demand a clear break with the principles-based platitudes that have been the hallmark of NATO’s previous public strategic concept. The nature of the threat is both clear and urgent. Russia has attacked Ukraine, overridden the NATO-Russia Founding Act, breached the Geneva conventions, buried the Helsinki Final Act, made unilateral threats of nuclear attack against NATO and stands accused of crimes against humanity and genocide.

    The Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said:

    “Regardless of when, how, the war in Ukraine ends, the war has already had long-term consequences for our security. NATO needs to adapt to that new reality.”

    Most importantly, NATO has to adapt its primary task of collective defence.

    When the Labour leader and I visited Estonia in February to thank our British troops, they told us about NATO’s tripwire deterrent, which the Secretary of State mentioned, with forward forces giving ground when attacked before retaking it later with reinforcements. The horrific Russian destruction of Ukrainian cities and the brutal shelling of civilians makes it clear that such a strategy of deterrence by reinforcement is no longer conscionable. NATO must instead aim for deterrence by denial, which is the operational consequence of NATO leaders’ commitment to defending every inch of NATO territory.

    I am not sure whether that is covered by the combat effectiveness the Defence Secretary spoke about, but it implies a very serious strengthening of military capability, with more advanced systems, more permanent basing, higher force readiness and more intense exercises.

    Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

    I hope the right hon. Gentleman will excuse me for not being here at the beginning of his speech but, when I saw him on the screen, I rushed to hear what he has to say.

    Does not this reappraisal, which is the consequence of recent events, need to recognise that, contrary to predictions until very recently that all future warfare would be high tech and entirely different from what we knew before, we now see that much of what is happening in Ukraine is very conventional and rather old-fashioned in some ways? The horror of street-to-street and trench-to-trench fighting requires a reappraisal that might mean we need just as many, or more, troops on the ground, more tanks and more of the things that we were told, not very long ago, are redundant.

    I might say the same of security more widely, particularly terrorism. Tragically and awfully, terrorism has adapted to use very ordinary, everyday things. We see cars used as weapons, for example. The recent terrorist attacks have been rather low tech, rather than high tech.

    John Healey

    I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman means to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, but he makes several important points. His last point, on low tech, is right. In many ways, high tech can sometimes become low-tech weaponry. It is easy to conceive that, in the wrong hands, an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone could almost be a flying car bomb.

    It is important that we continue to invest in and develop high-tech systems, which give us the edge and some of the deterrent effect we require. Like the right hon. Gentleman, one of the lessons I take from Ukraine is that, in the reality of battle, conflict and confrontation, we need “now tech” and not just high tech. That is one of the flaws in the procurement system, as the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) said in his intervention.

    Wayne David

    Does my right hon. Friend agree that we all have to deal with the difficulty of the Russians’ apparent willingness, in certain circumstances, to use theatre nuclear weapons?

    John Healey

    Indeed, there is certainly a willingness to threaten to use such weapons. The escalation of President Putin’s rhetoric at times in this conflict has been reckless. That requires responsible leaders in the western alliance to be careful, measured and consistent about the rhetoric we use. That has not always been what we have seen from some of our Ministers. It also requires us to be implacably clear that any use of such weaponry would be met with a strong, special response and that the universal opprobrium that would befall Russia must make a contemplation of this, even by those in the Kremlin, even in circumstances in which they may feel they are losing ground and losing the conflict, unthinkable.

    I am going to press on, because many other Members much more expert than I want to contribute to this debate. Whatever the points the Secretary of State has made and I have made so far, NATO’s new strategic concept has to be a major diplomatic agreement on geostrategic goals first and a plan for force generation, doctrine deployment and procurement second. The NATO 2030 plan must spell out how we are going to contain Putin, what forces we will generate, what new technologies we will accelerate and how we will strengthen our homeland societies. It must set out also a strategy for our open democratic societies to deal with China, which the 2030 reflection group now rightly described as

    “a full-spectrum systemic rival, rather than a purely economic player or an only Asia-focused security actor.”

    As the reflection group prepared NATO for these decisions, it said:

    “The line between civilians and combatants is being blurred”.

    So we want the alliance to set democratic resilience as a new core task for NATO when its member nations meet in Madrid next month.

    We cannot go far online without finding someone to tell us that western democracies are just as bad or even worse than Moscow or Beijing. Putin spends billions a year trying to divide and degrade our democracies. We have seen that in things ranging from meddling in elections to misinformation about covid and to criminal corruption. The waning belief in our own values has perhaps become the west’s Achilles heel. Just as we defend against attacks from beyond our borders, so we must respond to attacks within them, too. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s recommendations for this new strategic concept stress also the central importance of resilience in our democracies and our societies. It is the way in which we can both counter hybrid warfare and shore up support for our defence commitments.

    Within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Scholz declared it

    “a watershed in the history of our continent.”

    He overturned decades-long German defence policy and boosted defence spending by €100 billion. This is now day 85 and the Government have taken no action to reboot our own UK defence plans. Instead, we are told by Defence Ministers that

    “the invasion of Ukraine has proved the integrated review right.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2022; Vol. 714, c. 136.]

    Well, the integrated review was billed as a “threats-led” strategy. It has a prominent section on the Indo-Pacific, yet no section on Europe. It confirms that threats to Britain are increasing, yet it cuts the Army by a further 10,000 troops. It makes no mention of a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan or a Russian invasion of Ukraine. I say to the Defence Secretary that all democracies must respond to the newly realised threats to national and European security. That is why we are arguing that he and the Government must rewrite the flaws in the integrated review, review defence spending, reform defence procurement, rethink those Army cuts and reinvigorate UK leadership in NATO.

    In the run-up to Madrid, 30 or—I hope—32 democracies and their civil societies will rightly demand a say in the priorities that are set for NATO for the next decade. As the Opposition party that intends to govern Britain in the near future, so do we—yet it is a closed process, confined to Governments. It is closed to the public and closed to non-governing parties, despite the fact that national elections are due within two years in 19 out of the 30 NATO countries. That is why I ask the Government to open up the UK process to create a common British vision for NATO. I welcome the Secretary of State’s offer, in response, to discuss the strategic concept with us as it develops, but I urge him to go further and to lay out for the public, in this House, the UK’s view of NATO’s strategic goals and military priorities, as well as the contribution that Britain will make to our collective defence. I want the UK to drive the debates as NATO gives a greater focus to defence, alongside deterrence and diplomacy. I want UK leadership in NATO to anticipate areas of future Russian aggression, to respond as the Arctic opens up, to settle the alliance’s relationship with the EU and to challenge and compete with China.

    Jeremy Corbyn

    I thank my right hon. Friend for the remark he just made about future diplomacy. Does he not think that this moment, when defence expenditure is rising so rapidly all around the world, presents a big problem, and that we should also look at the role that the United Nations could and should play and regret the long delay between the start of the awful Russian invasion of Ukraine and any kind of diplomatic initiative by the UN? There has to be a world of peace and basically that has to come through agreements via the United Nations.

    John Healey

    I see it not as a big problem but as a necessary response. The right hon. Gentleman is right about the paralysis of the United Nations; that is because Russia is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Any UN action to try to deal with the conflict in and Russian invasion of Ukraine is therefore stymied before it starts.

    I want the UK to have a unified commitment to NATO. I want our commitment to be bipartisan. I do not want it to be a conversation simply for current Ministers behind closed doors. Let me use NATO’s reflection group to underline the point. It said that political cohesion is the basis of effective deterrence and that political consultation remains the most important means by which NATO can reinforce political cohesion. Bipartisan support has strengthened Britain’s action to help Ukraine and confront Russia; it will also strengthen Britain as the leading European nation in NATO.

  • Ben Wallace – 2022 Statement on NATO and International Security

    Ben Wallace – 2022 Statement on NATO and International Security

    The statement made by Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State of Defence, in the House of Commons on 19 May 2022.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered NATO and international security.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss NATO and international security today. The ongoing war in Ukraine underlines the fact that we are living in a dangerous new reality, where aggressor states such as Russia are ever more willing to take risks and violate our international rules-based order. But it also reinforces the ongoing value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the most successful alliance in history.

    Since NATO’s formation in 1949, it has been a beacon of freedom. Twelve founding members, of which the United Kingdom was one, came together to protect their common values and the precious freedoms so recently won in the second world war— freedoms that until recently many of us took for granted. Over the last 70 years, NATO has more than doubled in size to 30 members, but each is still bound by the common values of that founding treaty: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Contrary to allegations that emanate from the Kremlin, people choose NATO; NATO does not choose them. Those founding principles have stood the test of time, while other authoritarian, oppressive regimes have been found wanting. Our principles have remained, but our military and diplomatic strategies have continued to evolve.

    NATO’s strategic concept is the masterplan for the alliance. It reaffirms the alliance’s values and guides NATO’s future political and military development. It provides a collective assessment of the security environment and drives the adaptation of the alliance.

    Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)

    My right hon. Friend will have had sight of the 2022 Defence Committee report and its recommendations. Does he agree, without wishing to put him on the spot about higher defence spending, that it is wise for the west and this country to talk softly and to carry a big stick, and to resource those capabilities accordingly? We are more likely to be listened to when talking softly if we have the hard assets required to ensure that.

    Mr Wallace

    My hon. Friend makes an important point about resource. I have always said that, as the threat changes, we should obviously consider changing how we deliver and what we deliver in defence. One of the key planks of my tenure as Defence Secretary is for us to be a truly threat-led organisation—if the threat goes up or down, we should adjust accordingly—otherwise we will end up fighting yesterday’s battles, not tomorrow’s. That of course includes resource. It is also very important to make sure that the machineries of both NATO and our Department of State reflect that and move quickly to deliver it.

    Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)

    Having served as a Member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I am glad that both the Government and Her Majesty’s Opposition are of the firm opinion that NATO must be a cornerstone of our defence policy. What exactly is the Secretary of State doing to assuage the concerns of Turkey to make sure that the likes of Finland and Sweden can acquire the NATO membership they desire?

    Mr Wallace

    Turkey is an incredibly important member of NATO, and indeed a strong contributor to it. We should always remember that NATO covers a very wide frontier, from the high north—the Arctic—in Norway all the way through to the Black sea and Turkey. Turkey is one of the oldest members of NATO, and it is very important that we understand, in this environment, what Turkey is concerned about and that we address that to make sure that the 30 nations come together to support and accept Finland and Sweden.

    I will be speaking to my counterpart—I speak regularly to the Defence Minister anyhow—and I have listened to the worries of President Erdoğan about PKK terrorism groups and whether members are doing enough to deal with them. I think there is a way through and that we will get there in the end. It is very important that we listen to all members about their concerns in that process. We will certainly be listening to Turkey, and I was in touch with my counterpart over the weekend about exactly that.

    The NATO strategic concept is updated every 10 years and, in the wake of Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine, it is critical that we make sure it is updated to reflect what is going on today. The 2010 strategic concept has served us well, but clearly needs modernising to reflect the new security reality we face. For example, in 2010, the concept stated that the Euro-Atlantic area was at peace. The next concept will reflect how NATO is accelerating its transformation for a more dangerous strategic reality, calibrating our collective defence to Russia’s unacceptable invasion of Ukraine and the new challenges posed by countries further afield, such as China.

    While the new concept will reaffirm our commitment to freedom, openness and the rules-based order, it must also embed the UK-led work to ensure that the alliance is fit for future challenges in line with the NATO 2030 agenda. This includes modernising and adapting to advanced technologies, competing and integrating across domains using military and non-military tools, and improving national resilience. The UK has been at the forefront of the strategy’s development. We have full confidence that the 2022 strategic concept will reshape the alliance to ensure it is fit for purpose and for future challenges—in particular, by adapting its deterrence and defence posture on its eastern flank by expanding the alliance’s forward presence from a tripwire to a more credible and combat-effective model, which is grounded through effective, enabled and equipped in-place forces, and supported by persistent, rotational and rapidly scalable forces from elsewhere.

    Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)

    I again put on record my thanks to the Secretary of State for his leadership during the present crisis. One of the challenges facing NATO, which may seem quite boring to many people, is the issue of logistics and the resilience of transport and other networks across the NATO alliance. Does he see this being addressed at Madrid? Certainly from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly point of view, we talk about it, and it is one of those issues that comes up time and again.

    Mr Wallace

    NATO and many of its member countries are no different from the United Kingdom in that many of the unglamorous but key enablers have been disinvested in. That may be the bridge strengthening in eastern Europe that would allow heavy armour to get to the frontlines—that used to be a total norm in every design in the 1980s and at the time of the cold war—or it may be logistical hubs or transport to get people rapidly to the front. All of that has in effect been the Cinderella of defence spending for too long across the alliance countries, including the United Kingdom. One of the ways through that is NATO common funding, and Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General, has an ambition for a significant increase in that funding. We will look sympathetically at that request, obviously balancing our own budget requirements, but also making sure that it is going to be used for those purposes.

    It is here that places such as the EU can complement NATO. The EU has recently published what I think it calls its strategic compass, and I was very keen to make sure that the EU complemented NATO and did not compete with it. What can the EU do well? It can co-ordinate in sub-threshold areas such as cyber, transnational crime, transnational migration and disinformation, and also in infrastructure-readiness across its member states. I am incredibly supportive of the EU doing more in that space, which would complement the NATO response and make it even more effective.

    Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)

    I completely agree with everything that the Secretary of State has just said, but does it not make the case for the UK to have a defence and security treaty with the European Union?

    Mr Wallace

    We have a defence and security treaty with the 30 members of NATO, nearly every one of which is in the EU. I do not think that we need to replicate treaties, but we should recognise that where we can encourage the EU not to compete but to complement NATO, we should be full supporters of that. If necessary, we should join the EU in things such as the PESCO—permanent structured co-operation—mobility study. The United States has joined it as well, and we should be open to joining.

    John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)

    I am sorry that the Secretary of State missed that opportunity to ask what the SNP policy actually is on NATO, or which one it is on today. On logistics and transport, was it not a strategic mistake to pull the Army out of Germany? How far advanced are we in reinstating ourselves in bases that are far more accessible to where a theatre of operations may be?

    Mr Wallace

    I was one of the soldiers in north-west Germany at the time and there was always a desire after the cold war that we would bring forces back; the Dutch and everyone did that. With the unification of Germany and the accession of the Baltic states, Germany is a long way from any frontline. It is a different world now. It was a few minutes’ drive to the iron curtain in my day; it is now a long way to any frontline.

    If there were any desire to reinvest in mainland Europe near what are in effect the new frontlines, we would look openly at that. What we are looking for from NATO in this next phase is long-term planning for how it will contain Russia post Ukraine and provide resilience and reassurance to countries that cannot do that on their own. That could be permanent basing or it could be rapid readiness—being able to deploy quickly, instead of being stuck in a big base in one place. That is all up for development, which I think is incredibly important.

    The year 2014 was a wake-up call. With Russia annexing Crimea, NATO began steadily transforming itself in relation to the increased danger. Thanks to the leadership of the United Kingdom, it enhanced the NATO response force, created the enhanced forward presence and launched the framework nation concept. Since 2019, it has developed a new NATO military strategy and a new deterrence and defence concept for the Euro-Atlantic area—the DDA. It has recognised space and cyber as operational domains, and we have agreed strategies on artificial intelligence and emerging and disruptive technologies.

    Reflecting the themes of our own integrated review, we want to ensure that NATO is flexible and agile and has a resilient multi-domain force architecture with the right forces in the right place at the right time. In particular, the UK has been pushing to instil a culture of readiness in the alliance. The combat forces that deliver the NATO readiness initiative include 30 major naval combatants, 30 heavy or medium-manoeuvre battalions and 30 kinetic air squadrons—which, in English, is fighter planes. You never know what a kinetic air squadron is—only in the Ministry of Defence. [Laughter.] They are being organised and trained as larger combat formations for reinforcements and high-intensity war fighting or for rapid military crisis intervention.

    I am proud that the UK has made the largest offer of any ally to the NATO readiness initiative by allocating our carrier strike group, squadrons of F-35Bs and Typhoons, and an armoured infantry brigade. I am also proud of our role in developing two significant UK-inspired military concepts, the DDA and the war fighting concept, which will further strengthen the alliance’s ability to deter and defend against any potential adversary and maintain and develop our military advantage now and in the future. We will continue to play a leading role in the implementation of those concepts.

    The recent war in Ukraine has helped to recover NATO’s original sense of purpose. In the wake of President Putin’s senseless invasion, he imagined that he would find NATO weak and divided. Instead, he has found only strength and solidarity. From the outset, the alliance made it clear that any attack by Russia on its neighbours—including NATO’s enhanced opportunity partners, which is what Ukraine was—would result in the imposition of significant economic, political and diplomatic costs, and so it has proved. NATO allies, supported by further friends from across the globe, have imposed unprecedented costs on Russia, starving the Kremlin’s war machine of resources. In a matter of weeks, President Putin has destroyed decades of economic progress for the Russian people. Allies are providing substantial financial and humanitarian aid, including by hosting millions of refugees across Europe.

    I am proud again that the UK has been at the forefront of those efforts. We were the first European country to provide lethal aid to Ukraine. To date, the United Kingdom has sent more than 6,900 anti-tank missiles, including next generation light anti-tank weapons and Javelins; eight air defence systems, including Starstreak anti-air missiles; 1,360 anti-structure munitions; 4.5 tonnes of plastic explosives; thousands of tonnes of non-military aid and humanitarian aid; and military aid such as helmets and body armour. The Stormer armoured vehicles will be deployed soon, once training is complete.

    Not only has the Ukraine crisis tested NATO’s ability to support a neighbour, but it has rightly led to a re-evaluation of our collective security. As I have said to the House before, the greatest irony of the conflict is that President Putin has secured a larger NATO presence on his borders, the polar opposite of what he claimed he wanted to achieve. For the first time, we have deployed the NATO response force for defensive purposes. More than 40,000 troops are now under direct NATO command. We are setting up four new multinational battle groups in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, doubling NATO’s presence in the region.

    As part of that effort, the UK has increased its readiness to respond to all contingencies. That includes sending four additional Typhoons to Cyprus and Romania to patrol the south-eastern European skies, in addition to the four Typhoons already conducting NATO air policing from Romania. It also includes sending ships to the eastern Mediterranean and the Baltic sea and temporarily doubling our military presence in Estonia to 1,700 personnel.

    Article 5 is perhaps the most well-known article in the 1949 NATO founding treaty. It is the centre pillar of collective defence—the principle that an attack against one ally is an attack against us all—and it binds NATO’s members together in a spirit of solidarity, committing them to protect one another. Contrary to popular belief, however, article 5 is not automatic; a member invoking it still requires the consensus of all allies. It is important to note that once there has been a vote, article 5 gives member states a range of options, including but not limited to military responses.

    Article 5 has been invoked only once in NATO history: by the United States, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In contrast, the less well-known article 4 of NATO’s founding treaty has been invoked on seven occasions since 1949. An ally or group of allies can invoke article 4 if they perceive a threat to their security, territorial integrity or political independence. On 24 February, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia invoked article 4 in response to the Russian illegal invasion of Ukraine. As with article 5, the actions that follow article 4 can take a number of forms. On this occasion, allies agreed to significant additional defensive deployments of forces to the eastern part of the alliance.

    Our ability to honour treaties comes at a significant cost, but in that area, too, the UK is leading. We currently have the largest defence budget in Europe. Not only is Putin discovering more NATO presence, but his belligerence has paradoxically ensured more investment in the alliance. At the end of 2020, the UK, anticipating the resurgence of Russia, increased its defence budget by £24 billion over four years. Since the outbreak of war, other NATO nations have begun following suit. Denmark has established a defence diplomacy fund of €1 billion for 2022-23. France has indicated that it will increase its defence spending beyond the substantial increases already planned for the next few years. Poland has announced that it will increase its defence spending to 3% of GDP from 2023, while roughly doubling the size of its military. Most notably, Germany has dramatically reversed its historical position on defence and has announced legal changes to ensure that it will meet the 2% spending pledge alongside €100 billion for the Bundeswehr, which in effect doubles its defence budget.

    What we spend our money on matters as much as its sum total. That is why NATO is putting the onus on spending more on research and development to develop the disruptive capability that we need to defeat our adversaries. As part of our settlement for defence, the UK has ringfenced more than £6 billion for R&D, so I am delighted that NATO recently selected the United Kingdom, alongside Estonia, as the joint host of the European NATO headquarters of DIANA, the defence innovation accelerator of the north Atlantic.

    Sweden and Finland have both taken the bold step of seeking NATO membership. The UK will be strong in its support for them in that process. If Sweden and Finland are successful, all 10 nations of the Joint Expeditionary Force, from Iceland to the Baltics, will be in NATO. That 10-nation alliance will be well suited to training, exercising and operating together within the NATO alliance, with Britain as a framework nation.

    John Spellar

    The Secretary of State says, “If Sweden and Finland are successful”. Surely they have to be successful, having made an application. As militarily equipped democracies, their applications have to succeed. Nothing should stand in their way.

    Mr Wallace

    I totally agree. When Britain says that we want to support them, we want them to succeed. We will help them to succeed, and I believe they will succeed. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that they must succeed. We need to demonstrate that nations such as Sweden and Finland, having applied, are welcome in the alliance. As I said, people choose NATO, but NATO also recognises the values that those two countries stand for and the professionalism of their armed forces, with which Britain already integrates very strongly. Only a couple of weeks ago, I went to see British heavy tanks in Finland. I think that that is the first time in history that they have been deployed there.

    There remain a lot of challenges. We have seen encouraging signs of countries rising to the spending challenge, but as of 2021 less than a third meet the pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defence. The Russian Government’s invasion of Ukraine has, of course, presented new challenges to NATO members, which is why in March I asked NATO to produce a long-term plan on containing Russia, providing reassurance to its members and contributing to improving the resilience of countries on the frontline. I am pleased to say that earlier this week, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Tod Wolters, provided his initial thoughts on the long-term posture. Members will be discussing it between now and Madrid.

    Events in Ukraine have reminded many people of the importance of NATO as a guardian of European security. There are many in this House who have been consistent supporters of our membership. Putin’s strategic miscalculations have been so great that he has even now recruited new supporters to NATO’s cause: not only are Sweden and Finland applying, but the Scottish National party has now come out in full support, which we welcome on the Government Benches.

    Stewart Malcolm McDonald

    I will come on to this in my own remarks, but the policy happened 10 years ago this autumn.

    Mr Wallace

    Well, when I sat in the Scottish Parliament, I think NATO and the SNP did not go together.

    Stewart Malcolm McDonald

    More than 10 years ago!

    Mr Wallace

    Yes, maybe it was. But let us not forget that NATO is a nuclear alliance. There is a danger that the people of Scotland will pick up the slight contradiction that the SNP, which campaigned to rid Scotland of the deterrent that has kept the whole United Kingdom safe for more than 50 years, is campaigning to join a nuclear alliance. In that nuclear alliance, it is Britain’s deterrent that is effectively allocated to NATO. If the SNP got its way, it would be ironic if its wholehearted support for NATO meant that it was reliant on an English nuclear deterrent.

    Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)

    And Welsh!

    Mr Wallace

    And Welsh.

    I welcome the close working and clear support from the Labour party on Ukraine and NATO over the past few months. I noticed the article in The Times today by the shadow Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), arguing for the Opposition to have a greater involvement in the process of refining the strategic concept for the next 10 years.

    You know as well as anyone, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am always keen to be inclusive and above partisan politics. I am happy to discuss with Opposition Front Benchers the strategic concept as it develops over the next few weeks and months. I will, however, add that NATO has mechanisms to contribute to such decisions, not least the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, on which a number of hon. Members serve—there are six Labour Members on it. In both the Opposition and the Government, we do not pay enough attention to our Members who serve on committees abroad. The assembly is often an afterthought, when in fact it should be embraced wholly. It can work both ways, and we can learn what people are thinking in NATO—for example, when it comes to solving the Turkish issue, we should be using the members of the assembly as much as ministerial contacts.

    It is not always the case that Opposition parties are so supportive of NATO. Only a few years ago, the previous leader of the Opposition was a man whose aim was to disband NATO. There is also an individual on the Labour Front Bench who recently said that he hoped Russia would successfully hack the nuclear deterrent in the United Kingdom. I know that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne does not share those motives or views, but we should remind ourselves that not everybody, all of the time, agrees with our positions. Every party is free to change its position on alliances such as NATO, as have the SNP and others, although a certain Member for Islington is, I think, still on a different track.

    NATO’s upcoming summit in Madrid, from 28 to 30 June, is an opportunity to address the new strategic reality and agree abiding changes to our deterrence and defence posture in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ours aims at the meeting will be straightforward: to maintain NATO’s momentum; to ensure its forces are credible and combat capable in the east; to expand the alliance’s forward presence from a trip-wire approach to a more effective model based on well-equipped, in-place forces supported by persistent, rapidly scalable forces from elsewhere; and to strengthen neighbouring countries and the global partnerships that underpin freedom and democracy. Critically, NATO nations will be looking to agree our new strategic concept, which will set the direction of the alliance for the next decade.

    For more than seven decades NATO has protected our way of life and the democracy, justice and freedom that go to the heart of who we are. But peace must be defended in every generation, and as we confront a dangerous new reality in which those values and the international system that underpins them come under sustained assault, it is vital that the alliance is stronger and more united than ever before. I know that that desire is shared by Members on both sides of the House, and they should rest assured that Britain will do all in its power to make sure that NATO keeps delivering by upgrading its defence and deterrence, and will help it adapt to face the 21st-century threat, making sure it remains, as it has for nearly three quarters of a century, the greatest bastion of our security and the greatest guarantor of our peace.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Statement on Ajax

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Statement on Ajax

    The statement made by Jeremy Quin, the Minister for Defence Procurement, in the House of Commons on 19 May 2022.

    As part of my commitment to keep Parliament informed on the programme, I wish to provide a further update on the Ajax equipment project being delivered as part of the armoured cavalry programme.

    Programmatic issues

    Work continues on the noise and vibration issues.

    The independent Millbrook trials have now concluded. The initial findings informed the consideration by the safety panel on the next step of conducting user validation trials.

    The aim of the user validation trials is to help establish the effectiveness of the modifications to address the noise and vibration problems and thereby deliver a safe system of work under which we could conduct reliability growth trials on the modified vehicles.

    Following agreement by the safety panel, user validation trials by Army personnel resumed at the Armoured Trials Development Unit on 12 May, supported by the independent Millbrook trials team. Data was successfully collected during the trials for analysis. In particular, as a result of the trials, an issue has been raised on the effectiveness of the internal communications system which requires additional analysis.

    The safety panel have set cautious parameters within which the user validation trials are to be conducted. This included the temporary use of Crewgard headsets to allow the modifications proposed by General Dynamics to be trialled. Hearing checks were conducted on all personnel before and after the trials took place. These checks identified hearing anomalies in some personnel (including personnel not involved in the trials who were part of the “control” sample). We intent to resume trials once these anomalies are understood.

    User trials are required to allow Millbrook to continue to gather additional data to provide an independent assessment on the effectiveness of the modifications proposed by General Dynamics. We will then analyse the data, alongside feedback from the Army crews involved. This analysis will help define a safe system of work for the reliability growth trials on the modified vehicles.

    These reliability growth trials are planned to commence later this year. As with any armoured vehicle procurement, the aim of the reliability growth trials is to test the vehicle more thoroughly over an extended period. This will identify any issues beyond noise and vibration that need to be addressed before we can be confident that the vehicle meets the Army’s contractual requirements. Identifying and resolving a range of such issues is a normal part of the acquisition process for all military equipment.

    Once we are satisfied that there are long-term solutions to the noise and vibration problems, we will need to agree with General Dynamics a realistic schedule to initial operating capability and full operating capability. We will not accept a vehicle that is not fit for purpose and we are continuing to take all steps necessary to secure our contractual and commercial rights under the contract with General Dynamics.

    Update on personnel

    It remains the case that of the 310 people identified as working with Ajax, 13 individuals have had long-term restrictions on noise exposure recommended, potentially requiring a limitation in their military duties. The majority of these had pre-existing hearing issues prior to working on Ajax; some did not. A further five individuals remain under specialist outpatient care for hearing and other ear, nose and throat issues. In addition, it remains the case that four individuals who worked on Ajax have been discharged on health grounds, in some cases for reasons wholly unrelated to hearing loss.

    Assessments continue for both hand-transmitted and whole-body vibration. To date, fewer than five individuals have been identified with conditions which could be aggravated by vibration; these individuals have been recommended for a limitation in their military duties whilst they undergo further investigation and treatment. It is not possible to determine clinically whether Ajax exposure has caused or aggravated the clinical conditions of any of these individuals. I am withholding a more precise breakdown because, given the small number of service personnel involved, individuals could be identified resulting in a potential breach in medical confidentiality.

    The Sheldon review

    Following parliamentary clearance of the associated contingent liability, I am pleased to announce that we have now formally appointed Clive Sheldon QC. The review will have full access to all relevant MOD papers and personnel. I encourage all those who wish to provide evidence or other input to the review to contact the independent review team at Ajax-Review@mod.gov.uk. Copies of the terms of reference of the review are available in the Library of the House. I will update Parliament in due course on the likely duration of the review once Mr Sheldon has had the opportunity to consider the issue in detail.

    Conclusion

    The focus for the MOD and General Dynamics remains on developing and delivering long-term solutions for noise and vibration and vehicles that comply with General Dynamics contractual obligations. We want Ajax to succeed and to deliver what the British Army requires. We have a robust firm price contract for the delivery of 589 vehicles at a cost of £5.5 billion. We will not accept a vehicle that is not fit for purpose.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Statement on Defence and Security Industrial Strategy

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Statement on Defence and Security Industrial Strategy

    The statement made by Jeremy Quin, the Minister for Defence Procurement, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

    I wish to update Parliament on the progress made since the publication of the defence and security industrial strategy (DSIS) on 23 March 2021.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted even more the importance of a sustainable and resilient sector that generates the necessary skills to deliver the capabilities we and our partners need, now and in the future.

    Over the past 12 months, Government and industry have made significant progress on more than 50 DSIS commitments, and today, I am pleased to announce the publication of the land industrial strategy (LIS) which will be published on the www.gov.uk website shortly. I am also placing a copy in the Library of the House.

    The Land Industrial Strategy

    The LIS draws on DSIS principles to provide, for the first time, a specific strategy for the sector. It sets the conditions for a long-term collaborative approach, based on shared culture and behaviours that support co-investment in capability delivery, innovation, the strengthening of supply chains and the national industrial resilience the UK needs to respond to crisis.

    The LIS is not intended to prevent MOD looking overseas to acquire where appropriate the best value for money equipment. It is however designed to encourage greater transparency and partnerships, especially with onshore suppliers.

    The LIS should support the delivery of modernised equipment to the frontline more quickly and efficiently. Key platforms will serve for decades, so we will use open architectures, commonality and modularity, and work with industry to make upgrades through-life. This will give us enhanced capabilities and decisive advantage against adversaries, and, with our allies, the critical “technological edge” needed in this information age.

    Partnerships

    In the coming years, Government will be asking more of industry, to become more efficient and more enterprising, ensuring we have access to the skills and capabilities we need. This is why we are offering greater long-term transparency on our plans and policies. Since DSIS, MOD has published strategies for digital, data, shipbuilding, space and now land. Other documents such as the defence artificial intelligence strategy will be published shortly.

    In addition, we are now going beyond the commitments set out a year ago and, building on the principles of DSIS, we will soon be publishing a defence capability framework that will articulate our longer-term military capability priorities and challenges, providing greater transparency of our future plans and building upon the equipment plan 21. It will map out those areas where we expect industry to invest and upskill, combining our collective efforts to achieve the best outcomes for the UK.

    In January, in recognition of the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for innovation, diversity, and resilience in MOD’s supply chains, we published the refreshed SME action plan, which sets out how MOD will continue to create opportunities for SMEs.

    I will shortly be launching the defence technology exploitation programme (DTEP)—a UK-wide initiative that will fund and support collaborative projects between SMEs and higher tier defence suppliers—and help them win new business delivering against MOD’s technological priorities.

    DSIS also focuses on strengthening our partnerships abroad including through developing our Government-to-Government frameworks to better support defence exports.

    Acquisition and Procurement Reform

    Closer to home, we are driving increased pace into acquisition and incentivising innovation and productivity through a range of acquisition improvement initiatives and fundamental reforms of the regulations that govern defence and security procurement and single source contracts.

    The implementation of category management is expected to result in financial savings and capability benefits such as improved availability and time to delivery, through a pan-Defence approach to buying goods and services.

    We are improving the way that we manage our senior responsible owner (SRO) cadre by introducing an SRO talent pool and ensuring that our SRO skills are matched to the challenges of the projects. We are also targeting the SROs on our biggest projects allocating at least 50% of their time to the task.

    We have implemented the social value model within MOD’s procurement process, ensuring contracts deliver against key MOD outcomes and also support wider Government objectives. The MOD’s social value centre of expertise has been established and is ensuring this model is consistently applied.

    In March, the Joint Economic Data Hub published its first annual report, highlighting the important role the defence sector makes to the UK economy, including the large number of defence jobs supported by international business as well as the many apprentices and graduates in the sector. This is part of the drive by Defence to be more transparent in setting out the economic contribution the defence sector makes across the UK.

    Innovation

    This Government have reversed the long-term decline in research and development through additional funding and our ringfenced investment of at least £6.6 billion over the four years of the 2020 spending review. We have increased funding to the UK Defence Solutions Centre and the Defence and Security Accelerator, which is helping turn private sector innovation into military capability.

    In February, the UK’s first defence space strategy included a commitment to invest a further £1.4 billion into space technologies over the next decade—with additional innovation funding since being provided; and in March, I opened the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’s first regional S&T hub in Newcastle upon Tyne, focusing on AI and data science to exploit the latest technological breakthroughs for use across Defence.

    We are also working closely across Government with the Joint Security and Resilience Centre at the Home Office and UK Defence and Security Exports at the Department for International Trade to create a more resilient, more efficient, and more innovative security sector.

    Conclusion

    We have made significant progress in the first year of DSIS, but there is more to be done. The Defence Secretary and I, supported by other Government Ministers, will continue to review progress against commitments to make sure our armed forces will continue to get the equipment and capabilities they need to keep us safe and drive prosperity.

    Attachments can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2022-05-18/HCWS36/

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Comments on Defence BattleLab

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Comments on Defence BattleLab

    The comments made by Jeremy Quin, the Defence Procurement Minister, on 18 May 2022.

    As the pace of technological change continues to spiral, Defence must be forward leaning and innovative in its approach.

    Collaboration and innovation will be the catalysts to maintaining advantage over our adversaries. The BattleLab will bring together the best talent and expertise in industry and push technology boundaries to equip our Armed Forces with the latest state of the art kit.

    This will be supported by our new Land Industrial Strategy, which will increase transparency with industry to help drive joint working.

  • Liz Truss – 2022 Comments on Sweden and Finland’s Application to Join NATO

    Liz Truss – 2022 Comments on Sweden and Finland’s Application to Join NATO

    The comments made by Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on 17 May 2022.

    The UK strongly supports applications for NATO membership from Finland and Sweden. They should be integrated into the Alliance as soon as possible; their accession will strengthen the collective security of Europe.

    We look forward to working with them as new NATO Allies and stand ready to offer them our every assistance during the accession process.

    Our mutual security declarations signed with Sweden and Finland last week by the Prime Minister demonstrate our steadfast and unequivocal commitment to both countries during this process and beyond.

  • Geoffrey Mander – 1932 Speech on the Disarmament Conference

    Geoffrey Mander – 1932 Speech on the Disarmament Conference

    The speech made by Geoffrey Mander, the then Liberal MP for Wolverhampton East, in the House of Commons on 17 February 1932.

    I desire to call attention to a matter of which I have given notice to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, one in which a great amount of interest is taken in this country, and not in this country alone. I raise it in no spirit of hostility, but in order to give the Government an opportunity of making clear to the public exactly what the position is. The question concerns the appointment of Lord Cecil as a member of the British delegation to the Disarmament Conference. It has come as a great surprise and a shock to many people in this country to discover that he has not found it possible to accept the invitation extended to him.

    I venture to say that on this matter Lord Cecil occupies an almost unique position in the country. In very wide circles, in all three parties, Conservative, Liberal and Labour, he is regarded as the leader of the peace and disarmament movement in the country. More than that, for years past he has represented successive Governments on the Preparatory Commission of the Disarmament Conference. He has worked right through the technique and the details for a number of years past, and from that point of view is as well fitted as any living individual to be there to assist, to advise and to conduct negotiations. He knows the whole technique, he knows the personalities of the different individuals with whom one comes into contact there, and he knows exactly how far one could go in this, that, or the other direction. It is difficult enough to hope for the success of a Disarmament Conference when one finds the machinery of the League of Nations functions rather feebly in the case of open aggression, when there may be a tendency arising in the world once more to regard treaties as only scraps of paper. In those circumstances, I am sure it would be the desire of everybody in the House and the country to see the British delegation as strong as it is possible to make it.

    What are the facts so far as they are known to the public? We know that Lord Cecil has been invited to be a member of the Delegation, and that he has not been able to accept, and the reason given by the Lord President of the Council in this House the other day, as I understood it, was that Lord Cecil felt that he would be of more assistance outside the Conference. If a person is not in accord with the policy of a certain group, he naturally would not feel very useful inside that group. It rather makes one wonder and ask questions to get information as to what exactly is going on inside. It is clear from the statements made at the Geneva Disarmament Conference, both by the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary and by Lord Cecil, that there is a certain divergence of view. The statement of the Foreign Secretary, if he will permit me to say so, seemed to me to be in a great many respects a most admirable statement. All I would say about it is that I hope that it does not represent the last word on what the Government might be prepared to do, after negotiation with other Powers. Lord Cecil in his statement did go a good deal further. I do not know that in the long run there would necessarily be any complete divergence of view. I hope not. I hope that in due course it may be possible—and I trust that the Foreign Secretary will be able to make some indication of this kind tonight—that, although Lord Cecil is not able at the moment to join the Delegation, he is not without hope that at some later stage of the proceedings he may be brought in to the great satisfaction of all people in this country who are keen on this movement and on the promotion of the interests of the Conference.

    There is only one other word I would say, that is that if it became known—and there is a chance of this in the minds of people in this country—that Lord Cecil was unable to serve the country in this capacity because he was out of sympathy or in disagreement with the policy of the Government, I feel, in all seriousness, that it would do as much as anything to damage the prestige of this Government as a truly national Government.

  • Leo Docherty – 2022 Statement on UK Military Support for Ukraine

    Leo Docherty – 2022 Statement on UK Military Support for Ukraine

    The statement made by Leo Docherty, the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, in the House of Commons on 10 May 2022.

    The United Kingdom strongly condemns the appalling, unprovoked attack President Putin has launched on the people of Ukraine. We continue to stand with Ukraine and continue to support its right to be a sovereign, independent and democratic nation.

    The United Kingdom and our allies and partners are responding decisively to provide military and humanitarian assistance. This includes weapons that help Ukraine’s heroic efforts to defend itself. We have sent more than 6,900 new anti-tank missiles, known as NLAWs—next-generation light anti-tank weapons—a further consignment of Javelin anti-tank missiles, eight air defence systems, including Starstreak anti-air missiles, 1,360 anti-structure munitions and 4.5 tonnes of plastic explosives.

    As Ukraine steadies itself for the next attack, the UK is stepping up efforts to help its defence. As we announced on 26 April, we will be sending 300 more missiles, anti-tank systems, innovative loitering munitions, armoured fighting vehicles and anti-ship systems to stop shelling from Russian ships.

    The United Kingdom has confirmed £1.3 billion of new funding for military operations and aid to Ukraine. This includes the £300 million the Prime Minister announced on 3 May for electronic warfare equipment, a counter-battery radar system, GPS jamming equipment and thousands of night-vision devices.

    The Ministry of Defence retains the humanitarian assistance taskforce at readiness; its headquarters are at 48-hours readiness, and the remainder of the force can move with five days’ notice, should its assistance be requested. The UK has pledged £220 million of humanitarian aid for Ukraine, which includes granting in kind to the Ukraine armed forces more than 64,000 items of medical equipment from the MOD’s own supplies. We are ensuring that the UK and our security interests are secured and supporting our many allies and partners, especially Ukraine.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at Defence Space 2022

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Speech at Defence Space 2022

    The speech made by Jeremy Quin, the Minister for Defence Procurement, at Defence Space 2022 in London on 10 May 2022.

    As I walked here this morning, I was reflecting that I also delivered a speech not far from here in February. But it already seems like a lifetime ago. A lot has happened.

    In the intervening time scientists have discovered a massive comet with a nucleus 50 times that normal size speeding towards earth at approximately 22,000 miles per hour. And, fortunately, on course to miss us by one billion miles. More space tourists have also followed William Shatner’s lead and gone where few have gone before.

    Within Defence we have had a lot more to contend with – and directly impacting on space. Putin’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine has provided a powerful and salutary reminder of the operational challenges and opportunities that exist within the space domain.

    As in every other domain we have had much to learn.

    In the planning scenarios one might have imagined the lights going out and the communications going down. But that’s not, to date, what we’ve seen. The determination and resilience of the Ukrainian people has been assisted by the resilience and utility of space assets.

    Nine and a half weeks in and 72 per cent of Ukraine’s communications are still online.

    We imagined it would take maybe hours on a good day or more likely days or weeks to attribute intelligence. But that, of course, is not what we’ve seen.

    Instead, open-source imagery is providing us all with intelligence, live.

    The Kremlin’s disinformation narrative, actually let’s not dress it up here – their lies – have been made to appear clunky, out-dated and absurd.

    They said they wouldn’t invade, our ISR said they would. Their claims of what they pretend is the ground truth in Bucha is shown to be a lie when the whole world can see the ground in Bucha. Every individual involved in armed conflict now knows they are being watched and the international community will not forget what they have seen.

    Another example Absent War it could have taken years to form the agreements that could help support and protect a country’s communications in the event of some catastrophic attack.

    Instead responding immediately to this brutal, illegal invasion we’ve witnessed Starlink, courtesy of Elon Musk, gifting equipment as well as humanitarian aid. Even when the jammers started their all-too predictable attacks, Starlink’s experts have managed, to date, to stop them in their tracks.

    In Space as in every domain it is far too early to draw final conclusions.

    But the UK, seeing what we are seeing on the ground and in the skies, remains absolutely focused on our ongoing actions to increase capability in this area. Our launch of the Defence Space Strategy in February, coupled with our first integrated National Space Strategy and the establishment of our single joint Space Command paves the way for the UK to become a more resilient, more robust and more significant space player on the global stage.

    I spoke back in February about our investments. £5 billion over 10 years already allocated to our future Skynet Satellite communications. A further £1.5 billion allocated to support defence operations over the next decade. And millions invested already. On next generation constellations of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance satellites in Low Earth Orbit. On optical laser communication technology to deliver the equivalent of high-speed broadband. On other infrastructure that will provide the digital backbone on which our whole space enterprise depends.

    Amongst those investments was a pair of tiny shoebox-sized satellites – forming the Prometheus 2 mission – and destined to have an outsize impact. Built by In-Space Missions in Alton, Hampshire, this will be a test platform for monitoring radio signals including GPS, and conducting sophisticated imaging working with our international partners, with joint mission operations undertaken between In-Space, Dstl and Airbus.

    But there’s much more on board that satellite. For it also carries that sense of adventure. That delight in discovery. This mission is about examination, experimentation, exploration. There is so much we need learn and we know that Prometheus 2 will provide sparks to illuminate our future in space.

    And today I am delighted to update you on Prometheus’ progress. Some forty years ago the first British satellite Ariel 1 was sent into orbit on board a US rocket. Rekindling that arrangement, in partnership with the American National Reconnaissance Office, this year we will send Prometheus 2 into space with Virgin Orbit. Launching from their new spaceport in Cornwall. It will be the first time the U.K. has launched a British satellite into space. It represents another giant step forward in our surge to become a space power.

    These latest launches remind us that space is no longer the monolithic preserve of governments. Today the space enterprise is about collaboration. Bringing together the unique skills and intellectual heft of our supplier – those within the private sector, within academia and within the international community. Those within this room.

    And the purpose of this conference is to harness that collective brain power. To answer some of the key questions that have arisen from the conflict in Ukraine and ultimately apply those lessons to shape our space future.

    To help kick-start the debate I thought it might be helpful to pose a few questions of my own. How can get more out of Science & Technology R&D targeted defence needs? If we agree “buy before build or own only where needed”, how can we access and protect assured space-based capabilities to deliver military support on operations? And how can we accelerate our collaborations so that we not only deal swiftly with dangers in real time but minimise the bureaucracy that all too often bogs down space innovation?

    Perhaps, most critically of all, how can we create and enforce international rules so that space remains safe and secure for all? Thanks to research produced by the European Space Agency we know that humans’ behaviour in space is improving. That we are getting better at spotting and tracking smaller fragments of space debris.

    But we also know that not enough satellites are removed from heavily congested low-earth orbits at the end of their lives. I’m sure you’re all familiar with that artist’s impression of our fragile blue earth surrounded by a halo of space junk.

    Equally, we know our adversaries are far less cautious about operating in space than we are. Only a few weeks ago the International Space Station was having to take evasive action to avoid Russian satellite debris. The US recently took the bold and, I believe correct, decision to ban destructive ASAT testing. But the question for us is how can that be enforced? And how do we respond if those bans are subsequently ignored?

    So, plenty of food for thought today and I am very much looking forward to hearing your deliberations and conclusions over the coming days.

    Ukraine has confirmed a fundamental shift in the dial. Space capabilities are vital for us today but will be even more critical for our tomorrow. To reach the outer limits we must make a space pivot. But we must do so together.

  • Ben Wallace – 2022 Speech at the National Army Museum

    Ben Wallace – 2022 Speech at the National Army Museum

    The speech made by Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, at the National Army Museum in London on 9 May 2022.

    Good morning, and can I just thank the Deputy Director General of the National Army Museum Mike O’Connor for hosting us here today in the National Army Museum. I’m sorry the Director General can’t be here for personal reasons, but I know he too had been very supportive of this event so thank you.

    And it is a wonderful museum for anyone who wants to come and visit. I strongly recommend it, although it does make me feel a little old to see some of the exhibits actually above you, that I used to travel in, now sitting in a museum, as indeed the Challenger 1 tank is outside. So if you want to be reminded of your age, it’s a visit to come to.

    It is important to be here in the National Army Museum because I cannot imagine a more appropriate backdrop to what I want to say today.

    For here, amongst the amazing collections, are endless lessons from history. The successes and the failures.

    We all know the adage: “Why do they only write books on lessons learned? Because the book on lessons unlearned would be too big.”

    In this building are great tales of bravery, examples of great leadership and battle-winning technologies. But also in this museum are the stories of British failure on the battlefield.

    And throughout the hundreds of years of history – whether of victory or defeat – there is one constant: the junior soldier. The Private, the Rifleman, the Guardsman or the Trooper.

    Whatever you call them, they are the ones who rarely get to write their own history, or indeed get a say in their future, but it was their ranks that gave the most and bled the most.

    And it’s why good officers revere them, as the Squaddie or the Tommy or the Jock. Often the last to know, but always the first to fight.

    I know from my own time in uniform that to be young and to be in the service of your country is indeed a fine thing. It is even finer when the cause that you are serving is a just one.

    But is it ever easy? Is it comfortable? Is it safe? Emphatically it is not.

    It can be the most exciting thing in the world to be on operations, but luckily few of us know what it is like to be surrounded, outnumbered and attacked every day.

    There are some brave souls left from the Korean War and even fewer from the Second World War who do know.

    It’s why you also find here the permanent exhibition simply called the Soldier. Not just for learning about our past and our past battles but honouring the experiences and sacrifices of the private soldier who fought them.

    Just over an hour ago and 1,500 miles away, the world was implored to listen and watch Red Square. This is the Victory Parade in honour of the 77th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.

    But really what President Putin wants is the Russian people, and the world, to be awed and intimidated by that ongoing memorial to militarism.

    And I believe that his ongoing and unprovoked conflict in Ukraine does nothing but dishonour those same soldiers. Both the ones marching across Red Square as I speak and all the forebearers they supposedly march to commemorate.

    Let me be clear, it is right to honour the sacrifice of those many, many millions who contributed to Europe’s liberation from fascism and the Nazi reign of terror.

    It was a period of immeasurable destruction, atrocities and human suffering, particularly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. There will be no mention in Moscow today, however, that much of the suffering was self-inflicted by Stalin and his Generals.

    While in Moscow in February, I accepted the honour of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, beneath the vast red walls of the Kremlin itself.

    It stands in memory of those Russians who lost their lives fighting the invading Nazis. As the inscription proclaims – their names are unknown, but their deeds are immortal.

    And as I stood in front of the Honour Guard – themselves so young and with such uncertain fates even those few weeks later – my thoughts were for those ordinary Russian soldiers, so many of them conscripts who found themselves in a battle for personal and national survival against the Nazi regime.

    I thought about the scale of their suffering across the Soviet Union, but also how the suffering was used, then as it is now, to cover up the inadequacy of those ruling in safety and comfort from behind the Kremlin walls above and within the General Staff nearby.

    Most Soviet conscripts hadn’t a chance. Their suffering was often needless. In the absence of effective military leadership, many of their best officers were purged by NKVD for “counter-revolutionary crimes”, while “barrier troops” executed swathes of retreating soldiers, deemed “unpatriotic” for failing to press on in the face of unassailable odds.

    Fear and sycophancy dictated behaviours then, and today’s Russian Armed Forces still carry that Soviet imprint – the imprint of amorality and corruption.

    Let us be honest with ourselves and be open to the inevitable charges of hypocrisy.

    All armies risk failures of leadership and sliding into depravity, from the dehumanising of enemies and civilians, to the reckless discharging of that most solemn power, the power to take another human’s life.

    Because the profession of arms is, at its heart, the use of violent force in the defence of civilisation and its most vulnerable members.

    And that is why, in the British Army, our officers are instructed at Sandhurst under the motto ‘serve to lead’ to know that true leadership is service to their soldiers.

    As Wellington himself put it “I consider nothing in this country so valuable as the life and health of the British soldier”.

    So while there may be incidents of questionable competence, ill-discipline and unacceptable conduct, there is also, in this country, accountability and adaptation.

    Could the same ever be said of Russian Forces, with their quantity supposedly a ‘quality all of its own’? Do their officers serve their soldiers? Do they learn and adapt? Or do they seek only to comply and satisfy their higher commanders?

    Since February we have witnessed a systemic refusal to tell the truth up the chain of command, and it is playing out. Consider the fact alone that mobile crematoria trundle around the battlefields not just to hide Russian war crimes, they are for their own soldiers’ corpses as well.

    Imagine what it must do to the morale of a private soldier to know your commanders have so little faith in their campaign that you are followed around by those horrific contraptions. Or let’s consider the fate of a single unit, such as the 331st Guards Parachute Regiment, allegedly the “best of the best” in the VDV. The so called ‘elite’ Russian Airborne Forces. Supposedly professional soldiers, reportedly well-equipped, well-trained, and well-led.

    At the start of the invasion they were tasked with seizing Hostomel airfield on the outskirts of Kyiv, assessed to be planned as the airhead for reinforcement of subsequent operations to seize the capital.

    A significant proportion of the Ukrainian defenders were reservists, and despite significant Russian advantages their resistance was ferocious and brave, with the airfield changing hands several times within the first 72 hours of the invasion.

    As Russian Forces sought to consolidate the area they advanced into the nearby towns of Hostomel, Irpin and Bucha. Those places sadly, we now know, will forever be associated with the most despicable of war crimes.

    The fighting within them was intense, and open source footage alone shows the dozens of destroyed Russian vehicles and streets littered with dead troops.

    The 331st paid a particularly heavy price for having had to advance in haste, without a coherent operational plan, only light air-mobile armoured vehicles, and insufficient combat needed to sustain such fighting.

    Back in the unit’s hometown of Kostroma, in Western Russia, worried family members began posting online.

    Some confirmed the deaths of their loved ones with loving tributes. The wife of a Warrant Officer wrote “My most reliable, loving and caring husband. Now you are in heaven and you will protect us. You will always live in our hearts.”

    And as news of growing casualties spread, some posted their increasing concern and condemned the Russian military for sending them to their deaths in Ukraine.

    On the memorial wall for Sergeant Sergei Duganov one woman wrote: “nobody knows anything. The 331st Regiment is disappearing”.

    Others wrote that “ordinary boys are dying for no good reason”. The accusations President Putin had decided to “play war” and “sent thousands of guys to die”.

    And what were all those sacrifices allegedly for on that poorly planned and badly executed operation?

    On 29th March, Russian Deputy Minister Alexander Fomin announced the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kyiv area and the evacuation of Hostomel airfield.

    The axis of advance from Belarus to Kyiv had been repelled and was abandoned for those shell-shocked troops to now support a new offensive in the East.

    Ukraine’s moral component had led those brave fighters to defeat the Russian Army, poorly equipped and poorly led, and so it should have been.

    Today in Moscow it should be a day of reflection. It should be a day to commemorate the suffering, all be it at such unnecessary levels, of the ordinary Russians in the Second World war.

    And it should also be about the culpability of Stalin and his Generals whose 1939 non-aggression pact with the Nazi’s allowed both sides to dismember Poland, including the cold-blooded execution of Polish officers in the Katyn Massacre in March 1940.

    In 2020, President Putin mentioned the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in another one of his long essays, this time celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the end of the ‘Great Patriotic War’.

    Even as President Putin’s essays go this was a masterpiece of fiction. He brushes aside the pact, which not only saw Soviet forces train and supply the Nazi troops that they would later fight, but it led to the systematic invasion, occupation, liquidation and transport of the occupants of Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Romania.

    Putin dismisses these all, claiming Molotov’s pact was an “act of personal power that in no way reflected the will of the Soviet people.”

    If that’s the case, then it would be yet another example of Russia’s elites deceiving and exploiting their long-suffering population.

    But the governments did collude, with tragic consequences for their soldiers and all the citizens of the Soviet Union.

    And Putin must not be allowed to erase such uncomfortable facts in an attempt to mythologise the official national history as one of simply ‘smashing’ Nazism.

    Of course, such blatant rewriting of history is not unique to President Putin and the Kremlin propagandists. There’s even the proverb that ‘Russia is a country with a certain future, it is only its past that is unpredictable’.

    But in going to such extremes to justify this current war of choice he and his generals are now ripping up both Russia’s past and its future.

    Through their invasion of Ukraine, Putin, his inner circle and generals are now mirroring the fascism and tyranny of 77 years ago, repeating the errors of last century’s totalitarian regimes.

    They are showing the same disregard for human life, national sovereignty, and the rules-based international system. The very system, not least the United Nations Charter itself, that we conceived together and for which we fought and were victorious together in the hope of saving future generations from the scourge of war.

    Their unprovoked, illegal, senseless, and self-defeating invasion of Ukraine; their attacks against innocent civilians and their homes. Their widespread atrocities, including the deliberate targeting of women and children; they all corrupt the memory of past sacrifices and Russia’s once-proud global reputation.

    The response to this failure by Russian Forces on the ground in Ukraine has itself been a disgraceful display of self-preservation, doubling down on failure, anger, dishonesty and scapegoating.

    The behaviour of the Russian General staff has shown that their own self-preservation comes first. War crimes, targeting civilians, and the casualty rates in their own Battalion Tactical Groups are all secondary concerns.

    The truth is that Russia’s General Staff are failing and they know it.

    While I am angry at the behaviour of their army, I do not in any way remove culpability from the ordinary soldier for what horrors they are inflicting. I am equally angry at the General Staff’s absence of integrity and leadership – which should go up as well as down – and should be expected of all professional military officers.

    All professional soldiers should be appalled at the behaviour of the Russian Army. Not only are they engaged in an illegal invasion and war crimes, but their top brass have failed their own rank and file to the extent they should face court martial.

    I know soldiers in the Russian army will not get a voice and there will be thousands of mothers and wives who do not agree with this illegal war, who will be asking themselves why these things happened.

    They will of course be shamed into silence by the FSB and others. But for them let me read the charge sheet that perhaps should be laid at the feet of the General Staff of the Russian Army:

    Bad battle preparation, poor operational planning, inadequate equipment and support and most importantly corruption and the moral component.

    First, battle preparation. Perhaps most importantly Russian forces were not told what their mission was until they crossed the border into Ukraine, so they weren’t even given the opportunity to prepare.

    There were even reports of Russian troops in Belarus selling the fuel for their vehicles the week before the invasion because they had repeatedly been told it was all just an exercise.

    It was no surprise that their logistics system collapsed after 70km, leaving the Russian army in the world’s longest traffic jam where they were not only vulnerable to attack but quickly ran out of food and fuel. I have no doubt that their resorting to raiding nearby communities led to many of the atrocities.

    No meaningful Russian air support appeared for the first week and, unable to achieve air superiority, they had a limited role in the ground offence, having clearly not done any planning to support the Army or integrated land operations.

    Likewise Russian special forces, who have made and promoted their own macho videos openly mocking western armies for being inclusive of minorities and women, were resoundingly defeated by Ukrainian militia forces, often incorporating minorities and women. The farce of their commanders’ failures has led to certain VDV and Marine units reportedly suffered up to 80% casualties against those non-regular Ukrainian forces.

    And it’s all because in a military profession they failed to conduct adequate battle preparation. Why else were there such large numbers of first echelon supply trucks full of riot gear?

    Poor operational planning is the second charge. The Russian’s original ‘thunder run’ plan was based on that nationalist imperialist view that Ukrainians aren’t a real culture with the determination to resist and it led to those countless videos of ambushed columns of vehicles being burnt out.

    And despite that, the Russian generals’ refusal to report ground truth for fear of their own positions within the military has meant that ever more forces were pushed into the traffic jam of that Kyiv convoy, even days after it was clear that the strategy had failed.

    The subsequent siege and bombardment strategy failed, after it became clear the levels of resistance meant that at least a third of the force was required to take a single city. As the brave defenders of Mariupol are demonstrating even now, modern weapons and the moral force of a people determined to be free, to ensure their state, to ensure defensive dominance is also possible through that moral component. And that is why the Russian forces are failing.

    Throughout the Russian Forces’ operation and across all domains their commanders’ failures to conduct appropriate operational planning has been nothing but a betrayal of their soldiers and airmen who have paid the price with their lives.

    Thirdly, inadequate equipment and support. Russian vehicles had not been maintained properly and immobilised many logistics vehicles, leading to cheap tyres being blown out and truck axle hub failures, all due to poor maintenance or the money for that maintenance being taken elsewhere.

    As an aside, the sheer amount of footage from Ukrainian drones suggests to me that they also lack wider air defence and counter-UAV system.

    Almost none of their vehicles contain situational awareness and digital battle management. Vehicles are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them.

    But it’s not just ground forces. ‘GPS’ receivers have been found taped to the dashboards of downed Russian SU-34s so the pilots knew where they were, due to the poor quality of their own systems.

    The result is that whilst Russia have large amounts of artillery and armour that they like parading, they are unable to leverage them for combined arms manoeuvre and just resort to mass indiscriminate barrages.

    Their limited stockpiles of air-delivered precision weapons, demonstrated by a steep drop off in use after the second week, has meant that the Air Force has also fallen back on dropping imprecise dumb munitions on urban areas.

    On the ground, and despite knowing they were going to face Anti-Tank Guided Missiles, and all the lessons of the recent Karabakh conflict, the Russians didn’t invest in effective systems to protect even their most advanced tanks.

    Remember the T-14? Presumably still just for victory parades.

    Russian soldiers’ futile use of pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks and attaching overhead ‘cope cages’ to their tanks, it’s nothing short of tragic. But their commanders’ failures to adapt before entering them into such a conflict is criminal.

    And there is a complete shortage of all medical services, with overflowing civilian hospitals in Belarus and Ukrainian civilian surgeries being forced to provide medical aid to the same desperate Russian forces who invaded their homes.

    And there’s the difference. Report after report I see of Ukrainian soldiers helping injured and wounded Russian forces. The noblest of all on the battlefield, to look after your enemy as sometimes they are your own. That leads me to the fourth and most serious charge that should be laid at the generals – of corruption and the failure of the moral component.

    Caring for your own wounded – ‘never leaving a man behind’ – is one of the sacred tenets of all martial cultures, but apparently not the Russian Forces.

    How could these Generals commit their own troops knowing they were without the necessary medical support to care for them when injured in the pursuit of the orders they themselves issued?

    It is just another example of the moral decay in the Russian Forces. Rotten downwards, from the Chief of the General Staff down, where ultimately the blame must lie.

    Conscripts taken into a conflict zone unknowingly and illegally against Russian law, despite recent government claims to their families that no such thing would be done.

    Even when Ukrainian citizens have tried to indicate that buildings are sheltering civilians with signs marked out with ‘medical’ or ‘children’ the Russians have largely ignored them and then created false stories to try and cover the bombing.

    Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians forcibly relocated Eastwards. A quarter of the population refugees, over two thirds of children.

    Women and children raped and then murdered. A “terrifying echo of the Red Army’s mass rapes committed in 1945” according to historian Sir Antony Beevor.

    Ukrainian mayors abducted and tortured for their non-violent resistance. Abandoned Russian vehicles found full of looted white goods. Russian soldiers filmed in post offices mailing home endless boxes of stolen goods.

    But such open and shameless corruption does mean a complete record of who those soldiers are. We know who they are, where they have been and what crimes they have committed. It’s being created and filed and can be used to bring them and their commanders to justice as well.

    Because the Generals’ ‘butcher’s bill’ is also being paid by the many thousands of innocent Ukrainian victims of this conflict.

    Which, I just want to say, that the international community will hold to account all those responsible for these atrocities that the world is witnessing Russian Forces commit in Ukraine.

    We are watching and, as I have said, we are recording.

    Because we must protect civilians and their human rights, no matter their nationality, the cause of the conflict, or the perpetrator of their crime.

    So, all those responsible, from Commander-in-Chief to deployed tactical commander, should know that their actions are not without consequence and that ‘to know is to be responsible’.

    It is also important to recognise the countless thousands of young Russian men leaving their own mothers without sons, wives widowed, and children fatherless. Nothing more than a failure of leadership and a betrayal of command.

    To characterise such a situation as anything other than a human tragedy for both sides denies the reality.

    And to conflate it with the sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War disgraces the memories of the Immortal Regiment, each and every one of those family portraits held aloft in the parades held across Russia today should realise.

    We all wish this senseless war did not need to be fought but – like the vast majority of the world – we cannot stand by without giving Ukrainians the means to defend themselves.

    That is why the British Government – the whole United Kingdom – stands in solidarity with Ukraine, supporting their courageous defence of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the simple right to a peaceful and prosperous future, just as we did for the Soviet Union all those years ago.

    Their sacrifices in the past to defeat fascism should not be forgotten, but nor must the lessons about what lies in store for the perpetrators of such unprovoked brutality.

    Shame on those who seek to use the suffering of ordinary Russians as a launchpad for their own imperial ambitions. They are the ones who truly insult the memory of the Immortal Regiment.

    So let’s call out the absurdity of Russian generals – resplendent in their manicured parade uniforms, weighed down by their gold braid and glistening medals.

    They are utterly complicit in Putin’s hijacking of their forebears’ proud history; of defending against a ruthless invasion; of repelling fascism; of sacrificing themselves for a higher purpose.

    And now, they are the ones inflicting needless suffering in the service of lowly gangsterism.

    And for them and for Putin there can be no ‘Victory Day’, only dishonour and surely defeat in Ukraine.

    They might seek to control Russians’ futures through their past but in the end the past catches up with you.