My Lords, a few days ago, I was in the House of Commons at a meeting of the All-Party Parliament Group on Russia at which the ambassador said quite clearly that Russia had no plans to invade. That can lead to only two conclusions: his Government do not tell him what they are doing or he was not telling us the truth. There can be no other conclusion in the middle.
I am very sorry that we are where we are today because, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will know, I worked pretty ceaselessly in the Council of Europe to try to get the Russians back on side. I worked in the legal affairs committee with them and said to them “Look, if you want to be in the Council of Europe, you’re very welcome, but basically you have to underline and support what we are trying to do”. In a very short temporary period as chair of legal affairs, I was instrumental in getting a couple of rapporteurships allocated to the Russian delegation. I spoke to it about the need to reflect the values of the council in producing the report. In other words, being a rapporteur was not a licence to print Russian propaganda but an opportunity for members of the Russian delegation to show that they were prepared to produce reports reflecting the views of the council in a legal and human rights situation.
What has happened overnight is absolutely dreadful—there is no other word for it—because it destroys many months of work that has taken place, particularly outside the United Kingdom. Members may have noticed that on numerous occasions I have urged the British Government to work with their French and German counterparts because I thought that the French and German foreign ministries were trying very hard to lead Russia to a place where it would settle its disputes with Ukraine through the Minsk process, negotiation and talk.
I am sure that it is recognised today in Berlin and Paris that that has failed. At the beginning of this week, I had lunch in this House with some German politicians who were hopeful of it working. They pointed out to me that Nord Stream 2 had been put on hold, not cancelled, and it could be revived. We talked
about it, and one of the points that was made was that, of course, it goes two ways: it can bring gas from Russia and, once it is in the European gas network, it can pump it back. Indeed, some of my German interlocutors said that one of the guarantees that they could give would be that, if Russia threatened Ukraine’s gas supplies, Germany could supply it with gas. I mention that because it shows that, right up to the last minutes, the foreign ministries in Europe were trying to find a peaceful solution.
However, we now have to be firm because, as the peaceful solution has not worked, it cannot be said that no consequences flow from what has happened. So, clearly, we not only have to have sanctions, but if we are going to have sanctions that work, they have to be agreed among the larger players in Europe. That, frankly, means that we have to do what has been suggested about the overseas territories and we also have to stand up and be quite firm with Hungary and Austria because countries that are making large profits out of Russia have to realise that they are either in a European solidarity pact or on the other side. They cannot be on both sides at once.
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I say to my own party that it has to stop taking Russian money. Indeed, it has to stop taking foreign money. Looking at the United States, I discovered a long time ago that you cannot donate to American political parties. At one point, I tried to donate a sum of money to the American Democratic Party, but it was refused on the grounds that I had no standing in American elections. It would be very simple for us to say that there could be no donations to British political parties from any person or group that did not have standing with the British electorate.
We really need to look at this because I am afraid that, beyond this House, there is great cynicism about politics and money. We are largely seen as being in it for what we can get out of it. In my Conservative association, I have heard jokes about the Prime Minister playing tennis at so many hundred thousand pounds a match. This is not the way to run a democracy.
It has a consequence, which is that there is a lot of impunity. People look and say, “Oh, well they don’t mean it. They are not doing much—a couple of banks and three individuals”. We really have to sit down and say, “Do we intend these sanctions to work?” We have to realise that many of the Russian people in London with Russian money have bought golden visas and are proudly walking around with British passports. When the Home Secretary talks about taking citizenship away from people who break the norms of British society without telling them, I wonder whether she has considered looking at some of these people because surely they are in the wrong as well.
So I say to the Minister: I will back the sanctions. I am sorry that we have come to this point. I am sorry that the Russian state does not realise that common sense, decency and good practice should lead it to pursue what it sees as its legitimate expectations, but we do not, through a path of peaceful negotiation. What has been done is no longer acceptable in international politics, and we should make that very
clear. All I ask is that the Minister co-ordinates with his European colleagues and we have a united European view, in so far as we can, on this matter.