National Security and Russia — House of Commons, 2018-03-26
Topic: Mixed Topics
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): I spent last weekend with a group of British and German MPs discussing, among other things, Russia and global security. We face from Russia a new and growing threat, teetering on the edge of outright hostility, and it is not in our interests to have unstable or rogue states on the borders of Europe. As well as an angry Russia, we have an unpredictable North Korea and a changing face in China. We cannot address all these threats to our national security by acting alone. Our allies are important, and I congratulate the Prime Minister on her immense leadership in gathering the world together to take collective action and on securing such detailed support from all our EU friends last week I want to talk about four issues: hybrid warfare, cyber, energy and space. I shall start with hybrid warfare. Time and again in recent years, friends from many different countries have told me their experiences of how Russian sources have been linked to false news stories, negative propaganda or funding support for extremist political groups. There are many stories, but they all have a common thread. Their action is to sow seeds of disillusion to manipulate the psyche of the voter, leading to distrust of traditional politicians and thus destabilising legitimate democracies. When looked at one by one, the incidents are often dismissed, but when we consider them together, we realise how significant their impact might have been and how deliberate the strategy appears to be. We in the UK should not try to deal with such incidents in isolation. We must counter them with collective actions. I therefore congratulate the Government on ensuring that, in the announcements last Friday, the EU27 states made the decision to bolster their capacity to address hybrid threats The EU27 also said that they would look at cyber. After the last general election, I took over the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cyber-security. The Government are to be congratulated on prioritising this issue, on establishing the National Cyber Security Centre and on investing nearly £2 billion in capacity. We are in a digital revolution. The WannaCry cyber-attack, using ransomware with source code from North Korea, stopped our NHS in many places, and it should have been a wake-up call. Again, we need to work internationally, because the digital world is a borderless world and international co-ordination is needed. As members of the EU, we have been part of the ENISA network, which was actually set up by a Brit. It brings together stakeholders to look at risks, to examine resilience, to make strategic plans for key infrastructure and to develop standards. Britain plays a key role in the network, and other countries need us. It is in the interests of the EU and the UK to find a way to co-operate on cyber-security after we leave On energy security, many European countries, including Germany, are highly dependent on Russian gas. In the recent cold snap, we in Britain also needed to rely on gas imported from the continent. Recent stress tests have shown that if all countries were to co-operate, consumers would remain connected even in the event of a six-month disruption to Russian gas imports. However, that involves working together. It is important for our own energy security that we stay well connected, both physically and politically. Across Europe, there is a gas connect co-ordination group known as the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas—ENTSOG. It simulates disruptions, identifies risks to supply and agrees preventive measures. My latest discussions with energy suppliers suggest that we risk being cut out of that network, but that is not in Europe’s interests and it should stop threatening us with that Finally, on space, this morning’s Financial Times carried a story saying that the EU is considering cutting the UK out of Galileo, which is Europe’s answer to GPS. It is a €10 billion system of satellites that will provide accurate positioning and timing data. That is key for civilian safety and national security. Britain paid for those satellites, and we help to develop them and deliver them. Europe should not threaten us with cutting us out of that programme. If Europe is serious in wanting EU-UK co-operation on foreign policy and on security and defence policy, it should look at the detail and work with us on cyber, energy and space.