Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22 — House of Commons, 2022-03-09
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Independent, Unknown): Not for the first time and, I am sure, not for the last time, the House has cause to be grateful to the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) for reaching across the party divide in support of the strongest possible defence of this country and the strongest possible support for NATO. It is in that spirit, as a former Chairman of the Defence Committee, that I acknowledge the stalwart support he has given to successive holders of that post. This is an opportunity for defence-minded parliamentarians to give some initial reaction to the colossal and extraordinary events of the past fortnight in the context of what Britain was going to spend on defence, and what it should spend on defence in future In June 1950, five years after the end of world war two and following a time of mass demobilisation, the Korean war broke out. The effect of that conflict, quite apart from the terrible consequences for the people living in Korea, was to cause a huge reassessment of the amount of national effort that must be invested in defence in the United Kingdom. That led to a reconsideration of the level of defence expenditure, and I suggest that the seismic events of the past two weeks should lead to a similar reassessment of what we are prepared to invest in defence in the United Kingdom in the 21st century. We cannot conduct this debate as if nothing serious has happened to transform the situation in the past two weeks Although it is very early and the outcome of the conflict is still very much in doubt, I suggest it is possible to come tentatively to about half a dozen conclusions, and I will run through them very quickly. First, I think we can say that the advanced public messaging by the United States, NATO, the United Kingdom and other allies has been outstanding. It has prevented President Putin from seizing the narrative. By predicting accurately in advance what he was going to do, it has completely undermined his potential disinformation campaign. Every pronouncement that we hear from the Kremlin is so ludicrously at odds with reality that it cuts no ice at all, except with those totally indoctrinated Secondly, the events of the past fortnight dispel any illusions we might have had about the nature of our Russian adversary. As has been said rightly many times by those on the Front Bench, that is not the Russian people, but the people in control of that great, but benighted country. We must remember that people such as President Putin are the direct descendants of the regime whose ideology led them to kill millions of their own people in the decades in which Leninism and bolshevism held sway. Although the communist doctrine has collapsed, the mindset, the imperialism and the brutality have not. I have previously described President Putin in uncomplimentary terms, and I think it is worth repeating them. This man is a cynical, sneering psychopath. He does not care how many people he kills, as long as he gets his own way. Anyone thinking that there is a way to reason with these people, rather than deter, contain or, if necessary, defeat them, is living in a world of fantasy Thirdly, in light of Ukraine’s decision to give up—admittedly it was not a system it could operate at the time, but given time it could have done so—the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, which it inherited from the former Soviet Union, any lingering doubts about the wisdom of the United Kingdom continuing to possess a strategic nuclear deterrent as long as Russia does so have finally been put to bed.