---

UK Relations with Russia

I was delighted to secure the debate back in late July and I start by welcoming you to the Chair, Mr. Streeter. I also welcome the Minister to his new position. I think that he is, remarkably, the 12th Europe Minister in this Government. He changed briefs with Baroness Kinnock on Monday. I expect that that has not given him much time to prepare for the debate, not least because he has, I hope, taken the time to read the Lisbon treaty, which is certainly more than one of his predecessors did. Nevertheless, he and I were previously officers on the all-party group on Russia and I suspect that we may find much to agree about this morning. Thankfully, there has been some movement in UK-Russia relations since the end of July, when I applied for the debate. Nevertheless, my central premise today is that the Government have failed in most if not all of their foreign policy objectives in respect of Russia in the past three years and that something needs to be done about that. Whatever one's views on Russia—I suspect that there will be a variety of views in the debate, as always—no one can argue that relations have been a success. UK policy towards Russia has been characterised in the years since the murder of Alexander Litvinenko as one of deep-frozen non-engagement—I would even use the word "festering". There are essentially two approaches that one can take towards Russia. One can willingly engage with Russia, with a heavy dose of realpolitik, and seek to get what one can from the relationship—an approach recently described as Schröderisation by Boris Nemtsov, the former Russian Deputy Prime Minister. Alternatively, one can take a critical approach, also engaging but being tough in a way that the Putin-Medvedev duumvirate understands, and taking a long-term view that short-term benefits should be put second to a primary interest of getting Russia to behave more like a normal state.