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UK Relations with Russia

I was born when fighting stopped in Europe at the end of the second world war. I grew up in a household, town and country that had learned to hate fascism and hate Germans. Sixty-five years later, western Europe is united, harmonious and making progress. One needs to ask: how did that transformation come about? Clearly, it did not happen overnight. It started very badly, but there was mutual commitment from everybody who had been through a world war on the continent and was determined to do something about it. The Soviet Union collapsed only 18 years ago. Surely, it is unrealistic to assume that 65 years of progress can be made in 18 years. More to the point, when we have taken 300 years to get our democracy into its present slightly chaotic state, to expect similar progress in 18 years would be to push our luck a bit. I say that because the Russian Federation is a country in transition. It is a new democracy; it is new at all sorts of things. The tsars before the Bolsheviks were not models of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, so the Russians have little to draw on. In case I am again accused of being an apologist for the Russians, let me repeat what I say to my Russian friends. Of course Russian democracy is far from perfect. Of course the handling of human rights in Russia is not very clever—we have heard examples of that. Of course the rule of rule of law is weak. We know that and we say so, but the Russians know it too. The challenge is to ask ourselves whether things have improved in Russia, not whether they are perfect. In my judgment, Russia has made progress. Many people, myself included, wish there was more, but we must be fair. What we have to do on occasions such as this is to ask whether, because there are still so many shortcomings in Russia, we should condemn or try to help. I know where I stand on that. I readily accept that trying to help a new or emerging democracy, with all its shortcomings, requires a difficult balancing act for those who want to keep their self-respect, but who also need to be pragmatic and to be prepared to work with the imperfect to try to make it less imperfect. I know that, but it might help to admit it. For reasons that I shall explain, I am very much involved and committed to helping people in Russia. I am a member of the UK's Council of Europe delegation and the leader of one of its political groups, a group that has 27 members from United Russia. I have found that progress can be made. My contribution to today's debate is to say that it is okay to discuss what the Government of the day can do, but it would be useful for a moment to spare a little thought to what we parliamentarians can do by serving as a route to individual parliamentarians in other countries. I shall leave it to the Minister to say what the Government want to do, and I shall leave my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) who speaks for the Conservatives to give our party's view. My view is that if we can build trust and friendship with members of another parliament, however imperfect, we parliamentarians stand some chance of passing on some of our beliefs and values. That is what we need to do, but to achieve it, we must understand the Russians. We are talking about a former superpower that has lost its empire, whose rouble has collapsed and which descended into chaos under Yeltsin and at one point even had to rely upon food aid. Is it surprising that such a country should feel humiliated and the need to do something to restore its self-respect? We should to be clear about the range of changes that have to be made. When talking about the Russian Federation, we must also remember that it is not some Balkan state. It is geographically enormous, and has an enormous population. Turning around such a country is not as simple as taking action in places such as Kosovo or Macedonia. We need to help. In my judgment, it can be done at the parliamentary level only through personal contact. We simply cannot afford to leave to Governments, of any colour, the things that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) wants to see done. We ourselves have to play a part in building those relationships. With Russia, as in any other case, we need to understand that no Parliament is made up of people who all believe the same, who think the same, and who have the same policies and the same powers. It is not like that. In any Parliament, and certainly in the Russian Duma and the Russian Federation, there are people whose view of Russia's future is of a country that is integrated into Europe—not a member of the European Union but a European country. We are a European country and some believe that Russia is part of our continent, but others want Russia to stand alone again. That is perfectly honourable, but I believe as parliamentarians that we could usefully help those who wish to see a united continent, with Russia being integrated with the rest of us into a peaceful future. The track record of conflict in Europe—be it Russia's or anyone else's—has not gone away. We need to integrate Russia into Europe to stand the maximum chance of ensuring less conflict or no conflict in the future of our continent.