UK Parliament / Open data

National Security and Russia

Proceeding contribution from Tom Tugendhat (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Monday, 26 March 2018. It occurred during Debate on National Security and Russia.

Madam Deputy Speaker, what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, particularly when we have had such a demonstration of moral relativism—such an apologia, in many ways, for a regime that has really done nothing to justify the explanations that have been permitted it.

May I welcome the clarity that you have brought to this debate, when all that we have had from some parties is very much the opposite? We have had obfuscation, deception and dissimulation. We have had all the tricks and all the terms that we are used to when we talk about a regime that has institutionalised lies, deception and dishonesty not, as Churchill put it, as vanguards for the truth, but instead of the truth. These are attempts not to build a better world, but to destroy one that is trying to serve the people of these islands and our allies and friends.

I am privileged to be speaking today about security. We have heard—and no doubt we will hear more—about how security is built on military hardware, and Members will not, quite understandably, hear me resile from that point. However, security is, of course, not built just on military hardware. It is not built just on the training teams that, even now, are helping the Ukrainians to defend themselves against the Russian tanks that are in Donetsk and in the Donbass, and that care about the overflights over Ukraine. It is not just about the British

battalion that is, even now, in Estonia, demonstrating to the Russians that the NATO commitment is real. Those British troops are not there just because they are capable, but to demonstrate that an attack on one is an attack on all.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

638 cc567-8 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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