Mike Martin MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is a great fan of honesty in this Chamber, so I am sure that she will give me an honest answer. One way of understanding Brexit is that it replaced a circular flow of people with a one-way flow of people. Does she think that Brexit increased or decreased migration into this country?

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister find it strange that in a debate on a Bill so important to Reform UK—indeed, it is the party’s raison d’être—80% of Reform UK MPs have left the Chamber and are, presumably, in the pub?

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Resettlement of Ukrainians: Coatbridge · Hansard source

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  As the Minister knows, last month the Ukrainian permission extension scheme came into force, offering a further 18 months in the UK to our Ukrainian friends. Will she shed some light on the situation facing those Ukrainian guests who seek to enter further education, perhaps for three years, but who are unable to do so because they only have an 18 month extension to their visa?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Sudan: US Determination of Genocide · Hansard source

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  Conflicts such as this and genocides such as this tend to create refugees. Have the Government made an assessment of what the continuation of this conflict will do to the number of Sudanese refugees seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, and if so, will the Minister share it with us, please?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Financial Assistance to Ukraine Bill · Hansard source

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  I, too, start by congratulating the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth). Every time I hear someone give a maiden speech in this Chamber, I am really heartened by the passion and expertise of the new intake. As I said in my maiden speech, it is clear that we are going to have not just a good Parliament, but a great Parliament. I look forward to it very much. I welcome the Minister’s speech and the Bill. As is usual on Ukraine, there is agreement across the House. I was not quite expecting this degree of agreement on going further—on not just seizing interest or making loans, but going after assets. This Bill fulfils the UK’s part of an agreement that the G7 made in June, and we of course want to fulfil our commitments. However, the commitment in that agreement was made before the recent election in the US. As many Members across the House have said, including most recently the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), the security calculus that Europe has applied for the last 80 years has now changed. We can no longer rely on an American security umbrella. NATO is the cornerstone of our defence—there is no disagreement about that in the House. The Government talks of NATO first, but NATO does not work without an American security guarantee, American logistics, or the American backbone that runs through it. It is the same with Ukraine. Since the outbreak of the war in February 2022, the United States has provided approximately 50% of the support for Ukraine. The UK led; that is something that the previous right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip got absolutely right. However, we now face a world in which that support may be withdrawn, and that is not just a supposition. President-elect Trump has said that the Russians can “do whatever the hell they want” in Europe. This is a huge problem. We should have woken up to this five or 10 years ago. The fact that we are dealing with it now—well, I hope we are—should arouse the interest of Members in the Chamber today. I want to outline what the consequences may be of a withdrawal of US support from Ukraine. We may end up with a grubby little deal that would involve taking a marker pen and drawing through Ukraine on a map. The problem with that is that this war is not about territory; those who understand it to be about territory misunderstand it. It is about identity. Russia sees Ukraine as part of its imperial identity. If Ukraine exists as an independent country, then Russia does not exist as an imperial country. It is that simple. We are trying to define the conflict by way of territory, but that it is not how Vladimir Putin sees it. We may end up with a grubby deal; in effect, the US will withdraw support, and Ukraine will be forced to come to the negotiating table. A line will be drawn on the map through Kharkiv, Donbas and Kherson. However, Vladimir Putin will not stop there. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are all allies of ours that the United Kingdom has pledged to defend through NATO, under article 5. If Putin took a bite from Lithuania, and Britain and France stepped forward to defend it, as we are pledged to do under article 5, we would have a huge problem if we then heard from Washington that the US would not follow us. Even if we do not get a grubby deal that empowers Vladimir Putin, we could end up with the collapse of the Ukrainian frontlines, if the Americans withdraw their support and the Ukrainians decide to fight on. If I was Ukrainian, I would fight on, because of what the Russians did in Bucha and their kidnapping of Ukrainian children. The Ukrainians may fight on, but the frontlines may collapse. The hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins) spoke about a refugee crisis. The UN in Kyiv recently carried out a study of the crisis that could follow a collapse of the Ukrainian domestic power system. As we know, the Russians are targeting it at the moment. The UN estimated that between 5 million and 10 million Ukrainians would leave and move into western Europe—and that is just on the collapse of the power system. What would occur if the frontlines collapsed and the murderous, genocidal Russian army started to rampage through western Ukraine? If we step outside Europe and look at possible consequences of a Ukrainian defeat, we can see that the idea of nuclear proliferation being kept under wraps, which we have cherished for the past 50, 60 or 70 years, would be under threat. The lesson we learn from the conflict is that if a state has nuclear weapons, it can bully its way into invading other states. Iran and other countries will see this and think, “That is something we need to get.” Colleagues have mentioned other autocratic states. China is watching what is happening in Ukraine carefully, as well as the western, European and American response. If we lose in Ukraine, we can kiss goodbye to Taiwan. This is an existential conflict for Ukraine, in which it must succeed. The Bill goes some way to helping with that, but not far enough. The west collectively has $300 billion of Russian assets. Some $200 billion of those are in Belgium in Euroclear. To put that in context, the US has to date donated or pledged to donate approximately $180 billion to Ukraine, so the total amount of Russian assets we hold is 50% more than the total spend so far from the United States on the war. Given that we may well be losing US support for Ukraine, with all the second-order effects that has for our security, why are we not considering much more carefully sequestering and using those assets for the defence of Ukraine? If not now, when?