MPs will vote on any deployment of UK troops to Ukraine, says Keir Starmer

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Sir Keir Starmer has said any move to deploy UK troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Russia would be put to a vote of MPs, as he came under pressure to explain how the planned operation would work.

Downing Street refused to say whether a British force sent to Ukraine after a ceasefire would be expected to fight Russian troops in the event of another invasion, but suggested it would not.

“This would be a reassurance and regeneration force,” Number 10 said, while refusing to say how big the British contingent would be.

However, British officials said it was likely to be similar in size to the “several thousand” French troops proposed by President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with French television on Tuesday.

Starmer faced pressure to make a statement to the House of Commons about his pledge to deploy troops and weaponry to Ukraine as part of sweeping security guarantees to underpin a proposed peace deal.

Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch accused Starmer of showing a “fundamental lack of respect” to MPs, while the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, said he wanted Starmer to make a statement to the House as soon as possible.

Badenoch said: “It is clear that the prime minister either does not have the detail or does not want to give us the detail.” Downing Street said Starmer would make a statement “at the earliest opportunity”, but it would not happen on Wednesday.

Starmer told MPs at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday that any deployment would only come after a peace deal with Russia and that he would put it to a vote of MPs.

Downing Street declined to confirm that the vote would happen before any deployment, but British officials said the “inference” of Starmer’s words was that MPs would have an effective veto.

European officials are sceptical that Russia will agree to any ceasefire in the immediate future, though have praised Tuesday’s agreements for getting the US more firmly on board and strengthening commitments from the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’, led by the UK and France.

“There would only be deployment after a ceasefire and it would be to support Ukraine’s capabilities, to conduct deterrence operations and to construct and protect military hubs,” Starmer told MPs.

“The number will be determined in accordance with our military plans, which we are drawing up and looking to other members to support.”

Starmer said that if they were to put a “legal instrument” in place to allow the deployment he would “then have a debate in this house so all members could know exactly what we’re doing, make their points of view, and then we would have a vote in this house on the issue, which, to my mind, is the proper procedure in a situation such as this”.

Badenoch challenged the prime minister over whether the UK military had enough funding to support a deployment of troops. She said the government had not yet mapped out how it would meet its pledge to raise spending on defence to 3 per cent of GDP in the next parliament, from 2.3 per cent currently.

“The world is changing. We need to spend more on defence. He did not answer the question about when we would get to 3 per cent yet he knows, up until 2031 how much he’s going to be spending on welfare,” Badenoch said.