Speeches by Carns.

“They are part of defence.”

“There is also a slight difference—in some but not all cases—in the way the different Departments deliver, which may be through a charity or a second or third-order connection, whereas ours is often our own people delivering in conjunction with a host nation, an ally or a partner, which means it is easier for us, perhap…”

“On the national action plan, you are working in conjunction with the FCDO. This is done at an official level, with officials at every level. It is well-connected. The delivery mechanisms are sometimes different. I do not want to go over old ground, but we need to work collectively to measure the effectiveness of our pr…”

“From my perspective, internally within defence, we have our permanent joint headquarters and human security. We have the same in our single services. That trickles all the way down to a relatively low level in the commands. We have taken this really seriously. We have three dedicated policy teams at the strategic level…”

“Do you mean compliance with our ability to enact both human security and WPS into our own Department?”

“We have to be an honest broker in defence and accept that we have more work to do. We are moving as hard as we can on the violence against women and girls taskforce as a tri-service. We have just put out an unwanted sexual behaviour survey. We have revamped our victim support units. Interestingly—this is where statisti…”

“We have to be honest with ourselves. If we design a measurement of effect and we are not delivering, we should reapportion the resource elsewhere to make sure we maximise delivery. Your help in supporting us with that would be good.”

“We will continue doing what we are doing. What I would like to ensure, and I have looked at this in detail, is that we can categorically say it is working. We have a lot of deep data at the moment that says it is, but I want to see some more granular data on that, and we can then apportion funds to where they have the …”

“Yes, 100%. From our perspective, it will be part of the coalition of the willing. We need to allow Ukraine to win the peace first, but as part of our coalition of the willing we will have human security advisers within there ensuring that diverse groups, and indeed women, are integrated into the future security structu…”

“We should, but the practicalities of delivering that will need to be thought through by the team. In any mediation piece or negotiation, I would always support having the most diverse team you can, because then you end up with the diverse thinking that tends to provide the best solutions to complex problems.”

“No, I do not; the two are the same. I am a firm believer, in some of these cases, particularly perhaps as we look to Ukraine, in the “fight and talk” strategy. Within that talking space we have to accept that our adversaries—Russia in particular—have used sexual violence as a weapon of war. For example, we work with Op…”

“I actually looked through this and it is because it is already there—it is so ingrained in our thinking. I will give an example. I was the chief of staff of the UK Strike Force, which is a big maritime two-star headquarters. I had a dedicated human security officer there, and within their role was the women, peace and …”

“It should absolutely include women like that, and I will take that away and have a look into that specific detail and get back to you, unless the team can pull that out now.”

“It is a bit of both. We have really good structures in place internally. Almost everything I mentioned there was about going out to our allies and partners—like-minded nations—trying to help them realise the advantage of having more women in leadership and indeed in mentoring roles within their national security archit…”

“This Government are not hollowing out defence or taking a dig at defence procurement. This Government are increasing morale, increasing recruitment and, importantly, making defence an engine for growth by investing in SMEs all over the country, with new cutting-edge technology and technological capability that will be …”

“The hon. Member makes an exceptionally valid point. Just last Thursday, we launched the Military Intelligence Services that are primarily about co-ordinating all of our intelligence capabilities to ensure that we can identify, deter and defeat threats should they be posed towards the UK, our critical national infrastru…”

“As the hon. Member will recognise, a review of Ajax is under way. However, Ajax has been overspent and the key user requirements have changed and oscillated from left to right for the past 10 years. We have now taken this on and we recognise that we have to secure the capability to provide our armed forces with the ver…”

“Let us be really clear, for 14 years—[Interruption.] For 14 years, we have not seen defence spending going up. As shadow Ministers sit on the polished Opposition Front Bench criticising the individual Ministers speaking on behalf of the Government, I am the one who, collectively with others, had to put up with poor rec…”

“I thank the right hon. Member for his insight and support for all things defence. We must ensure that Ukraine is at the very centre of any negotiation, and this Government have been leading not only on the coalition of the willing but also across the Ukraine defence contact group. Just recently we raised €50 billion in…”

“The reality is that armies, navies and air forces respond to crisis; economies, industries and societies win wars. We are stepping up in these key areas, but we are not alone. As a great general once said, there is only one thing worse than working with allies, and that is working without them. We are doing this togeth…”