Speeches by Baker.

“My actual worry, Chief Secretary, is that you do not know the facilities that are there—we are pretty dismissive of NATO facilities; we always think we know best—and that we are just recreating the wheel. Is that true?”

“Will the right hon. Member give way?”

“Has that been happening at ministerial level?”

“There is a narrative that the MDM is for high credit-rated nations with established defence industries and the DSRB is for lesser nations with smaller defence industries. Do you think that is helpful in this debate?”

“The debate about percentages of GDP is slightly irrelevant, because even if defence spending were raised to 3%, we have no ability to spend that money within the industrial base, as we do not have the capacity. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look at a much more innovative approach to some of these things, wi…”

“Therefore, DSRB potentially has a contribution to make, from a defence finance perspective, for the UK defence industrial base.”

“I happy for you to look at them all, but I would specifically like you to look at—”

“Minister Pollard, the previous Secretary of State, who you worked for, sent an observer to the charter negotiations. We had a UK observer in the room for those charter negotiations. That observer presumably sent a read-out of those negotiations. Have you read that read-out? If so, could our Committee and the Treasury C…”

“The Canadians will have sent you the charter, probably about 10 weeks ago. It is a 60-page document, having been through charter negotiations. I am really keen to push you: have you read that document?”

“It will be interesting to see what is in that. I think every Government Minister should have their national security responsibilities laid out within their brief, so that it is clear what each and every role in Government is accountable for.”

“I just want to touch on the defence readiness Bill, because obviously that was part of chapter 6 of the SDR. Various members of this Committee were disappointed that the King’s Speech did not have a defence readiness Bill in play in this Session. What do you want to see within that Bill when it is introduced?”

“I have the great pleasure of having Standing Joint Command in my patch—Aldershot. That is the three-star headquarters that is the national headquarters for homeland defence. I took particular interest in chapter 6 of the SDR and the focus on homeland defence, but when it comes to the DIP and the commitments on homeland…”

“You coming in as an independent team was a novel approach—it has never been done before. You sat independently of the MOD to deliver the SDR. The Government were very proud of that approach, but has it failed?”

“You talk about the whole-of-society approach, but my view is that we need to start with a total Government approach and work from there. I am doing a lot of work on NATO article 3 and our commitment to be prepared. Obviously, everyone knows NATO article 5, but nobody has much awareness of NATO article 3. How much aware…”

“Lastly, I want to touch on the suggestion that the Government have reached the 1.5% NATO target on resilience spending. In your view, is that investment sufficient or is more needed?”

“I am interested in your determination that the SDR is still the right SDR for this time. You have listed a load of commitments that have been made since, such as the coalition of the willing. We also have commitments around the High North that we did not have when the SDR was written. How do you square the fact that th…”

“The challenge to that is this is supposed to be a costed plan. What we have seen in the last year are more commitments that cost money. You cannot have it both ways and say, “This is the right plan,” but also, “The envelope doesn’t meet the mark.””

“You told us that this was a costed plan. I asked you that.”

“But it does not meet the moment in terms of the things that we now need to do.”

“This weekend we had the pleasure of hosting the Nepal cup in Aldershot—a celebration of the Brigade of Gurkhas. Talking to some of the Gurkha veterans there, and hearing of their experiences, again underlined the urgent need for a resolution of long-standing issues such as Gurkha pensions. I pay tribute to the new Mini…”