Speeches by Baker.

“I come from the private sector. I am just getting to know how the MoD works, in a way that I did not before. In the private sector, when a business commits to a process of change, generally in my experience the business brings in people who specialise in transformation and change, and specifically finance. You have a t…”

“A veteran in my constituency who is the father of five young daughters has spent nearly three years waiting for a four-bedroom social home while raising his family in a two-bedroom property. He has now been told that the wait could be a further three years, which means six years of overcrowding for a family simply need…”

“12. What steps he is taking to build more social and affordable homes in Aldershot constituency.”

“Thank you. We will continue to ask this question every year, and hopefully you will come back with more and more tangible examples of greatly improved pace and value for money. My colleague Calvin Bailey asked about you and the Chiefs all being on the same page. For me, it was really clear that you obviously set the de…”

“Do you have any clearcut examples of how it has tangibly made a difference so far?”

“I welcome the Government’s commitment to providing security guarantees for Ukraine, which are vital to the defence of Europe and to upholding peace on our continent. However, military resolve alone is not enough; deterrence requires financial guarantees that underpin our security commitments today and in the years ahea…”

“We have seen rates of ammunition and complex weapon expenditure in Ukraine. I am interested in how long the UK could sustain a fight on a comparable tempo, based on our stockpiles as they are now.”

“I just want to say thank you for your leadership on this. You have clearly really moved the dial, and that is an amazing thing for our women.”

“The Ukraine war has shown us that modern conflict is as much a test of factory capacity and balance sheets as it is of the actual platforms. Rupert, with your VC background, what changes do you think we need in the way the world of UK defence finance works to be able to invest at scale to increase capacity rather than …”

“That is really encouraging. It is refreshing to have somebody with your experience in that world come into the world of defence and, hopefully, be able to take us forward. I have been campaigning for a multilateral defence, security and resilience bank. The Defence Secretary has talked about the need for a World Bank f…”

“We have gained all this knowledge, General Reilly, supporting personnel, including women, on the frontline. The Atherton report from this Committee highlighted real shortcomings in uniform and equipment for our serving women on the frontline. I would like to give you an opportunity to tell us where we have got to: do o…”

“Presumably you are thinking about what you have on day one, versus how you would then ramp up supply.”

“So your aim would be to get that rolled out as quickly as possible, if the—”

“Where are you on how we fight against just feeding the inflation monkey? That is the big issue, isn’t it? If we just continue with the capacity that we have as is, all we are going to do is make things more expensive. How do we fight against that?”

“When it comes to a pinch point, though, if we are all just buying from the same people, isn’t that going to be an issue?”

“Can I first put on record my congratulations to the Minister for his announcement yesterday lifting the ban on the remaining roles of people who can serve in our armed forces? His leadership has been extraordinary on this. I was delighted to see his work with THT and I know that other members of this Committee have sup…”

“Our assessment is that this comms plan is not where it needs to be at the moment. It is very difficult to get any sense of constituencies, as you have said, beyond key constituencies that have been mentioned. My own constituency will be playing its part in AUKUS, yet I have no clue how. That is fundamentally not good e…”

“Your assessment is that your comms plan is not where it needs to be.”

“I am interested in how you measure Team Barrow’s impact. Do you do sentiment mapping? What are you hearing on the doorsteps of Barrow about where you are at on your journey?”

“It would be useful to have the list, if we could, of Departments that are around the table. Nona Buckley-Irvine: Yes, we can share that.”