Speeches by Ballinger.

“The right hon. Lady raises the JCPOA and the negotiations with Iran 10 or so years ago. Do you think we are closer to a nuclear negotiation today than we were back then? Do you think that negotiating at the start would have been a better approach in this conflict?”

“rose—”

“I thank the right hon. Lady. She talks about the UK’s military support in the conflict. I wonder whether she is suggesting that we should have provided support to the Americans during the initial attacks, as some Opposition Members suggested, or whether she is talking about other types of military support. If she could…”

“To pick up some of Fleur’s points on the ISF and conflict prevention, growth, security and migration were your first three priorities that you mentioned at the outset. Obviously, conflict has a massively negative effect on each of those. Fleur outlined our concerns really well, so my question is just to follow up. You …”

“The summit in Ankara was probably a success, considering all the problems the Americans were suggesting they might cause there, compared with everything else. You talked about some of the areas where the UK was co-operating with allies to have a stronger Europe inside a stronger NATO, but I noticed a few areas where th…”

“Fair enough. Zelensky made a lot of Ukraine’s defensive capabilities and the contribution they were putting forward to European defence, which I think is absolutely justified. Many people have talked about a path to NATO for Ukraine; what is your view on how that will happen, and how is the UK supporting that process?”

“I really welcome that, but my question was slightly different. Of course, another great way to prevent migration is to prevent conflict, because then fewer people will be fleeing from conflict. Are we going to see any of that money being spent on peacebuilding, mediation and conflict-prevention civilian programmes that…”

“That is good news. On the non-ODA money that you said was additional for the ISF, obviously it is great that there are more opportunities for migration and security co-operation, but can we spend any of that on conflict prevention? Can we spend any of that money on the civilian peacebuilding and the stuff on the ground…”

“Do you not think that space might be that area? We had the UK’s contribution to space at Armed Forces Week here a couple of weeks ago; is that not something that we should be co-operating more with NATO on?”

“How might that road map look for Ukraine getting into NATO? There are some people who have said that the peace process might preclude that; do you have a view on what the mechanism might be for Ukraine to become a NATO member?”

“Of course. Israel’s continued breaches are flagrant. They are publicly advertised—there are more journalists in Lebanon to report on them. Does that not show that the steps that we have taken so far have not been effective? Does the sense of impunity that the Chair talks about need some sort of response?”

“Just to confirm, there have been no changes in our defence relationship with Israel after the announcements that were made in 2024?”

“Has there been any impact in our co-operation with the Israeli defence industry?”

“There is lots of concern among UN agencies and human rights organisations that the IDF is using the same tactics in Lebanon that we had serious concerns about in Gaza. There are reports of 10,000 homes being destroyed. According to the WHO, close to 150 aid workers have been killed, and more than 1 million civilians ha…”

“What are our personnel in the CMCC doing?”

“But no specific changes have happened after the conduct of Israel in Lebanon that has been seen this year.”

“Minister, you have talked about some of the breaches of international humanitarian law that caused the partial arms embargo. We have seen lots of evidence, in witness statements from former members of the IDF, lots of UN reporting and the like, of things like the indiscriminate killing of civilians based on their age a…”

“So there are no UK personnel in Israel working alongside the Israeli Government on things outside Gaza or anything like that?”

“T4. I was pleased to see co-operation with the Netherlands on a new amphibious fleet in the defence investment plan. I spent two years of my career working alongside the Dutch marines, and the Royal Marines have a long history of co-operation with them—mostly not fighting each other—but since our amphibious ships HMS A…”

“13. What assessment he has made of the level of threat from Russia.”