Speeches by Kane.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I approach this debate from a position of experience, because I have seen volunteering and community centres from many levels: user, volunteer, trustee, community councillor, local councillor and leader of Stirling council. I am not talking about community sp…”

“So it was a very good conversation then!”

“I am conscious that I have had a very good conversation with you, Bob. I have enjoyed it, but I wonder if Steve and Dominic want to add anything to what we have been talking about.”

“Last week, I was lucky enough to meet some of the cyber specialists who have joined the military; the military brought them in in a slightly different way. I am conscious of this because my children are teenagers at the moment. They are looking at universities and thinking about engineering, but they are also thinking …”

“Yesterday in the Public Accounts Committee, we heard from the MoD that the mix of uniform skills and industry skills is what they really celebrate. They think that works very well. I would love to hear, from a trade union point of view, how you feel about that mix of uniform and civilians working together to create the…”

“Can I ask about the speed with which we are investing in skills? The defence industrial strategy has a £180 million package of skills investment. When I went to Barrow to see what BAE was doing, it was almost like the industry is now bypassing traditional skills development and just doing that itself. In Barrow, you ar…”

“It is more about the joined-up approach of the Government. I absolutely get the safety aspect, and I think we promote that well, but if you take nuclear—we have Rosyth, Barrow and Devonport—do you feel that we have joined-up UK approach to doing skills, or do you feel that devolution can sometimes get in the way of an …”

“As a Scottish MP, Bob, can I take you back to what you were saying about decommissioning submarines? Having been to Rosyth and seen how keen everyone is to get going with that, do you feel that delays to the DIP are compounded by the—I am not sure whether I want to use “dismissive” or “naive”—approach to defence shown …”

“I think, as we are approaching Easter, this is the one time of year when baskets are probably useful—for Easter-egg hunts and things like that.”

“Sir Geoffrey has talked about the graduate or youth entries into this; can we talk about the defence skills passport—this sort of smoother transfer for mid-career professionals—in moving between industries? How are you finding the Government’s approach to ensuring that the skills shortages can be filled throughout a ca…”

“Is the cost to replace a weapon that you have fired the same as the cost to plan to do it?”

“You have talked about the ability to surge production, and to go to 24-hour shifts if necessary. How long could you sustain that before it became the norm, or before it broke? Temporarily surging is not the same as moving to a new normal. This question is in relation to how you are coping with the thoughts of being at …”

“I am very conscious of time, and I want to crack on and ask a couple of other questions, if that is okay. I suspect America is now firing more missiles than it was planning on buying to replace them. How is the industry thinking about the difference between its approach to steadily building a stockpile of munitions in …”

“Good morning; I am Chris Kane and I am also guesting from the Public Accounts Committee today. What impact are we seeing across industry from the current war in Iran?”

“Thank you. The assurance I am looking for is that you have a mechanism by which it will land on your desk if there is divergence or more of a problem around accessing medical records in Scottish GPs versus English GPs, or if there is a consistent level of recruitment from Scotland versus England in the total, or if the…”

“My constituency has Queen Victoria school, which is one of the few boarding schools for service personnel. Will you ensure that when we are looking at where families are living, you realise that you have some very articulate teenagers living in this school, and that their accommodation could also do with some TLC? Can …”

“Air Marshal, I am the Scottish MP in the room and am always interested to ask a devolved question. When you talk about liaising with doctors to break logjams of paperwork, can you tell me what you are doing to ensure that those engagements happen in the devolved health services? Will you also talk about general recruit…”

“In constituencies such as mine, social and community enterprises are thriving. They are practical working solutions, driven by local people who care deeply about where they live. We see that in employee ownership, such as in United Auctions, where employees now have a direct stake in the business. We see it in communit…”

“Many households in the rural part of my constituency—including in Carron valley, whose community council I met on Friday—rely on heating oil and live in older housing stock that can be difficult to make energy-efficient. Many of those communities also have an older population. Does the Minister recognise the particular…”

“When you say that you are confident you can get to the 25-day target but you cannot tell us when and you are not prepared to put a figure on it, I understand why but it does not give us the confidence we need to know that you are moving towards the target being met. If this 25 days should be 40, to give us a realistic …”