Speeches by Reed.

“Zoë, Emma and Ahmed, thank you very much for being with us. To pick up on Emma’s point about the concept of service justice travelling with soldiers on overseas deployments, have there been any recent cases of budgetary constraints, whereby people have not been able to go out to investigate in a timely way because the …”

“Mary, thank you for your very in-depth evidence this afternoon. Clauses 20 to 25 will make several changes to service courts. From your perspective, how effective will those measures be in improving the efficiency of the service justice system?”

“This is an important point and, given the volatility of the international system, we must learn from our mistakes. In a written answer on 9 March, the Minister for the Armed Forces confirmed that discussions took place before the decision to deploy HMS Dragon. We know those conversations happened and that the Royal Nav…”

“It is a known known that the Iranian regime will close down the strait of Hormuz in a period of conflict. Back in June 2025, I asked the former Foreign Secretary, now the Deputy Prime Minister, what contingencies we had in place to offset against that happening. He responded: “I assure the hon. Member that these issues…”

“British personnel in Cyprus, Bahrain, Iraq and across the middle east have been attacked by Iran and its proxies. In such circumstances, we must act quickly to protect our people and interests. Having served on Royal Navy vessels, I know it takes time to ready a ship, yet nearly two weeks passed before the Government s…”

“Has that conversation been forecast for the coming months and years, as the Armed Forces Commissioner position is established?”

“Thank you for being with us today, Brigadier and Nina. A number of different mechanisms and structures are being brought into Defence; individually, many of them have merit, but to me, it is the problem between problems. How will the new structure around the Armed Forces Commissioner, and their new powers to go into ba…”

“From your perspective, how is the Bill in its entirety being viewed by the armed forces community?”

“Thank you.”

“With serious offences, is there less or more trust in convictions, or at least in progressing cases for certain offences?”

“David and Nathalie, thank you for being with us this morning. From our perspective, we all want to see the situation improve, but I also want to manage expectations. Going back to the claim of reducing the delivery cost of housing projects and maintenance work by 25%. If we were in the private sector and I was trying t…”

“My next question is closely linked to that point. Is whether there is less or more trust based on the themes of serious offences—whether they are violent or sexual, say? Is there a view that a case involving violence might be progressed and might lead to a conviction? Would it be the same for sexual offences?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I echo the initial comments of the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), in thanking the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), a fellow former Royal Marine, for bringing this debate to the House today. This is a massively imp…”

“To go into the terminologies of public debt finance: committed, commitment—without the DIP, have you been given a multi-year financial settlement, and do you have a hypothecated, ringfenced budget, linked to inflation, that you now know you can spend over the next few years and that you know you have that in the bank? …”

“Just for my understanding, are we saying it is a commitment from the Defence Secretary that this is going to happen? It is not committed funds.”

“Thank you very much for being with us this morning, Sarah. Given your connection to the armed forces community, can you tell us the community’s view on the service justice system’s progress on improving the treatment of serious offences?”

“Sir Nick and Lord Lancaster, thank you for being with us today. I am a big fan of zig-zag careers, and an area that I would quite like to push is transferring security clearances between those different environments. If we want to bolster our defence industry or our national security environment, that needs security cl…”

“Linked to that point, on the other side of a lot of the measures in the Bill will be employers. From your assessment, what is the current view of employers regarding measures in the Bill?”

“Blairite policies told 50% of my generation to go to university. Looking back at those conversations, we see that rarely did anyone ever talk about who would pay for those students to go to university, or how the jobs market would then take on that amount of graduates. It is clear that the student finance system does n…”

“A small follow-up: as the international system descends into more volatility, do you feel that the national conversation is being had at the moment? Where do you think we are on that progression?”