Speeches by Twigg.

“Order. If Members can keep their speeches to five or six minutes—we are doing okay—then everyone will get a chance to speak before the wind-ups.”

“I note that the shadow Secretary of State made great play of the changes and the extra safeguards that Ministers of the previous Government put in place following the breach. I also note that the Secretary of State said he had had to make more changes and introduce new software. That suggests to me that the changes put…”

“How many vacancies do you expect to have in a year’s time?”

“This is the nub of the issue. There will be some things that can be shared in private and some in public, but when we are talking metrics, we are not talking about just public metrics; it is how we, as a Committee, hold the MOD to account. Obviously knowing the number of combat aircraft that are available for operation…”

“Can that be shared in private with the Committee? You can see where I am coming from—we are talking about which metrics.”

“But not with this Committee.”

“Will that not be one of the metrics shared with this Committee?”

“Air Vice-Marshal, you have spoken quite a bit about combat air in various guises and lethality. What percentage of our combat air is available for operations?”

“My question was, how will we be consulted?”

“We need to know what metrics you are considering and how we will be consulted as a Committee, because that has been a long-standing running sore for this Committee.”

“We are talking about warfighting readiness. I understand medics are an important support for our service personnel.”

“Thanks. The Committee welcomes the Government’s intention to enable scrutiny of the UK’s warfighting readiness by publishing metrics every year. How will you consult on developing those metrics? How will you consult us, the Committee, on that?”

“I understand that. My issue is that, given the seriousness of the problem in Defence Medical Services, I am just very surprised that there has been no ministerial discussion between the Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence on the issue.”

“You have just done cyber-security; if I take another case study, in the SDR there is a whole section on defence medical services. In the start of that section it says, “Ensuring the health and operational medical care of the UK’s Armed Forces is vitally important to deterrence and defence”. It goes on to say, “A moral …”

“Do Ministers have to do more to drive change?”

“Since the SDR, does Defence need to change how it works with other Government Departments to ensure readiness and resilience? If so, how?”

“You can understand the perception: if we are saying that we have a NATO-first policy, but there are 80 vacancies, that does not quite tally.”

“So there is no guarantee that you will have filled those vacancies in 12 months’ time.”

“You expect them to be filled.”

“I do not think that necessarily reduces the importance of the role.”