Speeches by Twigg.

“Before I call the Minister, I remind her to leave a minute or two at the end for Dr Evans to wind up.”

“Order. Members should not speak about live court cases.”

“I am going to call the Front Benchers no later than 5.10 pm, so could Members keep their speeches to around five minutes?”

“Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. If speeches are kept to around seven minutes, we will get everyone in.”

“I remind the Minister to allow a minute or so at the end for Sir Mark to wind up.”

“The two Opposition spokespeople have about five minutes each.”

“Yes.”

“But they kill people.”

“It is interesting that Putin’s father was a submariner. We know from open source—read any book about him—that he takes a great interest in, and is very proud of, his father’s service. Probably unusually for a leader of a country, he takes a specific interest in this area of warfare. Could you explain what the Russians …”

“Your argument is that there are no consequences because there are no people involved, but that machine could kill people, so then there would be consequences.”

“So if they killed someone in Poland, there would be consequences then?”

“Sorry, but if that machine kills people, there is.”

“Are we talking thousands or hundreds?”

“In connection with Mike’s question, but going back to AI, rather than quantum computing, I want to get clear in my head your view of the possibility of AI being developed to such an extent that it is almost impossible for any submarine not to be detected. Will we ever come to that? The survivability would be so low as …”

“Thank you; I just wanted that to be made clear. I am interested in their command and control. Do the Russians have much autonomy compared with, say, what our commanders have, in terms of what they do?”

“Sorry—just because of time, and because other people want to speak, can we get a short yes or no answer? Are we matching their capability or are they ahead of us?”

“Basically, any tiredness or lethargy in building up our own capabilities there could be pretty serious.”

“How would you compare the capabilities of the Russians with those of the west and the UK? How would you compare what their vehicles—their submarines—can do with what we can do? This is on detection, for instance.”

“In terms of the first line of defence and the land battle, we are clearly further away from the eastern front, but underwater we are pretty much on the frontline, aren’t we?”

“Can I give an assurance that we in the ISC are very confident that we can do an effective job on this? It is worth pointing out that we cannot be told what we can and cannot publish. That will be a matter and a decision for us. May I ask for an assurance, following on from what the Minister has just said, that there wi…”