Speeches by Thomas.

“Who will they report to, whoever that leader is?”

“How senior will that leader be in terms of staff?”

“It goes to something in NAD Group and then down to UKDI as part of NAD Group. That is clear. Who is going to run UKDI?”

“It travels from frontline command, from MSHQ to NAD Group and then down to UKDI.”

“It is not MSHQ.”

“We are saying the same thing, Minister.”

“Given the time, I want to ask some quickfire questions. We are talking about innovation and pillar 2. In the context of UK MoD, UK Defence Innovation is part of the defence reform. Where does and will UK Defence Innovation get its demand signal from? How does it understand what problems it needs to solve?”

“Yes. Speaking frankly, I think that a lot of people around Team Plymouth wanted that to happen, and it has not happened. You mentioned governance and roles, and Peter alluded to bringing people into the tent, such as local MPs and the NHS—we have a massive hospital in Plymouth. But we do not have a CEO of Team Plymouth…”

“Team Plymouth is now jointly led by Defence Minister Lord Coaker and MHCLG Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh MP—we were able to announce that a couple of weeks ago—so we have joint sponsorship from both those Government Departments.”

“Whose whole job is Team Plymouth.”

“I am a Plymouth MP, and was very proud to host the launch of Team Plymouth a couple of weeks ago here in Parliament. It is not a new concept, clearly; we had the Growth Alliance Plymouth before. Work has been going on for years to get the city ready for the increased workforce demands that are coming, and we have been …”

“Thank you.”

“Working groups—yes.”

“The SRO is in the MoD, yes.”

“Thank you so much for being with us this morning. It is really helpful. I will come back later to the answers you just gave about people in the UK becoming aware that there were guys being left behind for potentially no good reason, but can we just talk about the data breach for a second? You have given us this in writ…”

“Talk us through what happens next. You think, “Okay, this is part of a bigger breach.” How do you find out? We now know there were 19,000 names. How did it emerge? Give us a sense of what you did and who you spoke to.”

“Thank you.”

“That is really useful to hear. A final question from me: I want to get your sense of how your suggestions to the Department and the DARR team in September have been received? Has there been any response or interaction from Government?”

“Can I ask you something else, which is because of your network with Afghans, which we do not have? Are they following and talking about the UK’s Haddon-Cave inquiry into allegations around wrongdoing during a specific time in Afghanistan?”

“To pick up on that last point, the BBC has reported several times this year on suggestions that some actors within the UK MoD were deliberately not bringing Triples back into the UK for fear that they would give testimony against UK special forces about things that they may or may not have seen on operations with UK fo…”