Speeches by Thomas.

“How much of your work is contingent on the very long‑standing and close joint intelligence sharing that we have with the USA?”

“How many people work for you directly?”

“I have some quickfire questions, since we are about to end, with the assumed kind permission of the Minister, for the air commodore. You are the head of military strategic effects. If you could distil it into one sentence, what are military strategic effects?”

“There is a move to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence in over two years’ time. People such as Neil Kinnock, a former leader of the Labour Party, and several former Defence Secretaries say that that is nowhere near enough to credibly deter a peer adversary such as Russia. That is the game that we are in now. Is 2.5% in over t…”

“Minister, you described the UK needing to show credibility and needing a stronger response to show that. You also spoke about how grey zone or hybrid warfare is all sub-threshold—that is, the threshold of war. People also talk about “pre-war”. It is all about deterrence. It is all about a push and pull of deterring war…”

“I will mention one that is in the public domain. The i Paper published a story online earlier this year about having been able to geolocate, they say, individuals who, they say, were Russian proxies and who, they say, they were able to track from some farming activity in Europe, and who travelled to the UK and, apparen…”

“That is brilliant. If I could bring you on to talk about how hybrid threat is changing, we are quite aware of the threat to undersea cables. What are some of the things that are known but have not made the front page yet? Can you elaborate on the Government assessment of how hybrid threats are changing?”

“Minister, you described a couple of hybrid threats, and you talked about a slight change over the last year, since Labour came into Government, in terms of how the Government communicate those threats to the public, and increased public awareness. We remember the Government telling the public earlier this year about th…”

“The hon. Member talks about political leadership, and I understand that. While we can all agree that Brexit has been an almost unmitigated disaster, the Labour party manifesto said that we will not go back into the EU, the customs union or the single market. That is the manifesto that I and all of us on this side of th…”

“Will my hon. Friend give way?”

“That is certainly a positive outlook. You mentioned the submarine service there. In your command, there very different structures. The Royal Marines, on one hand, are very heavily male-dominated infantry soldiers. Then there is the submarine service, which you alluded to there. Can you talk a bit about some of the chal…”

“Respectfully, I do not mean to interrupt too much, but just because of time, rather than the changes you have made, what are the challenges of that unique environment? Why is it that there is a public perception that submarines breed—this is not my perception, but you understand that it is out there—a very distinct typ…”

“Particularly on submarines.”

“Thank you very much to all of you for laying out in some detail and on the record the action that you are taking within your respective services or within the Department to try to get a grip of what we can all acknowledge is a serious problem. You have put that on the record, so we have heard those things. I am gratefu…”

“Minister, sexual misconduct against women, as we have heard this morning, is a problem across our military. Which of the three services is it worst in?”

“It was a big weekend for the Foreign Secretary in Canada representing our country, and a big weekend for the Royal Navy in Plymouth. The Foreign Secretary alluded to increased co-operation with our EU NATO allies in defence activity. In Plymouth this weekend the deputy French ambassador was down to unveil Ariadne—a new…”

“The Committee has come back recently from a trip to Finland and Estonia, where there is a whole-of-society defence culture that permeates from the public sector and the Government well into the private sector, which does not happen in this country. Minister, you have made comments previously that we might need to adopt…”

“Minister, can we talk about the private sector? We have covered some of the areas of Government that the Armed Forces Bill may extend the covenant to. All of you have also mentioned the changing character of warfare and the changing requirement for skills. You spoke, Admiral, about a kind of porosity and this idea that…”

“T5. The security of Europe is absolutely paramount. What new steps is the Secretary of State taking to deter Russia from further invading European borders given that we are now in a new situation of ongoing negotiations?”

“Ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine are under way, whatever our opinion of them, but the eager eye of Putin may now look to other former Soviet countries, such as the Baltic states. I was in Estonia a couple of weeks ago, and the distance between the Russian border and the Russian-held Kaliningrad territory is j…”