Speeches by Thomas.

“I want to go back to the question about the overall strategy and what we can expect to see from the SDR. Will you be getting into as much detail as to recommend particular centres of excellence or clusters, for example around marine autonomy?”

“Lastly, having been Defence Secretary, taken a further career and now here you are doing a review outside of the Government, do you think we in the UK are positioned well to innovate quickly enough to keep pace with what is happening in modern warfare in Ukraine?”

“I hope so. To follow up on that, some defence commentators say that the types of organisation that are able to learn very quickly and iterate capabilities that are having effect successfully in Ukraine at the moment tend to be smaller or medium-sized businesses. You will have had hundreds or thousands of submissions fr…”

“Secretary of State, you are a champion of parliamentary scrutiny, but last year the MOD did not publish—or partially published—an equipment plan, which should give insight into £300 billion of spending over the next decade. Are you able to commit to saying that the MOD will publish that this year and every year that yo…”

“Secretary of State, are you implying or suggesting that once the Haddon-Cave inquiry resolves, you would potentially be open to reassessing how this country scrutinises UKSF? Is that what we are to understand?”

“Mr Williams, you are the permanent secretary. You have previously been a director general in different Departments. You have held a lot of risk. From your understanding of Whitehall, and having seen other Departments being scrutinised in Parliament, do you consider that the MOD is holding risk by not allowing UKSF to b…”

“Thank you. To continue on the theme of parliamentary scrutiny, we are able to ask you an array of questions, some of which you cannot give us the answers to here because they are at a high classification. We understand that. The parliamentary establishments of Five Eyes friends of ours are able to ask about their respe…”

“Okay.”

“Q13. Two weeks ago, the Chancellor announced a historic £22.6 billion investment into the NHS, because it is our duty to rescue this country’s health service after 14 years of mismanagement, under-investment and, unfortunately, misleading announcements from the Conservative party. In Plymouth, Derriford hospital, which…”

“A bit of this debate should be about honesty. If the Ministry of Defence were to step forward and say, “We want to modernise and be able to buy kit at scale and at pace, but we have a limited budget,” it would just be being honest and realistic to say that we have to let some things go. With my Royal Marines background…”

“I welcome the Bill: it is great news. I left full-time service only last year, and it is fantastic to see the pledges that I hoped the Government would fulfil being brought—I hope—into law. I first encountered these proposals last year when we were joined by Eva Högl, the German armed forces commissioner, in the House …”

“What a fantastic day for every person in Plymouth who uses the bus! We strongly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement that £4.5 million will be invested in our buses over the next couple of years. She said that that represents an investment not just in buses, but in people and communities. That is fantastic to …”

“Folks in Plymouth are really interested in how the Government will solve this big problem. They will welcome the increase in money towards dealing with the problem and the increase in returns. Another thing they want is constructive, lively debate with ideas in this place. Unfortunately, the Opposition seem so devoid o…”

“Very quickly, Professor Chalmers, would you support, and would you like to see in the SDR, budget being ringfenced for research and development, and innovation, particularly for SMEs? Would you like to see our Government go that far? Do you think that is a good model?”

“Not only the MOD and serving personnel, but industry, will be looking on very keenly to see what comes out of the SDR. How much scope do you think the Government will have to change how industry interacts with the customer, that being the MOD, in a way that we have not seen for the last several decades, particularly in…”

“Thank you, Professor Chalmers, for being with us. I have a question about the strategic defence review that is due to land early next year—we are not sure exactly when—and your assessment of the Government’s ability to reprioritise and change things, given that it has been laid out that some of the big-ticket items, su…”

“I think we all understand that Conservative Members are desperate to talk about anything other than their record of 14 years of failure in government. We hear from hon. Friends and Opposition Members how those failures are affecting constituents every single day. My question is, what next? How will the Conservatives di…”

“I warmly welcome the £2.26 billion of aid announced today. It is great news for those fighting for democracy in Europe and a day of low morale in the Kremlin—it is fantastic. The Ukrainians might well use some of the money to continue to innovate at pace. Every few weeks they create new cutting-edge and adaptive techno…”

“Devonport dockyard in Plymouth is where the UK repairs and maintains our submarine fleet. In future, there will be even more submarines, and we will need even more infrastructure for that upkeep, so what conversations is the Secretary of State having with the Secretaries of State responsible for housing and transport t…”

“Can I begin by congratulating Conservative Members on their sudden interest in national security? They must have forgotten all about the millions and millions of Russian roubles swilling about in the party’s bank accounts. I do have a question for the Foreign Secretary, and I want to ask a question on behalf of my cons…”