Speeches by Norman.

“I have a tiny follow-up question. When a drone company tries to indigenise in this country a drone business that is a sovereign capability of another country, should we regard that as adding to our sovereign capability or as a potential strategic weakness?”

“Sir Hew, do you want to come in on anything?”

“It sounds like the defence and security strategies we have are not only failing to acknowledge the point about the substantive requirements, but are just the wrong shape and design to hit the concerns that are being articulated by this panel.”

“Have you written about that?”

“I would be very interested to see that, if you want to send it in.”

“So there is compute, energy and nuclear. Ed, do you want to add on sovereign capability? I've said nuclear, but maybe there is a question mark on that.”

“It also does not seem as though we have the strategic intelligence to understand that there are different ways of thinking about model construction and that, for example, China is adopting different approaches from America and that there may therefore be a spectrum in which we could play effectively with sovereign abil…”

“Okay, that is incredibly helpful. I am going to reverse the order of questions that the Clerks have written—not that I ever ask those questions anyway—and start with the sovereign defence and sovereign capability question. Dr Dear, you have talked about AGI and intelligence—of course, there is a whole series of equivoc…”

“And that might, in fact, increase the likelihood of war.”

“Arguably, that accountability is reduced by having parliamentary votes on these matters.”

“Arguably, the idea of a platform is not compatible with the speed that you are describing. I have a couple of questions related to defence capability and sovereign power. Sir Hew, before we start on that, can I ask you something that picks up on what you said earlier about law? I should declare interests of my own in t…”

“So you are definitely in the three out of 10 area.”

“But in terms of actually doing things—”

“I thank the Leader of the House very much for the business. As the House will know, this is the week of Holocaust Memorial Day, and I am delighted that we will be debating it in this Chamber later today. I am sure colleagues will have visited the extraordinary exhibition of shoes in Portcullis House. I visited Auschwit…”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“No, no, which individual? Is that the Prime Minister?”

“I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to my registry of interests. We are some way in, Secretary of State, I would be grateful if you and the team could be relatively clipped if you can because there is a certain amount to get through. You have spoken about defence spending, £6 billion here, and I think you sa…”

“I was asking about a technical matter and you have made a slightly party political response, which is a pity for the Committee. Let us just talk a little about what the Prime Minister said. In a speech last year, he said that he wanted to see security and defence as a central, “Organising principle of Government;” “The…”

“Secretary of State, you have said that you absolutely recognise the importance of this Committee as a critical friend of the MOD. I think you also recognise that we treat all information we have been given in confidence; there have been no leaks of any kind that I am aware of, certainly from this Committee. The amount …”

“That is very helpful and we will be able to judge it when we have the details. Will you commit to briefing the Committee staff so that we are completely on top of the technicalities of that but also letting us have a baseline so that we can then judge what progress you make against your strategic priorities under that …”