Speeches by Norman.

“Mr Speaker, may I associate myself very strongly with the remarks you have just made about hospices? You will recall that St Michael’s hospice was the topic of a recent discussion that we had at the Dispatch Box in business questions. Mr Speaker, I must confess that I feel a slight degree of trepidation and nervousness…”

“Not scaring the horses unnecessarily involves scaring them a bit. The question is this: When we had a Cold War on—many people would say we are entering a new Cold War—defence spending on average was 5% to 7% of GDP. That was not a threat against the homeland in the way that we might have thought of in the Second World …”

“Permanent Secretary, I just want to come back to points that have been made on the equipment plan. You will be fully aware of the importance of disclosure and transparency, and the worries that we have had about diminishing transparency and disclosure. How much do you care about the concern about consent and preparedne…”

“I am just joining the dots and want to be sure that we are all completely on the same side on that. You cannot have an organisation spending the level of cash that you are spending without escalating interest as the money goes up and as the warfighting capability starts to come under question. I just want to reinforce …”

“Can we all enjoy the word “helpful”?”

“Thank you for the clarity of that response. Ms Blackmore, the NAO recently criticised processes within the MOD for identifying and reporting losses in 2022-23 and 2023-24. Have you fixed the problem? What was the problem, as you see it, and have you fixed it?”

“What lessons has the MOD learned in relation to the inadequacies of PFI? There have been very significant concerns, even in areas where you had replicable programme capability rather than, as it were, explicit one-offs, that there was inadequate risk transfer, loss of control, loss of transparency. It was essentially a…”

“If we think about Ukraine, the NAO has pointed out that we have provided £2.7 billion of military equipment from existing stocks, but we have only agreed £1 billion of replenishment. Does that mean we do not think that needs replenishing or are we planning to replenish it on a much longer basis than would be ideal for …”

“Great, so we can expect that kind of rapid remedial action in relation to further disclosure of information on equipment, et cetera, filling the gap that we described earlier about loss of disclosure and loss of transparency?”

“What a marvellous time of year it is when I see the Christmas tree in New Palace Yard, and the trilling sounds of the parliamentary and Salvation Army choirs to boot. On a slightly more sober note, you will recall, Mr Speaker, that the story of this Government so far has been one of early scandal, a first reset and a d…”

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

“Is there any expectation that, if there was a breakthrough and the Russians got closer to Kyiv, there would be a more resolute allied or supportive reaction?”

“Panel, you will be aware that Russia has received a lot of different kinds of military support since the beginning of the war, both from aligned nations and from putatively non-aligned nations. They might be drones from Iran, missiles or drones from China, troops from North Korea, basing support from Belarus, or, alleg…”

“Could you just dwell on that for a second? Just talk for a second about what the impact of the blockage or the delay of US support was on the ground.”

“Just to be clear, the effect of the US blockage or temporary withdrawal was to create a strategic weakness because Ukraine was incapable of dealing with evolving strategic threats to block the linkage between the US and the front in Ukraine from an evolution of warfare standpoint, but also to prevent it from exploiting…”

“Let us turn to the other side then and look at what Russia has received and what the effect of that has been. There is obviously a big difference between the early phase of the war and the more China-enabled drone context of the later phase.”

“Is there enough of a feedback loop where we go after the people who are actually selling this stuff or the people who are manufacturing it within Europe?”

“The functional failure of the sanctions regime.”

“That is very helpful. Could we just touch a little further on Orysia’s earlier point about the earlier blockage? The Kiel Institute has estimated that military aid from Ukraine’s partners could drop by almost half next year, relative to current levels. Without being too melodramatic, can we just talk about some of the …”

“It is great to see that Christmas has come to the Palace of Westminster. I hope, Mr Speaker, that you enjoyed the Christmas fayre yesterday, and that you loaded up on goods from Frank’s Luxury Biscuits from Herefordshire just as heavily as I did—”