Speeches by Glen.

“Eight years ago next month, Dawn Sturgess died in my constituency as a direct consequence of Russia’s attack, via Novichok, that aimed to take out Sergei Skripal. During that awful episode, it was quite clear that the work of our security services was instrumental in understanding the covert networks that Russia has ac…”

“Wiltshire council has assessed that the combination of the decision to stop the A303 tunnel at Stonehenge—despite £250 million already being committed to that, and spent—confirmation that the UK Health Security Agency will move to Harlow from Porton; the reduction to the rural grant; and Wiltshire having one of the low…”

“How does that relate to this whole issue of what capabilities we need? We talk about the size of personnel pools in the different armed forces and the capability. Are you saying that, because of that provision on capital expenditure and equipment expenditure, decisions will be made differently? What is driving what her…”

“Mr Warner, could I just come to you about the issue of defence spending and equipment, what the fiscal rules do to encourage capital expenditure, and how that works? There is a sense that distribution of defence spending will be affected by fiscal rules, not rational decisions around capability. How should we think abo…”

“It does not give the impression that there is a co-ordinated plan that is made under controlled circumstances. It feels like it is very uncertain for industry. Is that a reasonable conclusion that we should draw from that?”

“Could you give us an industry view of what effect this has? The example that was put before us is the £1 billion contract for a new fleet of Leonardo helicopters that went very much to the wire. My expectation from the little bit of exposure I had was that Treasury tends to lock down as a bargaining chip until things a…”

“Yes, but the view is that, essentially, the Treasury is probably reluctant to give a meaningful uplift because it has not really reconciled, to a reasonable level of satisfaction, what gaps have existed in commitments already given and, apparently, spent. Is that a reasonable assertion as to why we may have this impass…”

“On 1 September 2024, the Government, reasonably sensibly, asked Jean-Christophe Gray, a former director of public spending at the Treasury, to join the SDR team, presumably to give some validation of the plans and the capabilities, as a reasonable proxy for the Treasury’s eyes. What happened to get to a point where tha…”

“I want to just probe a bit more on this Treasury-MOD relationship. I was, briefly, for 13 months, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and one of my Ministry of Defence ministerial colleagues said, “Your job is just to sign it off, Mr Beancounter. Don’t you get in the way.” I respectfully disagreed with him, as nominally c…”

“You have very eloquently set out the problem. I am not sure we have quite got to the solution, but thank you very much.”

“It goes to the heart of it in terms of being honest and real about this. Lord Robertson did a massive piece of work with a multidisciplinary team, which included Treasury expertise. He made quite a profound statement. How else do we interpret what he said, if we cannot get to the bottom of where this money is coming fr…”

“Would that be consistent with manifesto commitments given?”

“I have one more question for Mr Warner. Lord Robertson said that we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget. What scope is there for cutting the welfare budget in favour of defence spending?”

“That is a reasonable answer, but history tends to suggest that, whenever there has been a surge in money, there has been a problem in terms of accountability. Ms Retter, can you address that? Are there lessons from elsewhere that we could draw on?”

“We all seem to think that everyone will be satisfied—NATO and President Trump—that we are on this trajectory to increase spending. What I am trying to get at is that, if you do not have the capacity in the workforce and the industry, either you will end up importing a lot more or you will not be able to absorb that ext…”

“I have one final question on this element of the uplifting. If all goes well, the 3.5% commitment is secure, we get a defence investment plan and those increments are true in the first spending round, that is quite a rapid increase in quite a short amount of time. Mr Kinniburgh, could you address the issue of the indus…”

“The political argument that was made was that the Government were having to make this very tough decision on international aid. Indeed, a very respected Cabinet-attending Minister resigned from Government because that choice had been made. You seem to be saying that it is not clear where that saving was spent.”

“Hitherto, the initial increase that we have seen from this new Government has been by cutting international aid from 0.5% to 0.3%. Do we have clarity on what that saving funded in terms of the MOD budget?”

“The fiscal position is well understood, in that the borrowing restrictions are pretty much maxed out. Unless you increase those taxes, as you have described, or a similar basket of taxes, you have to make pretty significantly different spending decisions elsewhere, do you not?”

“If I may say, you are the authoritative voice on this, are you not?”