Speeches by Jopp.

“Permanent Secretary, hopefully a very quick one. We had one of these sessions with the Secretary of State and your predecessor in about November 2024, at which the then Permanent Secretary said that he would reduce the number of full-time equivalent civil servants in the Ministry of Defence by 10% over the course of th…”

“In answer to the Chair, I think you said, “I do not recognise the characterisation of some sort of security deep state which is attempting to keep secrets from Parliament.” So with my irony claxon still ringing in my ears, can we talk about the superinjunction that was put in place by the prior Government and maintaine…”

“There was just one other legacy piece of that discussion that we had with the former Secretary of State: Ben Wallace said that after a prior data breach he had put in train a number of measures that were not followed up on. And when we asked him, “Well, why did no one do it?” He said, “Someone didn’t do their job.” I j…”

“Secretary of State, you are a busy man so you may not have had the opportunity to see your two predecessors and the former Minister for the Armed Forces giving evidence a week ago today.”

“That would be incredibly helpful.”

“Okay. In the summary, particularly Sir Ben Wallace and James Heappey outlined the following thesis. From the mid-90s onwards, Governments of both parties took a capability holiday; they hollowed out defence. What enabled them to do so was the fact that the perception of threat is run by the information flow that comes …”

“Last time I checked, there were 404 Labour MPs. Why does the Minister think that his Whips could not come up with a single Back Bencher to come to the Chamber and support his position today?”

“The news has broken that overnight the first asylum seekers have been moved into Crowborough barracks in Sussex. The Minister for Border Security and Asylum stood at the Dispatch Box and told me that the Stanwell hotel in my constituency would not be kept open as an asylum hotel for a minute longer than necessary. Will…”

“Thank you for that welcome, Ms Vaz. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous), who is also the chair of the APPG on global education, on securing this debate and on his long-standing interest in this matter. I also thank the hon.…”

“The hon. Member is describing the Bill, but we are not here to debate the Bill; we are here to debate the remedial order. I asked him why he was comfortable with the fact that the Government are guillotining a piece of law without putting something else in place, and he has not answered that yet. He has answered that t…”

“I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Gentleman for giving way. He has glossed over another thing that he will potentially be voting for today: allowing Gerry Adams to claim compensation on the basis that his internment was illegal because the Minister of State signed the order not the Secretary of State. Would he like…”

“As the hon. Member says, we are considering this order alongside the Bill. I am grateful to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which he sits, for producing this very good report, but I would like to try to get an answer that I did not get earlier. How is he reconciled with the fact that this remedial order is bein…”

“I will not. I challenged the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) earlier, asking him to speak to veterans and the people of Halesowen to justify why that triple whammy is okay, and why he is prepared to go through the Lobby to vote for it tonight. And he said, “The Prime Minister has told me that that’s okay, an…”

“I haven’t got time. I do not think that we are doing the House, or indeed Parliament, justice by proceeding in this way. I was a soldier for 25 years and spent three and a half years in Northern Ireland. I once made the mistake of saying that to Ronnie Flanagan—he was the chief constable at the time—and he told me that…”

“I want to make a couple of points, one about democracy and one about service and justice. I am deeply uneasy about this remedial order being brought in today. I will make no criticism of those who are here, but for major parts of this debate over the past three hours, the Government Back Benches were empty and yet 20-p…”

“I fear that the Liberal Democrat spokesman may have misspoken earlier in his remarks. I will quote from the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the first draft: “A declaration of incompatibility has no legal effect and does not affect the ongoing validity of the incompatible legislation. It is merely a tool by wh…”

“The shadow Secretary of State makes a very powerful point, but I think it is worth putting it on the record that it is pretty unlikely his words will carry the day on the basis that there are eight Labour Back Benchers here to hear this debate about applying a guillotine to gut a piece of existing legislation without p…”

“I hope I am not misquoting the Secretary of State, but he said the Government are using this guillotine motion to withdraw parts of an existing law before they have another one in place because of the urgency, and that that urgency was created by a desire to “build trust” in both the civilian victims of terrorism and t…”

“rose—”

“I am new in this place, but my sense of the hon. Member is that he a great parliamentarian, so I would like to understand how he has reconciled himself with this being the correct course for the Government to take—bringing in a remedial order that pulls a law out before we put a new one in?”