Speeches by Jopp.

“My constituency has 2,000 acres of raised reservoirs and there are 402 Members in the House from England alone who have raised reservoirs in their constituencies, but the debate has not covered the potential for floating solar. Does the shadow Minister agree that if the forthcoming Government solar road map does not co…”

“The Leader of the House knows a great deal about my constituency because I never tire of telling her about it during business questions, so she knows that it is in the administrative county of Surrey, but she may not know that it is in the historic county of Middlesex. Tomorrow is Middlesex Day. I wrote to the Governme…”

“Some 5,500 defined-benefit schemes have £1.6 trillion-worth of assets. The trouble is that the regulatory environment is skewed toward buying an insurance policy at the end of that journey. In order to change the way in which trustees and fund managers invest, the Minister has to change the end state. What discussions …”

“What was it about the local election results that first attracted the Home Secretary to the idea of rushing out an immigration White Paper?”

“I very much enjoy discussing the British film industry, because Members across the House stand up and say that they have the Hollywood of Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire and everywhere else. I am blessed in Spelthorne to have Europe’s biggest film studios and the second biggest in the world in Shepperton—interestingly, i…”

“Thank you. If it is any consolation, when I worked in the Ministry of Defence, we had two teams working on the single version of the truth, so don’t worry about incoherence in UK space policy.”

“The Chagos islands, or somewhere like that.”

“Are those commercial companies all US-based, or are other options around in the marketplace up there?”

“That brings us into the realm of sovereign nations having huge reliance on commercial capability for the prosecution of self-defence. You might say that ’twas ever thus, but it is obviously not a national capability of Ukraine; they are reliant on the commercial sector. Can you give us a sense of the concentration risk…”

“I just want to run the tape on my understanding of the role that Starlink played in Ukraine. As a couple of experts, you might confirm that this version is the right one: the Russians took out the Ukrainian satellite-based internet capability and Starlink, a SpaceX company, provided it, including to the tune of about 4…”

“I am not an expert in the field, so you will have to forgive me. I want to look at bringing the UK’s response up to date with more recent developments, on the back of Fred’s question. I understand that there is a thing called the Space Leadership Council, but it has not met for 900 days—and quite a lot has happened in …”

“Did UKspace make a submission to the defence review?”

“Does anyone deploy EMP-hardened capability in low Earth orbit?”

“So it is foundational and contested.”

“This is a nuclear weapon constantly loitering—deployed in space for deployment downwards. Is that correct?”

“Yes, moving on, I think it was in 2021 that we saw the Russian testing of a direct-ascent anti-satellite capability, to international opprobrium at the time. How has the threat environment developed since then? What have we seen? Can you bring us up to date on what is happening up there?”

“Juliana, is there anything you want to add?”

“Very quickly, if you wanted a British launch capability, would you put it in Britain, necessarily? We have a large number of overseas territories. Have they not got greater natural advantages as a launch centre compared with putting it somewhere in the UK?”

“Rest in pieces!”

“Is there any particular reason?”