Speeches by Jopp.

“I always thought it was ironic that Armed Forces Day, which is a way of the nation giving back to their Armed Forces, normally meant soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines having to work another day, which did not seem to fit the bill in any way at all. With that thought, I will hand back to the Chair.”

“6. If she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Pensions Regulator on economic growth.”

“The then pensions Minister, Guy Opperman, said that green-lighting defined benefit pension superfunds was his greatest achievement of lockdown. The unelected Governor of the Bank of England then unhelpfully intervened and said that superfunds would be a risk to financial stability, and as a result the Pensions Regulato…”

“4. What recent discussions she has had with the Welsh Government on NHS reform in Wales.”

“The Labour party has been running the NHS for 25 years in Wales, where waiting lists are through the roof, compared with those in England. Does the Secretary of State agree with Mr Mark Drakeford that what Wales really needs is fewer hospitals?”

“You both talked about capability gaps, in particular in answer to Ian’s question about the White Paper and not duplicating NATO’s work in terms of capability gaps. Ed, in terms of the specific, hard-end capabilities that had to be borrowed from the Americans, you alighted on some of them. When I ask the question, “Wher…”

“On the politics of Europe and European cohesion, by which I mean the EU, we have a problem at the moment in terms of France and Germany being in some sort of political stasis because of the electoral cycle. In the meantime—we left it—how is the rest of the EU getting on in terms of its own cohesion? Armida van Rij: The…”

“It is always tricky, when looking at burden sharing, because it does rely on trust. As ever, as you said, it always ends up being a couple of nations, when it is hitting the fan, that say, “You and me, brother, we are going to go and do this together”. If there were a couple of areas where the UK could really offer to …”

“I am reminded that, at the end of the Cold War, when it really mattered, the only common kit and equipment across NATO was diesel and 105 mm ammunition. Even that did not galvanise us to get our act together and be particularly interoperable.”

“We had better not go into that.”

“On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit Manor Mead special school, where 60 members of staff look after the 92 pupils, many of whom have the most severe learning disabilities and autism. I was absolutely blown away by the care of the staff, and I was particularly grateful to be shown around by the adorable Luchia, on…”

“I have a simple question: would it be compatible with the military covenant to make compensation payments to former members of the IRA?”

“My train got cancelled on my commute home last night from Waterloo to Sunbury, but that gave me the wonderful opportunity to catch up on one of my favourite radio programmes—that of Mr Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live. My joy was only increased when I had the opportunity to listen to a rare interview given by the Leade…”

“The permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence said recently that he would reduce the number of permanent civil servants at the MOD by 10% by the end of this Parliament. Will the Cabinet Office be larger or smaller at the end of this Parliament?”

“They say that one ought to build one’s enemy a golden bridge. I think the compromise and pause proposed by the National Farmers Union is an elegant solution. That golden bridge is now being signposted by Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, the Co-op, and all the major retailers the Minister claims to be engaging with. Why does he not j…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) on securing this debate. I am time constrained, but I want to mention St Mary’s in Stanwell, a grade I listed 12th-century Norman church. An overseas visitor remarked to me recently how odd it was that the Normans chose to build such a beautiful c…”

“But is the genie out of the bottle? Can we only go in one direction for a liberal democracy, or can we re-instil that security culture?”

“In our last session, we were discussing how we loved the clarity of the ideas of perfect peace and perfect war, because then our rules kick in and we know where we stand, but this “grey zone” that we are talking about really just represents life. The gap on the spectrum between competition and conflict is another grey …”

“That is very much looking at it from our point of view, and how we protect against said attacks, but I want to invite you to explore the nature of the threat. You have described it as autocratic, as if that covers the spectrum, but is there a nuance within that in terms of our adversaries’ national approach to the way …”

“You have a range of adversaries out there, and you have seen them develop these new techniques onto the surfaces that you refer to. There's nothing new under the sun but national character. To what extent does that inform the way in which they develop their own offensive capability?”