Speeches by Pollard.

“I deliberately did not use the same words as the shadow Defence Secretary because I have not seen the evidence of what has happened in this case. I am reserving judgment about the advice given to me, but I am asking for a review into the accuracy and timeliness of it to ensure that the information given to me is right.…”

“Every single day, brilliant people in defence companies large and small deliver incredible capabilities for the UK’s armed forces. In many cases, we are using faster procurement and new permissions for our friends in Ukraine. There are lessons that we are learning from the experience of supporting our friends in Ukrain…”

“I thank my constituency neighbour for her question. If there is a local defence business in the hon. Lady’s constituency, it is not far from mine, and I would be very happy to speak to her about that. First of all, we are looking at what has happened, and then we will make a decision based on the evidence. That is the …”

“I can reassure my hon. Friend that we are not waiting just for the output of these reviews to make substantial reforms to our procurement system. We know it is too slow, and we know it is too expensive. In the Defence Industrial Strategy that we published a few months ago we set out our ambition to cut our contracting …”

“As we look into what has happened, it is important that everyone, including General Dynamics employees, has the opportunity to share any concerns. That is why General Dynamics, the British Army, Defence Equipment and Support and elsewhere in the supply chain have the appropriate whistleblowing structures. I am happy to…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his question. The Army has a number of vehicles that, as we have heard in this discussion, have been in service for a long period. In refreshing our capabilities, it is not just the Ajax platform that we as a nation are seeking to update, but the Land Rovers and a whole host of other platfor…”

“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the importance of logistics. I am reminded that without Colonel James Sunderland—a logistics colonel who sat on the Conservative Benches—the House is slightly light on that expertise at the moment. It is important that we look at whether the system is working properly. When …”

“I thank the hon. Member. One of the hallmarks of a good defence debate in the House, certainly since I was elected in 2017, is that we have more in common across the parties and share a desire to get to the right solution. I am pleased that there is often less party politics in defence debates, because it is so importa…”

“It is pretty standard fare right across our military platforms for there to be safety notices issued and rectification work taking place.”

“There are opportunities there, but I do not want to simply open the doors to the club and say, “Come on in,” without clarity about what projects we want people to participate in and where we see there being an advantage for the UK and the trilateral partners of further participation. That could be cost-sharing; it coul…”

“While pillar 1 is very clearly a trilateral arrangement, we have set out that we believe that there are opportunities within pillar 2 for other nations to be involved. Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the Republic of Korea are the nations that have expressed interest and we believe are closest to having the close collabo…”

“On a standard basis, there are safety notices.”

“The objective of pillar 2 is to narrow down the number of projects to a smaller number so that the funding, the use cases and the tech challenge we are trying to overcome can be clearer. That sets a clearer demand signal for those partners in the nations that are involved with those pillar 2 programmes to be able to go…”

“The defence investment plan will come out shortly. We are certainly seeing the energy from industry around Rupert’s appointment as National Armaments Director and a lot of energy around the changes he is putting in place.”

“We maintain forces that have a degree of readiness.”

“I do not know the answer to all those questions off the top of my head, but I want to get them right. I will write to the Committee with the full details of those. I do not want to get something wrong.”

“Yes. The NAD is in charge of the National Armaments Director Group. We have pieced together quite a lot of the disparate bits of the MoD under there. UKDI is a really key part of—”

“Safety notices are a very common occurrence in defence due to the large number of platforms that we have and what we do with those platforms. Issuing a safety notice for a problem to rectify is pretty standard fare. I would not expect every single one of those small issues to be notified to Ministers. As a prudent resp…”

“It is the National Armaments Director.”

“It is a concern if it is a fundamental problem that relates to something stepping outside of the usual process. In relation to the MAN trucks—it is important to say that that is different and distinct from Ajax—a problem was identified and the system worked as it was appropriate and as it was supposed to do, identified…”