Speeches by Pollard.

“In the respect that an air leg to our nuclear deterrence provides an update and a change from where we were before we announced it, we will add it to our fighting spirit and to how we plan. It provides options for our management of any crisis, escalation and support. That would be a given. However, I do not think that …”

“I do not mean to put words into Lord West’s mouth. That is a dangerous pursuit for anyone, let alone a Minister. On the fundamentals of the question about updating our nuclear doctrine, clearly if we have an air leg to our nuclear capabilities, that does in effect update our nuclear doctrine because our nuclear doctrin…”

“First, it is good to see more west-country MPs involved in defence, so it is good to see you back doing that. The decision to purchase F-35As is deliberately designed to increase the strategic dilemmas we can pose, as the United Kingdom but also as a NATO ally, to Russian nuclear escalation. Our current proposition onl…”

“We are already stepping up as a country and looking at that. The Americans have asked Europe as a whole to spend more on defence, to step up support for Ukraine and to demonstrate our ability to refill stockpiles—so we are better able to warfight and therefore have greater deterrence. We are already doing many of those…”

“The US global force posture review is ongoing at the moment, and it will be for them to decide what capabilities they seek to redistribute across their priorities globally. I think, to be fair to the Americans in this respect, they have been saying under various Administrations for quite some time that it is their inte…”

“It is a very fair question. The defence investment plan will be looking not just at kit and equipment, as the old equipment plan did. That effectively loaded the attention on kit and equipment and did not load it on infrastructure at all, and our people. The defence investment plan is designed to be broader in its appr…”

“Yes. What we need to make sure of is our ability to respond to those crises—and we plan, in some cases, for concurrent crises. If you are going beyond concurrent crises, you are moving into much more of a warfighting position, which then moves from effectively holding forces at readiness to forward deploying forces. Th…”

“I will bring the team in on the details of how we manage the tensions between different commitments. What I would say is that the SDR very clearly set out that our defensive posture and moving to a warfighting readiness is underpinned, yes, by our NATO membership and our leading role within NATO, but also through the b…”

“I think it is the same one. As Paul says, Ministers decide.”

“No, I certainly do not recognise the buccaneering suggestion there, because it is part of an integrated model of deterrence and deployments that we have across the European theatre. Our partners in JEF are very clear that JEF is entirely complementary to NATO. Now Finland and Sweden have joined the NATO alliance, where…”

“All resource allocations are done via the established process of creating an Armed Forces plan that flows from the SDR and allocating those resources. There is temptation to answer your question by saying there is a set of forces held solely for JEF and a set of forces held solely for NATO. That is not the case. In man…”

“No, I don’t think it is. It is about how you implement that objective. We have to be very cognisant that if we want to fundamentally change the incentives within the system about attractiveness of job roles and attractiveness of an individual for their next job role, we have to have that throughout their entire career …”

“I entirely agree. Having an element of churn in our overall post fill is quite normal. NATO allows for a 5% churn, and we are nearly at that point. Not many of our NATO colleagues are anywhere near that, so that is welcome. Our offer has to be about family life, service life and career. The SDR set this out very clearl…”

“It is absolutely something that we are aware of. I realise that not all NATO roles are in the European Union—some are further afield—but for the ones that are EU based, especially where we are filling at NATO headquarters, SHAPE, or the maritime missions in Italy, for instance, the Brexit deal removed the opportunities…”

“In the NATO-first approach that this Government will have, we aim to fill more vacancies and make service in NATO roles more attractive to people—especially European NATO roles, where we know there are some obstacles. If you compare the UK participation and fill rates with those of some of our comparable NATO allies, w…”

“The intention is that we have all our vacancies filled, but we know that there is a challenge in overcoming some of the issues that I just mentioned, in relation to the previous question, about the offer that some of those roles—”

“No, we will continue to make an effort to fill those vacancies as we go through.”

“As part of our model, we expect to continue to fill those vacancies.”

“No, absolutely not. The point I am trying to make is that we are making a clear statement that, to succeed to the highest levels in the Ministry of Defence and in military roles in the future, we have now set an expectation about roles. Over time, that should help people at early stages in their career inform the caree…”

“It certainly does, and that is why it is important to have the 80 and the 8.6% alongside each other. That demonstrates that the vast majority of our NATO roles are filled. I looked at the breakdown and at just how many roles have been gapped for some time. If a role has been gapped for five years, that is not a proper,…”