Speeches by Pollard.

“With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to update the House on the UK-Türkiye deal to sell 20 British-built Typhoon fighter jets. On Monday, the Prime Minister travelled to Ankara with the Defence Secretary, where he finalised an agreement with President Erdoğan for Türkiye to purchase 20 British-built…”

“There are a number of nations across Europe and Asia with complex energy dependencies on Russia. This Government and our partner nations have been very clear that there needs to be a fast and smooth transition away from using Russian oil and gas, and it is something we continue to work on with our allies. We encourage …”

“I was nearly going to say that I warmly welcome all the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, but I am afraid that the good news had to be tempered with a little bit of partisan attack. First, let me welcome his welcome for this deal. It shows that when there is good cross-party work, we can achieve things well. I am very proud th…”

“I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s welcome of the good-value platforms that we are exporting to Türkiye; it is really important that we have a strong relationship with Türkiye. He will know that the arms exports regime is run by the Department for Business and Trade. I have to say that the risk of diversion from so…”

“It is a joint base.”

“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. In a world that is growing more dangerous, this Labour Government will always put Britain’s security first, and if there is one thing that Members should take away from today’s debate, it is the absolute necessity of this Bill to secure the military base on Diego…”

“It is worth understanding how the Joint Strike Fighter—originally the F-35—programme works on a global basis. Of the eight original partner nations, of which the UK is one and the US another, agreements on how the F-35 global support system operates have to be taken by consensus, which means that all nations in that or…”

“I am happy coming back to you on that, but just to reinforce the point, the ability of the RAF aircraft or contracted aircraft to operate is entirely reliant on the permissions given by nations in the area. If the tasking of those aircraft were to go beyond hostage rescue, that would potentially change the calculations…”

“I am not aware of that, but I would need to check the wider conversations.”

“If the Foreign Office wanted to know about hostage-rescue data, a conversation would perhaps take place, but as the aircraft is solely focused on hostage rescue and using the capabilities for hostage rescue, that may not necessarily be of interest to other Government Departments—unless it is around hostage rescue, whic…”

“No, we are absolutely looking for the hostages. That is the sole purpose of those flights. That is the mission that they have been tasked with—to try to locate those hostages who continue to be held in Hamas captivity. That is their job and sole purpose. All the capabilities that the aircraft may possess are tasked wit…”

“It is difficult to go further in answering the question due to the fact that we do not routinely comment on intelligence matters. If there were additional taskings placed on those aircraft—beyond just hostage rescue—I think the ability of those aircraft to deliver those activities would be more constrained. As a result…”

“It would not normally be a thing that we would look at in relation to this specifically because the tasking and our entire mission out of RAF Akrotiri is solely for hostage search and rescue. If there were to be alternative taskings based on a wider aspect, that would require a very different approach and may affect th…”

“The question is whether the data would be held in such a format that it would be able to identify that, because effectively—without going into too much detail—instead of looking at the landscape and geographies, it is trying to detect information that would pinpoint the location of individual hostages. In that respect,…”

“That is not the purpose of those flights—”

“It would not be normal for me to—the flights are solely for hostage rescue. Their intention is to use the technologies and capabilities to look at that. As a result, we do not look beyond those activities, and it would be hard for me to give out further details due to operational security.”

“If we are looking at the activities of the hostage search flights, that is solely with the intention of locating hostages, so all the activities of those flights are based on hostage location—to assist in search and rescue for those hostages. That is their primary and only tasking. We do not ask them to look at additio…”

“We do not routinely collect information on the activities of Israeli planes, so we do not have a lot of that information that I can share.”

“Use of that would be a matter for the FCDO to assess. Routinely, the Ministry of Defence would not assess the operational use of military assets by partner nations, but the particular use and test of that would be an FCDO-led question.”

“They are seeking to do that, yes.”