Speeches by Pollard.

“That is an area that Maria Eagle is working in. I do not want steal her sandwiches by pre-announcing anything on that, but certainly the intention, which the Secretary of State has laid out quite clearly, is to have more investment reaching our regions. Sixty-eight per cent of defence spending is outside London and sou…”

“I will ask Maria Eagle to write in detail on that point, but certainly the implementation of the financial services strategy that we seek to make will seek to recognise the difficulties that some firms have in raising investment and dealing with some of the valleys of death in terms of investment, bringing a product to…”

“The target on direct spend with SMEs is really important. I know that a number of members of the Committee are really championing the involvement of SMEs in the defence space. We are really keen to pursue that. Certainly, the objectives set out in the SDR, the sense that the Government have, and what will be in the def…”

“We are implementing the SDR at the moment. On the procurement side, I think the biggest change the Committee will be able to see is when the defence industrial strategy is published, and then when it is put into practice, in terms of the kit and equipment and the infrastructure that we are seeking to spend that increas…”

“I think that the Americans are very keen for Europe to step up. I have heard that message clearly; I think that many of our European allies have as well. Stepping up means doing more. Doing more has an industrial focus and a military focus, but that is entirely where the US wants Europe to be. We have heard that. We ar…”

“As a leading NATO nation, we need to co-operate with both our European friends and our transatlantic ones. That would be pretty established as we develop capabilities and export kit and equipment across the NATO alliance and further afield.”

“The defence investment plan will set out the spending priorities, and we certainly need to be on a journey towards having an integrated air and missile defence at a level that we can have more confidence in, based on the experience of what we can see Russia using. As part of that, we need to square a circle of how we u…”

“Securing our supply lines and resilience is featured in the SDR, and it is also important that we implement the spirit of what the SDR tells us. As a Department, we are very mindful that we need to look again at our resilience in the wider sense. That is what the SDR asks us to do in terms of warfighting readiness, hom…”

“The SDR has identified protection of our CNI as an area that we need to do more in. The lessons that we are seeking to learn from not just that incident but others that have happened more recently—Brize Norton is an example—highlights that under-investment over a long period of time has meant that there are greater vul…”

“I can entirely understand where you are coming from. For anything that we seek to publish, there is a difference in what we can track and what we cannot publish. I am very happy to look at the progress of that work to see what might be able to be shared with the Committee in a private capacity, due to the classificatio…”

“To implement change—yes. Ministers need to set the clear strategic direction. In the MOD, we have done that by adopting all the recommendations in the SDR and driving the SDR consequences. It is not just implementing the 62 recommendations—although we are, and we will—it is also by taking the spirit of the SDR and appl…”

“Yes. The SDR set out that we want to do more to improve our article 3 role, homeland defence and national security. Some of those are shared endeavours. If I take the example of cyber-resilience, we have restructured some of our cyber-capabilities since the SDR by creating a new cyberEM command and looking again at the…”

“First, I would challenge you: I do not regard it as slightly concerning in the way that you framed it in your question, mainly because I have spent most of today either here or preparing for here. I have not been looking at other aspects of my portfolio because I have been in front of the Committee. I am not worried ab…”

“We were involved in the work that underpins some of that, but, no, I have not yet seen every word of his statement.”

“The Ministry of Defence will be involved with all of those, but it is for the CDL to make his statement.”

“At the moment, the system works in terms of the structure and there is an understanding of who has responsibility for what. What I think the SDR sets out clearly is the fact that we have under-invested in our homeland defence and under-invested in, or have not really adopted, a whole-of-society approach to meet the thr…”

“It only concerns me if it does not work.”

“Overall responsibility sits with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Cabinet Office, then responsibilities are held across Government for different areas of expertise. For instance, last week, with the Chair, I was in front of the National Security Strategy Joint Committee, and we were looking at underwater…”

“I think we have been very clear that we are not satisfied with article 3 in the UK. But, equally, I think that is a position that every European NATO member state is clear on as well; there has been a correct focus on article 5, but there have not been many people looking at article 3. That is why we are seeking to cha…”

“Broadly, but we have implemented changes against that. As the Cabinet Office leads broadly on the aggregation of our article 3 commitments across the UK, we are making changes against that. We have been very clear that article 3 has not been upheld in the way that we would like it to be, and that is why it is not just …”