Speeches by Pollard.

“A sustained, unconditional ceasefire is the quickest way to stop the killing while creating the space for serious talks to achieve a lasting peace. President Zelensky has consistently shown his commitment to peace. Putin has refused to meet Zelensky in person while continuing barbaric attacks on the Ukrainian people, a…”

“I would not be able to give an answer on that one, because it would depend on what we mean by “operations”.”

“What do you mean by “hybrid threats” there? Effectively, anything below active kinetic activity could be covered by the definition of “hybrid threats”, and so we can point to nearly all of our budget being in that direction. If there are particular hybrid threats that we are looking at, the approach that I expect will …”

“We still have more work to do.”

“We are still making changes. There is still work to do. We have to refill our stockpiles. We have to reform defence procurement. We have to value our people more. We have to fix a broken recruitment and retention system. Against all of those, we are making progress. The SDR will really help as a catalyst to show the fu…”

“We are making changes to the system of procurement. We are trying to remove the barriers and the obstacles, so that we can refill our stockpiles. We increased defence spending in the Budget last year by £2.9 billion, with an increased budget of 2.5% from April. That provides the resources to create the renewal of our f…”

“It was a really useful one in highlighting the state of our forces at any given moment. As a Minister, if we ask our forces to do something, can they do it? Yes. Can they provide credible deterrence? Yes. Do we want them to do more, potentially, and provide greater deterrence? Yes, certainly. To do that, we have to add…”

“It is a very good report that the Committee did.”

“That is precisely the reason why we have set out a clear policy to move to 3% in the next Parliament. What we need to demonstrate with 2.5% is a journey to reform our armed forces, so that that money is spent better than it has been in the past. That deep defence reform that we need to take place is not only in procure…”

“Yes, but we want to do more. Deterrence by denial, which is what you are getting at, is about making sure that we have the capabilities, the credibility and the intent to, basically, deter any action before it takes place. That is part of a broad range of tools that the Ministry of Defence and, indeed all of Government…”

“As a matter of default, we would not comment on operational activities or intelligence matters, so I would not be able to comment on that specific example. If we were to point to activities that are in the public domain in relation to a similar type of cohort, we know that there have been Russian-backed activities in t…”

“I might bring colleagues in to answer that, but at a high level, we are seeing an increase in sub-threshold activity, which can have an influence on both the UK and our allies. Some of that is using technologies that already exist, such as drones. The MOD operates a good counter-UAS capability, but drones are dual-use …”

“Yes. I might bring colleagues in to give some more detailed examples in response to your question. Broadly, we took a decision, as Ministers, to declassify not just the activities of the Russian spy ship Yantar, but also our response to it, as a clear deterrent activity that would prevent Russia being able to operate i…”

“The Prime Minister takes his responsibility for national security incredibly seriously, and I have to say that he feels that very personally in terms of his approach to how he is addressing the increasingly difficult world in which we find ourselves as a nation, but it is absolutely true that it is a team sport when we…”

“In some cases, across Government, the Cabinet Office does function as a convening power to bring people together. What has been true—and I am stealing Pat McFadden’s approach here—is that the Cabinet Office functions differently under this Government than perhaps under the last one, because it has fewer discrete, addit…”

“The answer is that it is the Prime Minister and that he delegates it to a cross-Government approach. The reason that it is important to stress that is that the Ministry of Defence does not take any action in this area on our own. We take it as part of a joined-up, integrated, HMG-wide approach. It is hard, because grey…”

“How you define hybrid threats would be the first challenge to scrutinise there. The Ministry of Defence does not use the definitions “grey zone” or “hybrid” threats in the same way. We use “state” threats as our definition. Our allies would use slightly different language as well, and it is certainly true that even som…”

“You said that it was an easier question.”

“If anyone were sharing information in our system outside of the authorised systems that allow that data sharing, we have clear procedures in place for how we would address that.”

“Again, I understand why you are going down this line. It would depend on the context, the information that was being shared and who was sharing it in terms of where in the chain of command. My general rule would be that, if operational decisions are being taken, we should all, regardless of our role within defence, tak…”