Speeches by Martin.

“You were the Minister and the senior civil servant in the Department. If you guys wanted it to happen, who was holding it back?”

“If I get made the Chancellor, that is going to be a real turnaround for the Labour party—but I look forward to it.”

“But you were setting the objectives for the gold command.”

“So who was in charge?”

“Who controls the institution?”

“How do you crack that open?”

“And fixes our forces in Ukraine.”

“How can you be a Secretary of State if you are not a leader?”

“Which colleagues would you say sorry to?”

“Very briefly, for the record, can you describe your role in directing the MoD’s response to the immediate data breach? You were on the gold command, right?”

“You signed off that submission, though.”

“Have you any idea why that might be?”

“I was fascinated to read your Twitter on 17 July 2025. I will just quote from some of it. “Again & again, I said in public what very senior officials & military had briefed me. It is hugely frustrating that proved to be wrong.” You follow that up to point out that “The anger across Govt at the MoD over the breach was p…”

“A former Deputy Prime Minister of the UK described to me the MoD’s approach to information security as “Stalinist”. Do you agree with that characterisation—as we have been discussing—and why do you think that is?”

“Absolutely retentive and close hold, and nothing shared whatsoever. You have just been describing it.”

“Everyone would accept that the nuclear deterrent needs to remain confidential, but as we have discussed, there is a huge amount of other stuff that does not even make it to this Committee or parliamentarians. I note for Hansard that Mr Heappey is nodding his head behind you. This is not about particular politicians or …”

“When you originally applied to the High Court, you asked for an ordinary injunction—that is, you were happy for the existence of the injunction to be made public. Did officials advise, or did you consider, a super-injunction, whereby the existence of the injunction itself was made secret? Did you consider that?”

“That does sound—even though you formally requested a normal injunction—a bit like saying, “We need to keep this private until we’ve got to the bottom of the problem.” It actually sounds like you were asking officials for a super-injunction, no?”

“For the record, Grant Shapps is now laughing and nodding.”

“Correct.”