Speeches by Martin.

“My constituent Julian noticed that he had a mole on his chest that was growing and bleeding. Members of his family had died from skin cancer, so he was very concerned and went to his GP. He was referred to the Kent integrated dermatology service and was told that the results would come back in four weeks. They came bac…”

“Let me take the debate from the north-east to the south-east and Kent. The story that the hon. Lady is telling is very similar to that of the A21 Kippings Cross junction in my constituency. Of course, we have the opposite problem: the houses have all gone in, but none of the infrastructure has been built. Now that the …”

“As a member of the Committee, I welcome your comments that the Defence Committee has a role in that conversation. I note that you cleverly designed the review so that you can accelerate or decelerate depending on the assessed levels of threat and competence of our adversaries. Do you think the Defence Committee should …”

“Is there a role for regular reporting, Lord Robertson?”

“How should we monitor and measure that implementation? Did you propose any metrics to the Department? General Barrons, you said that there was a role for Parliament in there. Do you think that the Department should be reporting back to Parliament on those metrics on a regular basis?”

“Lord Robertson, you led the 1998 strategic defence review. What items, equipment lines or changes were in that, but never got implemented?”

“Dr Hill, General Barrons has said that the Munich security conference happened and then the penny dropped and there was a realisation that there was a change in American posture in Europe, and America was less engaged in European security. There are few people in the world with the level of expertise that you have abou…”

“So if the carriers are in the Indian ocean, then that review has failed?”

“You seem to be saying that it was obvious to you from November, rather than what General Barrons said, which was that there was a realisation later on about that.”

“It is a pinch-point trade.”

“If I may, why will this time be different?”

“If we look at the UK military and compare it to other militaries, we have a very high ratio of admirals, air marshals, and generals as compared to the number of personnel across our militaries. We are talking about reform and radical thinking, so it seems there is an argument for reducing the number of starred officers…”

“It is integrated. We are going in that direction, are we not?”

“It is not just a cost issue, because the salary of an admiral or an air marshal is nothing as compared to an F-35. There is that idea that, when you have a very busy field at the top of an organisation and they all have staff and departments, that actually slows down the ability of that organisation to make fast decisi…”

“Just dealing with this personnel issue, obviously all three services were shrinking in size. As I understand it, the Navy and the RAF have just started—”

“They are net positive, but still below the trend line that you would like to fulfil the whole. The Army is still shrinking in size. Could you just comment on some of the challenges that still remain? The Army has been shrinking in size for some time now.”

“Are those things changing?”

“Thank you, Admiral, for your time. The current Government are instituting a period of defence reform. This is a significant rewiring of the Ministry of Defence. As a brief introduction, could you just take us through the problems with the old structure and how this new structure is going to solve those problems?”

“Why?”

“It sounds great, and like many good ideas it also sounds obvious. The idea of having the Chief of the Defence Staff commanding the other chiefs is obvious. The idea of having a national armaments director is obvious. Why was it not done before?”