Speeches by Martin.

“Can I pick up on one of your points? How do we not make the mistakes we have made before? If we had been sitting in this Committee hearing 10 years ago, we would have said the same things about consistent demand signals to industry. How would you characterise the mistakes that we made previously—around us designing som…”

“With its NI rises, among other measures, last year’s Budget skewed the tax burden on to small companies. My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) has just laid out some measures that would skew that burden towards bigger companies and multinationals. Given that the Government’s No. 1 priority is growth, c…”

“What about your strategy?”

“Does the Minister think it more or less likely that, as a result of the American airstrikes, Iran will get a nuclear bomb?”

“Less than three weeks ago, the Home Secretary whipped her Back Benchers against new clause 43 to the Crime and Policing Bill, which had cross-party support and would have criminalised the harassment of women and girls. Her Ministers promised at the Dispatch Box and elsewhere that the new clause was not necessary becaus…”

“Was that the £30,000 RAF one?”

“As you know, Secretary of State, the UK, as with all other NATO countries, has to meet NATO capability targets. How would you say we are doing against our NATO capability targets at the moment? And when do you think we might meet them?”

“In effect, because you do not have Bs in your training unit.”

“That is a great segue to my last question, which is really about the philosophy of the SDR. The SDR is about a transformation of defence to a hybrid force and increasing lethality. In conceptual terms, it is a great document. In reality, however, with the resource profile, the inputs—inputs of course do matter—we are r…”

“With the purchase of the F-35As, we are in effect talking about ending up with broadly 90% of the carrier variants of the F-35s that we were going to purchase. Does that decision, which I support, in any way impact on the capabilities of the carriers, their ability to deploy full air wings and all that kind of stuff?”

“Sure.”

“So you would argue that there is some jam today.”

“How well does the UK measure up against targets?”

“You probably have the same briefings that we have. We have received briefings that some of our NATO allies are concerned about Britain’s ability to meet the targets, particularly when other NATO allies are also failing to meet theirs. The beauty of the alliance is that we all work for each other in collective defence, …”

“It is actually worse than just importing goods from the settlements. We are receiving tariffs from their import, so the British Government are making money from that import of goods. Would the Minister speak to that in his closing remarks?”

“It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cramlington and Killingworth on bringing forward this Bill. By reducing the funding termination agreement period from seven years to two, the Bill aims to make secure 16-to-19 academies more cost effective and adaptable, givin…”

“Nicholas mentioned a few there—there is Anduril, Shield AI and Helsing, and a few other examples where it has worked. Do we have a sense of what the magic formula is there and why it has worked?”

“I would like to ask a few questions about VC funding specifically. I will start with you, Nicholas. How would you summarise the challenges to VC companies getting into the defence and security sector? Can you give me some colour? I am thinking of things you have been personally involved in that have been deeply frustra…”

“See this as a therapy session.”

“That’s really interesting. So we don’t really have the financial architecture in place to convert increased defence expenditure into capability without causing massive inflation.”