Speeches by Doughty.

“I will be generous and give way to the hon. Gentleman in his new position.”

“I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) for securing the debate and for his tireless work as special envoy. I thank hon. Members from across the House for their thoughtful contributions. I will try to respond to as many of the points that have been raised as I can in the time a…”

“I absolutely can. I mentioned a range of different levels at which we do that—indeed, the Minister for Africa has raised a number of these issues at the highest level—and we continue to engage. The high commissioner and the team do an excellent job of engaging at all levels to raise these cases. That is why we have thi…”

“Let me start by thanking the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for securing this debate. He always speaks with conviction and passion; he has been absolutely consistent on these issues for a very long time, and I recognise his leadership as chair of the all-party parliamentary g…”

“The hon. Gentleman mentions the importance of reporting to Parliament, and I can assure him that I have been scrutinised in this place many times. I have sent a letter to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and to Lord Ricketts in the other place, to set out the full detail of all the work we have done. I am co…”

“Ultimately, the actions of the European Commission are for them to take under their European-wide legislation. We have a series of legislative tools here. It is a matter for our domestic Ministers how those are developed to further our response to threats. We are co-ordinating very closely with partners around the worl…”

“That is absolutely right. Jonny can probably say a little more on that.”

“I am a strong believer in freedom of speech, as are the Government. It is one of the things that makes this country great, and I am proud that we have the robust political and media landscape that we do here. I want to be really explicit: we are not talking about when somebody has tweeted something that is wrong, fake …”

“I do not want to speak for the Ministry of Defence and their budgeting. They go through their own process and you are welcome to ask those questions to the Minister for the Armed Forces. What I will say is that there is a cross-Government perspective on this and there is close working between Jonny and his colleagues i…”

“Defence spending does include work on information threats already. This is a cross-Government piece of work; that is why I emphasised the co-ordination between ourselves, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office on this. It is clear that the 5% target that we have on national security by 2035 include…”

“I am not going to comment on individuals or their activities; that is a matter for them to answer. What people do outside of Government, provided it is in line with their requirements under the appropriate regulations that apply to former officials and Ministers, is for them. I am not going to comment on that.”

“I am happy to write further to hopefully give you some more reassurances. This is a significant priority for the Foreign Secretary, myself and Ministers across Government, and we expect it to be resourced accordingly.”

“I think I am aware of that, yes.”

“It meets a number of times in a year and, of course, officials meet in between that. I am very happy to provide you with more information on that. We recently published a new strategy on the Antarctic, which is very important, and the Committee is welcome to have a look at that. I was recently on board the royal resear…”

“I totally understand where you are coming from, Ms Anderson, but I am not going to get into specific numbers on staffing or funding, for the very reason that that gives insight to our adversaries. What I can absolutely assure you of is that this is one of the highest priorities for the Foreign Secretary and myself in t…”

“We do work very close together with different Departments. I will turn to Jonny, who can say a little bit more about some of that co-ordination.”

“Absolutely. In fact, I have met the Greenlandic Foreign Minister twice in the last year and a half. I regularly meet Danish counterparts; I have been in touch with my Danish counterparts in the last 24 hours. I was in Denmark recently, and one of the things we have done under this Government is establish a new working …”

“I have consistently been very clear about our position on this over many years. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have been absolutely clear in the last 24 hours. I haven’t got anything further to add to that.”

“You heard very clearly what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary said yesterday. The Foreign Secretary answered questions for, I think, nearly two hours—I was there for much of it—and made her views very clear on this. I have been clear repeatedly that Greenland’s future is a matter for the people of Greenland …”

“I will come to Jonny in a moment to give some examples. Obviously, you will appreciate that there are complexities around attribution and about what we can say about certain things and whether that is the right thing to do at different points. But we have taken some very public action against some of the agencies I men…”