Andrew Murrison MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 16 Jan 2025 · UK Air Defence · Hansard source

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  There is a great deal in what my hon. Friend says. Historically, buying off the shelf has proved to be somewhat more cost-effective than designing exquisite systems of our own. I hope very much that, as we go further into this process, we can partner with others to ensure that what we buy is both integrated and cost-effective. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on ESSI. Ukraine has shown the limitations of the “just in time, not just in case” policy that has driven our failure to stockpile the materiel of war in recent decades. In the 1930s, the shadow factories initiative fitted commercial premises that typically produced cars for reconfiguration as armament factories, in case the need should arise, which it did. Car workers would switch to become the basis of the skilled workforce necessary to create materiel for prosecuting the war effort. That then happened, to the point that in 1940, this country was outstripping Germany in the production of fighter aircraft. With every respect due to the Few, the Battle of Britain was won in Britain’s factories and on its production lines as much as in the skies. Victory hinges just as much on logistics now, except the timelines are far shorter. The defence ecosystem in the US 2022 national defence strategy had more than a whiff of the 1930s in advancing an intertwined commercial-military co-operative. In a good light, we can see shadow factories in the thematic approach to missile defence taken by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory missile defence centre. Crucially, it is industry partner-based, with a heavy focus on growing suitably qualified and experienced people, of whom we are desperately short. The MDC is now 20 years old. What assessment has the Minister made of it, and what changes does he propose to its structure and remit to help plug holes in our missile defence architecture? In the light of prevailing circumstances, will he consider upgrading the MDC so that it has the salience and clout approaching that of the pre-war directorate of aeronautical production? Then, it was Spitfires and Hurricanes; today it is missile defence, SDEAD—suppression and destruction of enemy air defences—and drones. Then, it was preparation for the total war to come; now—God willing—it is deterrence. There are those who say that the solution to our vulnerability to missile attack from the east is simple: it is Israel’s Iron Dome—the close-in element of the layered missile defence system used successfully to thwart Iran in April. However, Israel is a small country with a small population concentrated in a small number of cities with limited critical national infrastructure. It is surrounded by hostiles. Happily, none of that applies here. Our missile defence must be fully integrated with NATO partners. NATO needs European leadership as the US pivots, and we must not encourage those whose primary interest in defence lies in extending the remit of the institutions of the European Union, rather than the defence and security of Europeans. We do not need the distraction of a separate, competing EU defence architecture; NATO is our strength and our stay, and we must use our status as the continent’s leading military power to ensure it remains so. In particular, we must articulate clearly the case for layered missile defence and SDEAD within a NATO construct, as the US pivots towards the Indo-Pacific. The UK and Europe need NATO integrated air and missile defence that incorporates close-in systems to guarantee major centres of population, defence assets and critical national infrastructure. Crucially, member states must not give an aggressor capable of waging an attritional war grounds for believing that the west will exhaust its ordnance in the first few hours or days. Where are we with the versatile and scalable very short to medium-range modular ground-based air defence system envisaged by NATO Defence Ministers at their meeting in October 2020? What application might that system have to provide the last arrow in our quiver—one that will destroy missiles that have evaded intermediate layers and are about to land on critical sites in the UK? For a country with no money, directed energy weapons offer a potential solution for dealing with drones and missiles, albeit in line of sight and in good weather. Is DSTL’s DragonFire weapon still on course for service with the Royal Navy in 2027, and what export opportunities are Ministers exploring? Do they expect that Type 26s, Type 31s, and any Type 32s will carry DragonFire or successor directed energy weapons? Will they be fitted as standard, or as expensive retrofits? Do we really need a sixth-generation manned—or even hybrid—fast jet to replace Typhoon? Would it not be better to rely on the F-35 airframe with mid-life upgrades in a future that is surely progressively unmanned? The lineal, if less romantic, descendants of the Few will be tech geeks, gamers, coders and those who provide a human interface with artificial intelligence. What are we doing to grow them, and will the Minister visit the #TechTrowbridge initiative that I started in Wiltshire’s county town, which was once a centre for Spitfire manufacture? He would be warmly welcomed on his way to his constituency. The reason that a grisly artillery war has played out in Ukraine is because nobody has been able to command the airspace. Happily and to our surprise, Russia has been unable to suppress or destroy Ukraine’s air defences. In the future, unmanned combat aerial vehicles configured to shoot the archer, not the arrow, will do that. I would be very surprised if Lord Robertson were not casting a critical eye over the global combat air programme, and comparing and contrasting its cost and effectiveness with those of unmanned combat aerial vehicles. I appreciate the deep cultural difficulty of envisaging an unmanned future battlespace. It is deeply unsettling for those of us steeped in the traditions of the armed forces, but while there will always be a need for sufficient booted and spurred combat troops ready to close with and kill the enemy and hold the ground—as the Member of Parliament for a garrison town, I am not for one moment suggesting a further reduction in headcount—this country will never again be able to expose itself to attritional warfare of the sort we are seeing being played out in Ukraine. Politically and societally, that would be impossible and unconscionable. That means integrated missile defence, SDEAD, drones, and command of the electromagnetic spectrum. Once again at a dreadnought crossroads, Britain must configure the forces at its disposal for the long term in all domains and take a lead as what is still the principal military power in its Euro-Atlantic voisinage. Early pointers suggesting that this Government are taking the right fork in the road would include difficult and unpopular decisions such as standing firm on the deep space advanced radar capability envisaged for Cawdor barracks on the St David’s peninsula, which was bottled by previous Governments. As we chop to an unmanned future, those pointers would—for example, and very painfully—include consignment of the RAF Red Arrows aero-acrobatics team to the historic flight. This Government have four years left to run—the time the directorate of aeronautical production had to fit out this country with what it needed to prevail. Recent events have revealed the fundamental truth that we are vulnerable now, as we were then, and the shifting geopolitical plates will likely make us more so. The public will never forgive an Administration of whatever colour who muddle through, leaving them open to the predations of Putin’s advancing missile programme.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  Commendably brief, if I may say so. I call the Opposition spokesman.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  Order. Interventions should be short.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  Jim Shannon, you have 30 seconds.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  We are massively oversubscribed. It is plain that we are not going to get everybody in. I remind those who wish to speak that they should bob. I also ask that, voluntarily, Members restrain themselves to two minutes. If we do that, we will get most people in, but not everybody.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  Order. Colleagues will have done the maths. Not everybody is going to get in. I am reluctant to introduce a formal time limit, but you really ought to limit yourselves to two minutes, please. I am sure John McDonnell will be an exemplar.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  Colleagues, the wind-ups will begin at 3.28 pm.

• 15 Jan 2025 · UK Submarine Fleet · Hansard source

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  I intend to call the Opposition spokesman at 5.8 pm. There are several Members seeking to catch my eye, so brevity is a virtue.

• 14 Jan 2025 · UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor raised the issue of human rights abuses in China, but did she get the opportunity to raise with her interlocutors the extrajudicial work of the United Front Work Department, particularly in relation to UK institutions, especially universities?

• 7 Jan 2025 · Pro-democracy Campaigners: Arrests · Hansard source

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  The malign extraterritorial reach of the Chinese Communist party is being played out in very human terms, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on bringing an example of that to the Floor of the House today. Why, then, are this Government potentially facilitating that reach by handing over the Chagos islands?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Ukraine: Military Support · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State said that his aim is to ensure that Ukraine is in the “strongest possible position”, but for what? Does he intend to support Ukraine in commanding her internationally recognised borders or to ensure that the de facto border, which excludes Donbas and Crimea, becomes a more permanent feature?

• 6 Jan 2025 · NHS Backlog · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. Does he agree that part of our duty is to support our general practices? Our constituents often say, “I cannot see my GP”, but if we probe, we find that it is a question of whether they are prepared to accept a telephone consultation, which is probably just as good for most of them. Radiology was mentioned earlier. The issue for the future, surely, is embracing technology rather than outsourcing. In many cases, AI reading of films and scans is probably as good as, if not better than, a reading by a radiologist in India, Shropshire or anywhere else.

• 6 Jan 2025 · Frozen Russian Assets: Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has to say, and I agree with much of it, including that Russia must pay for what it has done, in terms of supporting Ukraine in its war and the reconstruction to come, whatever that looks like. However, does he share my concern that were we to act unilaterally, or indeed with others, we may encourage the attractiveness of other reserve currencies and systems, in particular China’s, and that capital among the $12 trillion or so globally invested may find its way to Beijing rather than currently safer destinations in the western world?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Health and Adult Social Care Reform · Hansard source

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  The previous Labour Government did a hatchet job on community hospitals, including in Wiltshire, with a consequent uptick in the amount of delayed discharges in the acute sector, notably at Bath, Salisbury and the Great Western in Swindon. Will the Casey commission look at that and find ways of unpicking the damage that was done?