James Cartlidge MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 17 Jul 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. It was less than a month ago that the United States undertook a bombing raid on Iranian nuclear facilities—one of the most significant military actions undertaken anywhere in the world for years. With such developments understandably dominating the headlines, and almost three and a half years having elapsed since Russia first launched its unprovoked and illegal all-out invasion, it is right that the Government regularly update the House—as we did—on developments in Ukraine. The reality is that there has been no let-up in Russian aggression. As the Secretary of State confirmed, 9 July saw the largest drone attack of the war by Russia, and there were reports yesterday of Russia using 400 drones to target energy infrastructure and cities across Ukraine. That indiscriminate barbarism has inevitably led to further civilian casualties, but on the military side, can the Secretary of State confirm that Russia has suffered by far the greatest losses? He confirmed that last month, Russian battlefield casualties surpassed 1 million. Does that not show the extent to which Putin has nothing but callous disregard for the human impact of his actions on either side? I am proud of the decisive assistance that we provided to Ukraine when we were in office. We continue to stand with the Government in seeking to provide all possible support, but it is vital that all our allies play their part. On France, and what was previously called the coalition of the willing, I agree that we need to be ready for when that peace comes, so can the Secretary of State confirm how many other nations will provide fighter jets to the Multinational Force Ukraine? Can he confirm that there is no longer any planning for a land combat element to the MNFU? We welcome the additional provision of military hardware by the US, but the Secretary of State said that “we plan to play our full part.” Will the UK therefore be purchasing military equipment from the United States to pass on to Ukraine? The Secretary of State did not mention potential sanctions or tariffs. It has been widely reported that President Trump is considering tariffs of 100% on goods entering the US from any country that imports any product from Russia. Have the Government discussed this plan with the US, and will the UK follow suit? The Times reports today that Andriy Yermak, senior adviser to President Zelensky, has stated that the imposition of secondary sanctions on nations buying oil and gas from Russia could end the war “before the end of this year.” Does the Secretary of State agree with that analysis, and again, would the UK join in any secondary sanctions policy directed against countries importing Russian oil and gas? On Germany, we understand that the Prime Minister is meeting Chancellor Merz today. May I urge the Government to push their German counterparts on provision of Taurus missiles to Ukraine? Alternatively, given that the missiles are, we understand, compatible with Typhoon, will the Government backfill UK stocks to enable the provision of more Storm Shadow missiles? Turning to the impact of all this on the UK, we understand that Germany will today sign an agreement with the Prime Minister to come to each other’s aid in the event of an attack on the other. Will the Secretary of State outline how that is different from NATO article 5? I have had recent discussions with senior German parliamentarians on the impact on our nations of supporting Ukraine, and the Germans believe, as has been widely reported, that drone overflights of their military bases were linked to nefarious Russian activity. In the context of recent threats to RAF bases, and drone overflights at Suffolk RAF bases and elsewhere last November, can he update us at all—I appreciate the sensitivity of this—on whether there is yet any indication of Russian involvement? In particular, will he update us on progress on the review of security at UK bases, which he launched last month? When I was Minister for Defence Procurement, I stripped out a whole load of processes and red tape to bring forward the in-service date of our groundbreaking DragonFire anti-drone laser from 2032 to 2027. Given the extraordinary potential for directed energy weapons, will the Secretary of State accelerate adoption even further, and ensure rapid testing of anti-drone defences for our military bases? On drones more broadly, in a written answer in March, Ministers confirmed that they had ordered just three military drones for our armed forces since the election. I have tabled subsequent written questions on progress, and Ministers are now saying that they cannot answer the question. What is the latest figure? UK small and medium-sized enterprises have provided some of the best drones and counter-drone measures used on the live battlefield in Ukraine, so why are we not ordering the same kit in parallel for our own Army, at scale and at pace, so that it can train today—not years in the future—in how war is fought right now in Ukraine? After three and half years of war, we must keep reminding the British public of the most important point for our national interest—namely, that the best way to defend our homeland right now is to give all possible support to Ukraine, so that the democracy triumphs over the dictatorship, and to prevent Putin’s aggression from spreading westwards.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and for receipt earlier this morning of a hard copy of the Rimmer review. I also thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for the Armed Forces for briefing me yesterday and other parliamentary colleagues today. Furthermore, given the nature of the super-injunction and the fact that the timing and nature of the statement relate entirely to the court’s lifting of that super-injunction, I recognise that it was entirely right for the Secretary of State to update the House at the earliest opportunity, and I welcome the opportunity that colleagues now have to scrutinise these matters. Let me begin by declaring an interest. I was a Defence Minister in August 2023, when the Department first became aware of the breach, my main role being to chair one meeting on the matter in August 2023 because I was the duty Minister. Thereafter, however, as Minister for Defence Procurement and with this sitting outside my portfolio, I had relatively minimal direct involvement. That said, the Secretary of State has issued an apology on behalf of the Government and I join him in that, and in recognising that this data leak should never have happened and was an unacceptable breach of all relevant data protocols. I also agree that it is right for an apology to be issued specifically to those whose data was compromised. It is nevertheless a fact that cannot be ignored that when this breach came to light, the immediate priority of the then Government was to avoid a very specific and terrible scenario: namely, an error on the part of an official of the British state leading to the torture, or even murder, of persons in the dataset at the hands of what remains a brutal Taliban regime. As the Rimmer review confirms, that scenario, thankfully, appears to have been avoided. Of course, we understand that the review was set up in January and reported to the Secretary of State in June. I want to be clear that it is entirely appropriate that the Secretary of State has sought to update the Department’s understanding of the threat on the ground in Afghanistan that exists today, particularly for those persons in the dataset who had previously been considered to be at the greatest risk of reprisals. However, the House will appreciate that when Ministers became aware of the data breach in August 2023, we did not have the luxury of six months in which to assess the situation. As Rimmer says in paragraph 53: “The review notes that the passage of time is particularly relevant.” I know that my former ministerial colleague—the former Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, who led the response to the leak—will have been focused entirely on what he saw as his duty of care to those at risk of reprisals, based on the threat assessment that pertained at the time. However, any threat picture is constantly evolving, and as I say, I support the Secretary of State’s decision to review the MOD’s understanding of the threat. Given the latest situation, as reported by Rimmer, we support his conclusion that the Afghanistan response route can now be closed. Turning to the super-injunction, I entirely understand why this would be a subject of considerable interest, particularly to the newspapers and media outlets concerned. We have an independent judiciary, and it is not for me to comment either on the decision to grant the injunction in the first place or to lift it today, but it is surely telling that paragraph 56 of the Rimmer review states that planning at the time that the Government became aware of the breach in the summer of 2023 was based on a “risk judgement that were the Taleban to secure access to the dataset, the consequences for affected individuals may be serious.” Had that not been the case, no doubt the Court would have been less likely to grant the injunction, and certainly not a super-injunction. On the leak, can the Secretary of State confirm that it was by a civil servant, and that Ministers at the time took steps to change the casework procedure by not using spreadsheets sent by email, but moving to a more secure system fully within the entirely secure network? Can he confirm that, although the dataset was of about 18,000, only a relatively small portion were identified as at high risk of reprisals, and only a small number had been settled here, which is why, as he stated, the cost is about £400 million, not the £7 billion reported elsewhere? Now that these matters are rightly in the public domain and given the reassessment of the threat in the Rimmer review, I agree that it would be wholly appropriate for the Defence Committee and others to look further into these matters. Can the Secretary of State comment on one specific item being reported, which is that someone—I refer not to the person who made the leak, but another apparent third party who obtained some of the data—was engaged in blackmail? Did the original Metropolitan police investigation look at that, and if not, will he consider reopening it so that the police can look at that specific point, which has serious implications? Although we must recognise the huge role played by Afghan nationals in support of our armed forces, any policy in this area must always be balanced against our own national interest. We support the Government in closing the ARR scheme, as we did with their decision to close the full ARAP programme.

• 10 Jul 2025 · UK-France Nuclear Partnership · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question) : To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the UK-France nuclear partnership.

• 10 Jul 2025 · UK-France Nuclear Partnership · Hansard source

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  Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. I do think it is incredible that we have had to find out about such substantive matters overnight from the press and without a statement from the Government. We Conservatives back our nuclear deterrent 100% and have never wavered on that. We support steps that boost the resilience of our nuclear enterprise, diversify delivery and, above all, help our core continuous at-sea deterrence to remain the cornerstone of our homeland defence against the most extreme threats. We also welcome steps to genuinely strengthen UK-French co-operation on defence, building on Lancaster House. In particular, having been the Government who first authorised provision of long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, we recognise the urgent need to replenish our own Storm Shadow stocks, which is in the press release. Can the Minister confirm whether we are placing orders for new Storm Shadow missiles from MBDA or simply reconditioning existing stocks? The nuclear aspect of this is by far the most significant. Can the Minister confirm where this will leave the operationally independent and sovereign nature of our existing Trident nuclear deterrent? The Telegraph quotes the declaration—which, of course, we have not seen—as saying that both nuclear arsenals “remain independent but can be co-ordinated and that there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations”. Does this mean that our respective national deterrence will now be jointly operationally delivered, and how will that co-ordination take place in practice? Crucially, how does this new nuclear doctrine affect NATO and our very close co-operation on nuclear deterrence with the United States? Will France now be offering its nuclear deterrent to NATO, as we do? Perhaps most importantly, will France be joining the NATO Nuclear Planning Group? On the matter of tactical nuclear weapons, I have previously asked about options other than US-controlled gravity bombs, with no reply. Given the announcement on Storm Shadow and MBDA, will the UK and France now be looking at co-operation on tactical nuclear delivery options via our shared complex weapons industrial base? A particular concern of the Opposition is that there appears to be a deep paradox at play here: talk of closer co-operation with France, but in the background, the Government still getting nowhere on access to hard cash from the European rearmament fund, despite having given up our sovereign fishing grounds. To conclude, it is truly extraordinary that such significant defence developments do not warrant a Government statement, so the Minister must now be as transparent as possible in answering our questions—not least after weeks dominated by smoke and mirrors on defence spending and chaotic U-turns on welfare that raise the most profound question of all: where is the money going to come from?

• 10 Jul 2025 · UK-France Nuclear Partnership · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

• 10 Jul 2025 · UK-France Nuclear Partnership · Hansard source

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  Indeed. May I seek your guidance on how to set the record straight? Following the question from the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), the Minister criticised the fact that I only partially referred to a quote from the declaration text. To be clear, I have not seen the declaration. It was leaked to the media overnight; that was all I could read from, and I am none the wiser from the answers we have just had.

• 10 Jul 2025 · UK-France Nuclear Partnership · Hansard source

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  But it has been briefed to the press.

• 2 Jul 2025 · Defence · Hansard source

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  On a very serious note, the Opposition have been accused of being pro-Russia, pro-China and pro-Iran repeatedly by the Prime Minister, which the Minister has defended, because we dared to oppose the Chagos deal. If he wants unity, we need to see that on both sides of the House.

• 2 Jul 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory: Sovereignty · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In answer to the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), the Minister seemed to imply—to Opposition Members’ ears anyway—that the United States would be paying, I think he said, a larger quantum of the funding for the deal. I think he was referring to the operational cost of the base. May I ask for confirmation that the United States is not contributing at all to the £30 billion lease under the settlement?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  It is extraordinary that a British Secretary of State for Defence is unable to give his explicit support to the military action of our closest ally, the United States. Is the real reason why Labour cannot back US military action against Iran not the same as the reason why it will not U-turn on Chagos or on Northern Ireland veterans—that when it comes to choosing between legal theory and the national interest, this Prime Minister is a lawyer, not a leader?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Does the Secretary of State support the action taken by the United States to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Ukraine: Military Support · Hansard source

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  I associate myself with the Secretary of State’s comments on those terrible attacks. It should be a source of pride that some of the best drone and counter-drone tech that we have supplied to Ukraine has been made by British SMEs. The problem is that Labour’s procurement freeze means that almost none of it has been bought in parallel for our own armed forces. In this week of Labour U-turns, will the Secretary of State consider another one: namely, scrapping the Government’s crazy £30 billion Chagos deal and instead spending the money on rapidly supplying drones for the British Army, so that it can train for war as it is being fought today in Ukraine?

• 25 Jun 2025 · Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question) : To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on his Department’s plan to procure nuclear-certified F-35A aircraft.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement · Hansard source

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  It is 2.4%—less than we spent.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. You will recall that the Government’s plan, announced today, to procure nuclear-certified F-35As was previously covered in The Sunday Times the day before the SDR was published. You therefore granted an urgent question that day on this very subject, but we received no meaningful answers at all. I hope the Minister can be more forthcoming today. On 25 May, I wrote in the Express that our nuclear forces needed to be “even more resilient”, including in respect of the continuous at-sea deterrent, but also, “potentially, by diversifying our methods for delivering nuclear strike.” That is because we have to recognise the threat posed by Russia in particular, and its ability to operate nuclear weapons at tactical and theatre levels. To deter effectively, we must be able to do the same. In principle, then, I welcome the announcement, but I have the following questions. What is the anticipated in-service date for the 12 F-35As? Will they already be nuclear certified, or will that occur after delivery? We note that the 12 F-35As will be ordered instead of 12 F-35Bs, but will the Government still order the remaining F-35Bs as planned? How will the F-35As be air-to-air refuelled, given that the current RAF refuelling capability is probe and drogue? On operational sovereignty, we are fully committed to our strong military partnership with the United States, but given that the announcement is about diversity of delivery, has the Department given any thought to additional tactical options for which we have greater industrial input, such as Storm Shadow and Typhoon? Ironically, it was Lord Robertson, as Defence Secretary in 1998, who removed our last air-launched nuclear capabilities. It is noteworthy that, as one of the authors of the SDR, he said to the Select Committee recently that the authors were “not terribly enthusiastic about it.” That is before we get to the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary voted against the renewal of Trident. On this side of the House, we wholeheartedly back our nuclear deterrent. Does this situation not show why we need a robust plan to get to 3% on defence in this Parliament, rather than Labour’s smoke-and-mirrors and lack of a fully funded plan to properly increase defence spending in this Parliament?

• 25 Jun 2025 · National Armaments Director · Hansard source

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  The Minister mentioned money, and it is brilliant that she is engaging in that debate. I mentioned the 2.6% issue. This is very important; the pledge is for 2.6% of GDP by 2027. In written parliamentary answers, we are not being told what quantum of money will be added to the Ministry of Defence budget—namely, what the intelligence spend will be, and the spend on the Foreign Office items outside Chagos. Will the Minister tell what that quantum is, so that we know whether the MOD will really be spending 2.5% on the core defence budget?

• 25 Jun 2025 · National Armaments Director · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to respond to today’s estimates debate on defence expenditure. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, for securing the debate with the Backbench Business Committee, and particularly for timing it perfectly for the NATO summit and Armed Forces Week. Given the threats we face from Russia and the instability in the middle east and elsewhere, it is welcome in principle that NATO states have agreed at this week’s summit to increase spending. Nevertheless, when we consider what the Government’s announcement means for UK defence expenditure, we must be clear that talk of 5% on national security and 3.5% on defence is nothing but a con. It is unadulterated smoke and mirrors when we need real investment at real pace to produce a real step change in our deterrence. Consider first the promise of 5% on national security by 2035, consisting of 3.5% on the core defence budget and 1.5% on resilience and security. The Prime Minister confirmed on GB News yesterday that the 1.5% is already being spent. Not a penny of new money is being spent on actual military capability. As for the core defence budget, Labour has promised 3.5% in 10 years’ time, but the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster confirmed on yesterday’s media round that there is no plan to fund that increase, and there will not be one until at least 2029. If there is no plan for 3.5% in the Parliament after next, what about a plan for 3% in the next Parliament? The authors of the strategic defence review wrote on the day of its publication, 2 June, that the decision to go to 3% “established the affordability of our recommendations across a 10-year programme.” The problem is this: the Government no more have a plan to fund 3.5% in a decade than to fund 3% in the years leading up to it. It means that the promises of the SDR were dead on arrival, and the headline pledge of “up to 12” nuclear submarines is a fantasy fleet based on fantasy funding. Most worryingly, the smoke and mirrors are not just being used for spending in future Parliaments. What I am about to say is subject to the caveat that in response to our written questions to the Treasury, it is simply not sharing with us the quantum of money that has been moved from the intelligence budget into defence. Nevertheless, as far as we can see, Labour is not going to spend the 2.5% that it promised for defence by 2027. To recap, in his defence spending statement in February, the Prime Minister confirmed that intelligence spending would be added to the core defence budget, taking it to 2.6%. By our reckoning, that intelligence spend is the equivalent of almost 0.2% of GDP. Subtracting that from 2.6% gives a figure of just over 2.4%. The smoke and mirrors do not end there. That 2.4% will have to cover the cost of Chagos, which is at least £250 million next year, rising to a total of £30 billion. That 2.4% will also have to include spending on election interference, and other non-official development assistance FCDO expenditure that the spending review confirmed would now be added to the defence budget. The significance of that is that if 2.6% is actually in the region of 2.4%, it will mean that the increase in defence spending to 2027 is not the biggest since the cold war, because it will be less than the increase when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister in 2019. Here is the upshot of the so-called 5% on national security that Labour has announced at NATO: no new money in the 1.5% for security and resilience, just reclassification of existing spending; no plan to get to 3.5% on the core defence budget by 2035; and no plan to get to 3% on the core defence budget in the next Parliament. The detail of the spending review confirmed that when spending hits the supposed figure of 2.6% in 2027, it does not increase towards 3% but stays flat. Worse than that, as I have explained, defence spending does not get to 2.6% on defence at all, but to something like 2.4% at best. It is smoke and mirrors at every turn. If there is one thing worse than the lack of substance in Labour’s defence spending spin, it is the lack of urgency. Its promises are all about 2035, a decade away, but the threats that we face are real and imminent. As the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said in his excellent speech, last July the head of the Army, General Walker, said that we must be ready for a war not in a decade or even five years, but within three years. The SDR promised a bigger Army in reserve, but only in the 2030s. Its big headline promise on attack submarines will be delivered into the 2040s. Warfare is changing fast, but Labour is moving far too slowly. The SDR was promised for the spring, but published in the summer. The defence industrial strategy was also promised for the spring, but the Minister recently confirmed to me in a written answer that it is months away. The Government must move much faster to boost the total lethality of our forces in the near term, not least by rapidly embracing the extraordinary opportunity to boost our overall mass and capability through autonomous systems and drones. In my defence drone strategy, the aim was to provide high-quality drone and anti-drone tech for Ukraine—which we have done, and I am very proud of that—and then to learn from that, in parallel, to build a UK sovereign drone industrial base, but that has been completely stymied by the procurement freeze effectively in place since the election. Labour is prioritising penny-pinching over rapid rearmament. While Ukraine is producing thousands and thousands of drones every month, Labour ordered just three new military drones for the British armed forces in its first financial year in government. What would we do differently? We would go to 3% on defence in this Parliament. We would scrap the Government’s crazy Chagos deal and use the money to rapidly rearm, starting with next year’s £250 million on Chagos. That cash could be spent not on tax cuts for the Mauritians, but on drones and anti-drone tech from British SMEs—on tech that is battle-proven in Ukraine and can be produced in months, and that can be ordered at a low cost but a sufficient scale to enable the Army to start training comprehensively in drone warfare by next year. That is the kind of urgency that we need to see against the threat we face. If the country hears that the Government are going to spend 5% of GDP on defence, it will assume that it will be like in 1985, when we actually spent 5% of GDP on our military, not on smoke and mirrors. That gave us 337,000 regular personnel, over 600 combat aircraft and a full array of tactical nuclear weapons for land, sea and air. Perhaps there is a reason why our 5% then was so different from Labour’s 5% today: in 1985, our Prime Minister actually led the country. Instead of surrendering sovereignty, Mrs Thatcher stood up to Galtieri and successfully defended the Falklands. She would never have been neutral when asked if she supported strikes by the US on the nuclear programme of a country like Iran. By standing shoulder to shoulder with Washington, she helped to bring down the Berlin wall and relight the torch of freedom in Europe. Far from returning to the days of 1985 and actually spending 5% of GDP on defence, we now have instead a massive con trick from Labour. Unfunded ambitions and smoke and mirrors will not deter our adversaries. In Armed Forces Week, those who bravely serve our nation deserve much better.

• 23 Jun 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to the Secretary of State, and I am grateful for advance notice that he would be giving a point of order, although not of the exact detail. This is extremely important, because while there is no set process, there is a ministerial code, which clearly states that commercially sensitive information should not be given out to the media prior to being given to Parliament. To reiterate, on that day, yes, we were given a hard copy of the SDR 90 minutes before the statement, but I was already in the Chamber for the urgent questions arising from that situation—officials would have known that we were in the Chamber—and was unable to read it. However, at 8 o’clock that morning, senior people from the biggest defence companies in the land received a hard copy of the SDR. The key thing is that, on the point of order on 2 June, I said to the Secretary of State that the situation was unacceptable, and he justified the procedure on the fact that, at the time when I was a Minister—I quote him— “We had no advance copy of the defence review.” —[ Official Report , 2 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 40.] His justification was something that is not the case, and I said that in my immediate response to him. I am glad that, three weeks later, he has corrected the record. We have war in Ukraine and all the instability in the middle east; there should be consensus on matters of national security, and we should not play games on the most important strategic defence review for many years. I hope that we can now draw a line under this, but to enable that, I hope that the Secretary of State will say to his special advisers and officials that they must be as transparent as possible in all pursuant written questions on this matter to which we still await answers and in responses to freedom of information requests.

• 23 Jun 2025 · UK Military Base Protection · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of his statement, and I entirely understand that it is a fast-moving situation in relation to Qatar. I am grateful for the limited update that he could provide. We join him in condemning any escalation and look forward to further updates in due course. On Brize Norton, let me say what the Minister was unable to: the attack on RAF Brize Norton was not vandalism; this was sabotage, undertaken without regard to the consequences for our Royal Air Force and our ability to defend our nation. As a result, there must be consequences for those responsible. Can the Minister explain how on earth these saboteurs were able not only to break through the perimeter fence, but to cover a considerable distance to reach the precious airfield tarmac, inflict damage to our airframes and then get out of the base, all without being intercepted? What steps is he taking to ensure rapid reinforcement of perimeter and internal fencing, not just at the specific point of incursion at Brize Norton, as he describes, but throughout the base and at all other UK bases? What is he doing to ensure sufficient military policing personnel are in place to enforce security and that they have access to effective countermeasure technology? On the drone threat, which is relevant, the Minister knows how quickly military technology is moving. In December, I asked him in a written question about the protection of UK bases, and asked whether he would accelerate testing of directed energy weapons, such as lasers, for drone interception on our military bases. He said that work was in development. What progress has he made in the six months since? The protection of our bases is not just a priority on the UK mainland. Given the confirmation of reports that a man allegedly linked to Iran has been arrested on suspicion of espionage and terrorism offences in Cyprus, can the Minister confirm that all measures being taken to reinforce UK bases will be replicated with the same urgency throughout our overseas basing, Akrotiri in particular? Can the Minister confirm what will be the financial cost and impact of this attack on the RAF? In particular, can he explain the immediate operational impact on the RAF? He says there has been no impact on planned operations from Brize Norton, but he will know that it could still mean that task lines are unintentionally reallocated to cover for the damaged aircraft. How long will the two aircraft in question be out of action for, if at all, and what has been the wider operational impact? Turning to the perpetrators, what progress has been made on catching those responsible and have there been any arrests? Does the Minister agree that one way to defend our bases is to deter future incursion by ensuring that the full force of the law is felt by the individual saboteurs in question? Will he ensure that everything is done to work with the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that the offenders receive an appropriately robust response? I note, for example, that section 1 of the Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990 provides for an offence of action that can “endanger the safe operation” of aircraft, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Section 12 of the National Security Act 2023 relates to sabotage, and again the offence carries a penalty of up to life imprisonment. The review is welcome, but it needs to report urgently. Can the Minister confirm who will lead it and how quickly it will report? On the important issue of personnel, will the review consider how responsibility for the security of RAF bases is divided between RAF police, the RAF regiment, military provost guard service and private contractors? I join the Minister in condemning Palestine Action without reservation. Its role in this attack on the Royal Air Force was totally unacceptable, and we welcome the steps taken to proscribe that organisation today. I also welcome the Minister’s commitment to strengthening force protection more widely in the middle east, including through the deployment of RAF Typhoons, and particularly in light of the breaking news in Qatar. To conclude, the Minister is entirely right that the MOD’s priority at this time must be the protection of our people and bases in the region. In his opening remarks about the airstrikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities and, indeed, throughout multiple questioning in his media round today, it was totally unclear whether the Government support or oppose those US airstrikes. The Minister was asked seven times on LBC whether the Government support or oppose US military action. He failed to answer once. He is now in front of Parliament. These are matters of the utmost importance to the security of our nation, and he is the Minister for the Armed Forces being asked about the action of the armed forces of our closest military ally. I will conclude with a straight question: does he support the US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities—yes or no?

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. There are reports of an extremely serious incident at Brize Norton, which is being described as vandalism but, if course, may be worse. Will there be a statement from the Ministry of Defence later?

• 3 Jun 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, following the publication of the hard copy of the strategic defence review, I informed you that I was aware that at least two major defence companies had been given a copy of that document at 8 am yesterday morning. Looking at what happened on the market, I noticed that the share price of one of those companies spiked very sharply at exactly that time. We do not know exactly what that can be attributed to, but you will be aware that the “Ministerial Code” says very clearly, on the publication of White Papers and consultation papers, that “where commercially sensitive material is involved, no copies should be made available to the media before publication.” Presumably, that is to avoid this sort of effect from the receipt of privileged information that is not made available to other companies. Mr Speaker, I seek your advice on how to pursue this matter further. Have you heard from the Government on whether they will make a statement, or take any steps to investigate these matters?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Government Announcements · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice on the following, as I seek to set the record straight. At the weekend I became aware of an email sent to a group of journalists from the Ministry of Defence, which stated: “We will have a reading room open for you from 1030 to Horse Guards” on Monday. “You will have the opportunity to read through the full embargoed SDR publication”. After seeing that, I emailed the Secretary of State’s office on Sunday afternoon and asked whether, given that journalists would see the publication at 10.30, we could be sent a copy at 9 am. They refused. They told us we would get a copy of the statement—that is, the oral statement to the House—in the usual way. I then repeatedly asked the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is present in the Chamber, if we could get a copy of the SDR. He refused. I have now been told something else, which is that representatives of industry were allowed to see the SDR at 10.30. This is a multibillion-pound industry that is highly market-sensitive. Mr Speaker, can I ask your advice on this point? As I understand it, the Vote Office has multiple physical hard copies of the strategic defence review, which I have not read at all, my colleagues have not read and no other parliamentary colleagues have read. It was given to me only as I came into the Chamber, so obviously I have not been able to read it. Journalists have had five hours. It is unacceptable. Can I ask if the Vote Office could, exceptionally, be asked to release it now?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Strategic Defence Review · Hansard source

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  Before I turn to the substance, in responding to my point of order, the Secretary of State said that when he was in opposition, “We were not offered a briefing”, and “We had no advance copy of the defence review.”— [ Interruption. ]

• 2 Jun 2025 · Strategic Defence Review · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to add to what I said in my earlier point of order and to seek your guidance. I reiterate how incredibly disappointing it is, as the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, on the day of the SDR, not to be able to read it before having to stand up and respond to the Government. I said earlier that we knew of one major defence company that received a copy of the document at 8 am this morning. I have been told of another major prime—one of the largest—that received a copy at 8 am this morning. That means that at the time that I was messaging the Minister for the Armed Forces and begging him to let us have a copy, and he was saying that we could not have one, they were reading the SDR over breakfast. Madam Deputy Speaker, you heard Mr Speaker refer to the phrase “skin in the game”; he was very concerned about a document being given early in the morning to big defence companies that have skin in the game. Can you advise us on what more we can do to probe this point and hold the Government to account on commercial sensitivity?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Strategic Defence Review · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State said that this occurred when I was a Defence Minister. Actually, in March 2023, before I became a Minister, he was invited to a reading room on the morning of publication. On the Defence Command Paper refresh in July 2023, when I was Minister, he said he did not get a copy. I can confirm, and I am happy to substantiate this, that a hard copy was dropped off at his office at 9.30 am that morning. I asked for a copy of the SDR repeatedly on Sunday and earlier this morning, and we were not given one. I have not even read the document, and I am the shadow Secretary of State. I can add that some of the biggest defence companies in this land were given copies at 8 am this morning. They have had hours to read it; I have not read it at all. This is meant to be a democracy and this meant to be a Parliament. How can we hold the Government to account? While the Government may have tried to hide the document from us for as long as possible today, they cannot hide what has happened in plain sight, which is a total unravelling of their strategic defence review because, quite simply, they do not have a plan to fund it. An SDR without the funding is an empty wish list. The ships and submarines it talks of are a fantasy fleet. The reviewers were clear in The Telegraph today that the commitment to 3% “established” the affordability of the plan. On Thursday, the Defence Secretary said in an interview with The Times that reaching 3% was a “certainty”, but by the weekend he had completely backtracked to 3% being just an “ambition”. Today, the Prime Minister was unable to give a date by which 3% would be reached. Why? Because the Treasury has not approved a plan to pay for it. The Secretary of State and I have both been Treasury Ministers and Defence Ministers, and he knows as well as I do how this works. For the Treasury to approve a plan, it will have to feature billions of pounds of cuts to existing MOD programmes, so this SDR has dodged the big decisions on existing capabilities. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the so-called defence investment plan to be published in the autumn will set out the cuts needed for the Treasury to agree a plan to get to 3%? We should have had those details in the SDR today. Can the Secretary of State also confirm that the total budget for new measures announced in this SDR over the next five years is less than £10 billion? That is less than we will be spending to lease back our own base on Diego Garcia. Is it not the hard truth that the Government are unable to guarantee the money our armed forces need, but the one plan they can guarantee is to give billions to Mauritius for land we currently own freehold? And can he finally tell us what percentage of the payment for Chagos will be met by the MOD? He has never told us before. Let me suggest an alternative path to the Secretary of State: first, guaranteeing to hit 3% and doing so in this Parliament, not the next; secondly, getting a grip on our welfare budget, rather than competing with Reform to expand it; thirdly, saving billions by scrapping their crazy Chagos plan. That is a plan to back our armed forces and make our country stronger from the party that actually last spent 3%, in 1996. The terrible shame of this SDR unravelling is that this was an extraordinary— [ Interruption. ] It was a Labour Government who came in, in 1997; I do not know what Labour Members are laughing about. The terrible shame of this SDR unravelling is that this was an extraordinary opportunity to overhaul our armed forces in a world of growing threats. Only yesterday, we saw the Ukrainians once again demonstrating, with their audacious attack on Russian nuclear bombers, how profoundly war has changed. And yet it is true that some of the best long-range one-way attack drones used in Ukraine have not been built by Ukraine, but by UK defence SMEs. We are incredibly well placed to be a leading nation in the development of uncrewed forces, but how many military drones have the Government actually purchased for our own military since the general election? In a written answer to me, the answer was not 3,000 or 300, but three. They have purchased three reconnaissance drones since the election and not a single one-way attack drone. That is the reality. For the past year, the Treasury has used the SDR to effectively put MOD procurement on hold. That is absolutely shameful when we need to rearm at pace and at scale. At least the Secretary of State for Defence knows how the rest of the country feels: totally let down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If there is one capability that matters more than any other, it is people. We agree on the critical importance of recruitment and retention, which is why I did so much of the work to buy back the defence estate so we could rebuild it and rebuild the substandard defence accommodation. But the Army is down by 1,000 since the election. If the Government really want to address recruitment and retention, would it not be total madness to scrap the legislation protecting our Northern Ireland veterans from a new era of ambulance-chasing lawfare? Surely nothing could be more damaging for morale, recruitment and retention than to once again pursue our veterans for the crime of serving this country and keeping us safe from terrorism. To conclude, the Secretary of State says he wants to send a strong message to Moscow, but the messages he is sending are profoundly weak: surrendering our fishing grounds for an EU defence pact that does not offer a penny in return; surrendering the Chagos islands, to the delight of China and Iran; surrendering our Army veterans to the lawyers; and to cap it all and after so much hype, producing a damp squib SDR that is overdue, underfunded and totally underwhelming. Our armed forces deserve a lot better than this.