John Healey MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Nov 2025 · Defence Industrial Base · Hansard source

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  I do indeed, and my hon. Friend is right. Firms such as that in her constituency hold the future of our security and our economic growth. That is why we have set up UK Defence Innovation and ringfenced it with at least £400 million in the Budget this year, with fresh freedoms. We have also doubled to £4 billion the amount of money that we will invest in British drones and autonomy over this Parliament.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Defence Industrial Base · Hansard source

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  The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is that that we are doing so with close allies. We are also doing so with Ukraine. The right hon. Gentleman has been one of the voices in this House that has pushed us to do more with Ukrainian industry, and I know he will welcome our groundbreaking agreement with Ukraine, through which it will share for the first time with another country its intellectual property for the critical interceptor drone called Octopus. We will develop that further, manufacture those drones at scale within weeks and months, and return thousands to Ukraine to help its fight against Putin.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Defence Industrial Base · Hansard source

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  Quite simply, we have boosted defence investment. We have done so by a record amount since the end of the cold war, and three years earlier than the Conservatives’ unfunded plans proposed. Since the election, we have signed over 1,000 major contracts, 84% of them with British firms. We have brought £1.7 billion of foreign direct investment into defence, and we have won major export deals that the Conservatives never managed. On Monday, the Prime Minister and I signed an £8 billion deal with Turkey to buy 20 British Typhoons, which will help secure 20,000 jobs in the wider supply chain for the years to come. I would like to hear Conservative Members welcome that.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We have the increase in the budget this year; we have the increase in the budget over the Parliament. Our job now is to ensure that we can deliver value for money for that increased investment, and use that increased investment to drive economic growth across the UK. It is thanks to that increased investment that we have been able to announce and launch our defence housing strategy today.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is not correct in saying that the troops are there to monitor the ceasefire. A small handful of British forces personnel have been deployed to the Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre at the request of the US, and it is the US that is leading that work.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  No one word can sum up a country as significant and as complex as China, but our experience tells us that China is certainly an economic threat, as well as an opportunity in many areas.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Last week, I was in Turkey with the Prime Minister to sign Britain’s biggest fighter jet export deal in a generation. The £8 billion contract for 20 Typhoons is a win for European security, the British economy and 20,000 UK workers. It comes just weeks after we won the biggest ever warship deal—a £10 billion contract with Norway that will secure 4,000 jobs over the next decade. These deals demonstrate defence as an engine for growth. Today we go further and publish our defence housing strategy, in which we plan to upgrade 40,000 forces family homes and build 100,000 new homes for military and civilians alike. This plan is backed by a £9 billion investment over this decade—more than double what was in the Tory plans. This is a Government delivering for defence and for Britain.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I have nothing to add to what I said in response to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), who asked the same question. What a waste of a question.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The SDR quite rightly said that further decisions on investment plans were central to delivering the SDR. We are doing that work thoroughly at the moment so that we will no longer have what the hon. Member’s Government left: a defence programme that was overcommitted, underfunded and unsuited to meet the threats that face us.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I have to say that my hon. Friend is wrong on this. Over 400,000 jobs are supported—directly and indirectly—by defence, and almost 70% of the defence investment we make in this country is outside London and the south-east, right across the UK.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is right: the continuation of the Scottish nationalist Government in Scotland is a threat to our security and to future prosperity and jobs in that country.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Indeed, we are a year on from the Trinity House agreement, and our co-operation over the next year will only deepen further. Within weeks, we will have German P-8s flying out of Lossiemouth. We have a new cyber programme to conduct joint activities. We have accelerated work on a new 2,000 km deep precision strike missile, and a new £200 million bridging deal to support the British Army. I have to say that this agreement is more important now than when we signed it a year ago.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member’s figures are wrong, and his characterisation and description are wrong. We have put £5 billion extra into the defence budget in this, our first year, and we are raising defence investment with the highest increase since the cold war. But the public expect us to manage better the budgets that we have got, so we are managing those budgets, which he failed to do. Alongside the strategic defence review and the defence investment plan, we are already acting and have let over 1,000 major contracts, 84% of them to British firms. Today, we are putting £9 billion into defence housing for the future.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Strategic Defence Review Recommendations: Timetable · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is exactly right. Cadet forces cannot exist without the adult volunteers who support them, and they are central to our ability to increase the number of cadet forces across this country by 30% by 2030, which will give so many young people opportunities in the future.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Strategic Defence Review Recommendations: Timetable · Hansard source

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  The Government have accepted all 62 recommendations of the strategic defence review. Implementation of the review’s recommendations is already well under way.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Strategic Defence Review Recommendations: Timetable · Hansard source

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  In the last year, we have taken huge steps to start to make good on decades of substandard housing for military personnel and their families. We have brought 36,000 military family homes back into public ownership so that we can plan exactly the sort of upgrade that the hon. Lady talks about. On the rest of the SDR, we have announced the purchase of 12 F-35A aircraft, which will join the dual capable aircraft mission of NATO; we have launched our new £70 million campaign on cadets; and we have stood up the cyber and specialist operations command. Today, we are publishing the defence industrial strategy to make defence an engine for growth. This Government are delivering for defence and delivering for Britain.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I share with the right hon. Gentleman, and, I think, every Member of this House, the pleasure and honour of attending such breakfast clubs with veterans in my constituency. He is right about the range of concerns that veterans raise, which includes the pressures of homelessness. Recognising the forces’ service in local authority housing priorities is our first step, and the £50 million going into the Op VALOUR system to increase support for veterans will also play a part.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle). She served as a Minister in both this and the previous Labour Government with great commitment, and we thank her for her service. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Last week I travelled to Norway to sign the biggest British warship deal ever—a £10 billion contract that will secure 4,000 jobs for the next two decades. Last week I also visited Kyiv, during my fifth visit to Ukraine, where I met Defence Minister Shmyhal, visited a drone factory and chaired a meeting of the coalition of the willing with more than 30 Defence Ministers. The message to Moscow from one and all was of defiance and determination: the Ukrainians will keep fighting Russian aggression, and the coalition will step up support for Ukraine and preparations for a peace in Ukraine. Tomorrow from London I will co-chair the meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, attended by around 50 nations. This week I will also host the meeting of the E5 Defence Ministers here in London.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We are always ready to take further steps on imposing economic sanctions, and to close any loopholes in those sanctions. We have a record, under both the last Government and this Government, of being at the forefront of imposing these sorts of economic measures on Putin’s regime.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I will indeed, and my hon. Friend will be encouraged, I hope, by the visit I paid to Turkey, and the initial agreement that I have signed with Turkey for a big new order of Typhoons, which will be built in Lancashire.

• 8 Sept 2025 · NATO Defence Spending Target · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. This is about not just how much the Government spend, but how well they spend. Mr Speaker, you will remember that under the previous Government, the Public Accounts Committee branded our defence procurement system as “broken”. We are reforming procurement, and that will be part of the statement this afternoon on the defence industrial strategy by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). At the heart of this, we made a commitment to the British people at the last election that we would raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, and we are doing that three years early. This is a Government who are delivering for defence and for Britain.

• 8 Sept 2025 · NATO Defence Spending Target · Hansard source

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  On the contrary, both the Foreign Secretary and I have been consistent that, taken across the range, the cost of the settlement with Mauritius for Diego Garcia is split between the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. For defence, our commitment is less than 0.2% of the defence budget. That is a good investment for this country, and it gives us a sovereign right to operate that base with the Americans for the next 99 years.

• 8 Sept 2025 · NATO Defence Spending Target · Hansard source

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  At the Hague summit in June, all 32 NATO nations agreed to step up and increase spending on national security to 5% by 2035. I am proud that this Labour Government played a leading part in the discussions that led to that historic agreement.

• 8 Sept 2025 · NATO Defence Spending Target · Hansard source

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  The investment in Diego Garcia is a great investment in the defence and intelligence partnership with the United States. Together, we do things from Diego Garcia that cannot be done elsewhere; we do things together that we do not do with other nations. The deal is worth less than 0.2% of the annual defence budget. How is it that the Conservatives have got themselves on the wrong side of this argument about national security, when we stand alongside the US as our closest allies?

• 8 Sept 2025 · NATO Defence Spending Target · Hansard source

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  The response of NATO has produced results exactly to the contrary of those President Putin would have wanted when he invaded Ukraine three-and-a-half years ago. NATO is now bigger; it is 32 nations strong. The commitment that all 32 nations made in the June summit to increase national security spending to 5% by 2035 is a strong deterrent message to Putin, Russia and other adversaries, and it will make NATO bigger and stronger in order to deter in the years ahead.