John Healey MP: speeches

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Speeches

19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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We have committed to set new SME spending targets and establish a new SME support centre. In the last week, we have launched a new tech scaler, and we will strengthen the SME voice on the new defence industrial joint council.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I congratulate Lee Chapman on the event that he organised in the right hon. Lady’s constituency. I will indeed look into the matter, and if she has additional data and information for me to go on, I would be grateful if she could let me have it.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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We will indeed. We will set out in our defence industrial strategy the detail that the hon. Lady wants. She mentions Babcock, which has welcomed today’s UK-EU agreement as a step forward, describing it as strengthening the critical defence partnership between the EU and the UK in uncertain times. I am sure that she will welcome that as well.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Last year, we pledged to the British public that if we were elected we would seek a new security pact with the European Union. Today we have made good on that promise. The UK-EU security and defence partnership is an ambitious agreement. It will strengthen NATO, and it will grow the economy. In a further demonstration that defence is a powerful engine for growth, I can confirm that Rheinmetall will be opening its new gun barrel factory in Telford, bringing 400 new jobs to the area and boosting investment in the UK economy by nearly half a billion pounds. This is what resetting Britain’s relationship with Europe and stepping up on European security looks like, and this is what delivering for defence looks like, to make Britain secure at home and strong abroad.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The previous Government, with our support, set up the Haddon-Cave inquiry, whose job it is to get to the bottom of any allegations and investigate them fully. That is the job it is doing, and it has our full support—and, I hope, the continued support of the House —in doing it. The hon. Lady mentioned the “Panorama” programme. Anybody who is willing to talk to the media about the information they have and what they allege must be willing to do the same to the Haddon-Cave inquiry.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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No. It shows that when we were elected last summer we inherited a situation of increasing questions and jeopardy over the continuing sovereignty—our operational sovereignty—of the Diego Garcia base. That is why we have been taking action since then.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The shadow Defence Secretary, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), shouts, “Total rubbish,” but his 12-page drone strategy was half-full of pictures and totally unfunded. The strategic defence review will look at how our technologies are changing the nature of warfare, and will ensure that we can make Britain secure at home and strong abroad.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I reject any accusation of a veil of secrecy. I will look into the allegations that the hon. Gentleman makes, and I will write to him, or can meet him, if that is helpful.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that the Government and the Ministry of Defence are seeking judicial review of the coroner’s work on the Clonoe inquiry. If there are other factors to be taken into account and lessons to be learned, the Government will do that.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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It is simply too early to say that about any of the nations, including all 27 EU nations. What I can say is that today’s agreement is the necessary key that opens the door to that potential for our Government and our defence industry.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The Diego Garcia base is essential to our security and to our security relationship with the US. It was increasingly under threat under the previous Government. We have had to act, as the previous Government started to do, to deal with that jeopardy. We are completing those arrangements and will report to the House when we can.
19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The right hon. Gentleman is a regular attender in this House, and I suggest that he be here on Wednesday for Northern Ireland questions to put that question directly to the Northern Ireland Secretary.
19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source
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Quite simply, the answer to both the hon. Gentleman’s first question and his second question is exactly the partnership deal that we have signed this afternoon.
19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman is quite right. [Interruption.] He is quite right, in that during the last Defence Question Time he talked about our not being excluded from the Security Action for Europe defence fund that would include EU states. I would have thought that he would welcome this afternoon’s agreement, because this is the open door to those arrangements. Let me ask him this: does he therefore agree with his party leader, who declared before even seeing the agreements that will be signed today—including the security and defence partnership agreement—that she would tear them up?
19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source
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This is a big step today—a broad and bespoke agreement between the European Union and the UK on security and defence—but it is a first step. Settling the details and the terms of access for European programmes, including the SAFE funding programme, is exactly the task beyond today.
19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source
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I will indeed. We congratulate the crew of HMS Dragon on their professionalism and skill, and they will welcome my hon. Friend’s championing of that skill in the House this afternoon.
19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source
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This is a Government delivering for defence. Today we have agreed a new bespoke and ambitious security and defence partnership between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The SDP will strengthen NATO, the cornerstone of the UK’s defence, and it will grow the economy. It allows us to step up more effectively together on European security against growing Russian aggression and the increasing threats that we face.
19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is right about the joint expeditionary force, and he is right to emphasise the importance of the step today. While NATO is the cornerstone of our European security—and recognised as such by the European Union in its White Paper—the step today will mean that we will be able to upgrade our co-operation with the European Union on the mobility of military matériel and personnel, on maritime and space security, on irregular migration and on protecting our critical infrastructure. It opens the door to closer defence industrial collaboration, including potential participation in the EU’s €150 billion SAFE arrangements.
30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman has been around long enough to know that I will not comment on the process of proscription. Suffice it to say, the Government have sanctioned a number of major Houthi leaders. I welcome his welcome for the action we took last night, and I hope he will take that action as a sign of a determination to do what we can, alongside our US allies, to degrade their ability to continue to threaten freedom of navigation for international shipping.
30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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On Ukraine and a potential role in a coalition of the willing on security guarantees—if a negotiated peace settlement, which we all hope President Trump secures, can be put in place—we are planning at the moment. The consequences of any commitments we make will be fully explained to the House if a decision is made, but that is contingent on a ceasefire and a peace agreement, and that is contingent principally upon Putin doing what he says he wants by seeking an end to the fighting.
30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman is right to say this is bigger and more important than just UK or even US action. I reported to the House earlier that the broader challenges that he sets out were discussed by NATO Foreign Ministers, and have been discussed by Foreign Ministers at the G7 within the last month.
30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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The strikes that we conducted last night were a result of the fact that America, our closest ally, has been coming under near daily attack from the Houthis; that shipping has more than halved through that Red sea route; and that 50% of UK businesses now say that they have been impacted by conflict in the middle east. I make no apology for defending Britain’s interests, and the interests of our allies.
30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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As I said earlier, my responsibility as Defence Secretary is for the military components of the wider approach that must be pursued if we are to help play an important role in securing peace and a settlement to end the civil war in Yemen, and to provide relief to the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who are suffering so severely. Constraining the Houthi threat is part of that, as is reinforcing and bolstering the Yemeni Government, but working with allies, particularly the leading regional allies, in trying to force the pace of a negotiated settlement and a peace in Yemen is absolutely crucial.
30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman has managed to broaden his question from this specific statement on the overnight strikes. The strategic defence review is a strategic defence review. It will be published in the spring. It has been an unprecedented and externally led process, which has allowed to us to take stock of the threats we face and the capabilities we need, and to do so within the unprecedented increase in defence funding that this Government have now committed to over the next 10 years.
30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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I am confident that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has that in mind. He will be conscious, as is the right hon. Gentleman, that the UK acts not just as the third-largest donor to the Yemen humanitarian programme, but as the penholder for Yemen at the United Nations.

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