Mark Francois MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Jul 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  Is it true that a statement was made in private to Labour councillors and activists in Essex at the weekend? I know this for a fact, because I was told by one of the Labour members who were there, but will the Minister confirm that it is true? Is she also aware that a YouGov poll has shown that, by 56% to 24%, the people of Essex do not want Labour’s plans for local government reform? Let us have a referendum.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this important and timely debate, which coincides with the NATO summit. I will make what is perhaps a point of consensus: yet again, when we debate the defence of the realm—the first duty of Government—the Reform Bench is empty; yet again, the plastic patriots have gone AWOL when we discuss the defence of this country. Count Binface clearly has them worried in Clacton. As I am a historian by training, perhaps I can offer some historical context. Arguments about military readiness are not new. The Roman military theorist, Vegetius, some two millennia ago, coined the now-famous phrase, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—he who desires peace should prepare for war, in order to deter it. There have been times in British history where we have disregarded Vegetius’s sage advice. For instance, in 1919, following the first world war, when Britain had fought at great cost—both human and financial—a Liberal-led Government introduced the concept of a 10-year rule: a pan-Whitehall edict that no major war was likely for at least a decade. That continued on a rolling basis into the 1930s. On 9 February 1933, just 10 days after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, in the now famous Oxford Union debate, referred to several times already, the students resolved by more than two to one that: “This House would, under no circumstances, fight for King and country.” And yet, a few years later, we know that many of them did. The 10-year rule was only finally rescinded in the mid-1930s. Nevertheless, as General Lord Dannatt pointed out in his excellent recent book “Victory to Defeat”, our armed forces still did not recover sufficiently in time to deter Hitler from launching what eventually became world war two, in which some 60 million people perished worldwide.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  In a moment. We face a revanchist Russian led by Putin, who launched an invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and then an even more brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As someone who visited Ukraine in February of this year, I remind the House that the Ukrainians would argue that they have therefore been at war with Russia not for four years, but for 12 years—longer than the first and second world wars combined. Against that rising threat, Labour produced its much-vaunted strategic defence review, and there was much good in it. However, it still contained echoes of the 10-year rule, declaring the Government’s intention, on page 43, “to deter, fight and win—with allies—against states with advanced military forces by 2035.” That is nine years away. The Chief of the General Staff has warned that we might have to fight Russia by 2027, the First Sea Lord said 2029, and even the outgoing Prime Minister said that this might happen by 2030. How are we supposed to deter Putin without a single attack submarine currently at sea, with no new AWACS aircraft in service in the Royal Air Force, still, and with Ajax almost a decade late and still not in operational service, despite Ministers previously promising us that it was fine? That really is corrosive complacency, is not it? The threat is now, and we need to rearm accordingly, including by spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2029 at the very latest, if not earlier. The three co-authors of the SDR were adamant that the cost of implementing it was spending 3% of GDP on defence, and a year after the SDR was published, we finally received Labour’s plan for how to pay for it: the so-called defence investment plan. But that was not before Labour’s Defence Secretary and Armed Forces Minister—the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who is in his place—both resigned on 11 June after months of frustration with the Treasury over the paucity of funding in the plan. As the outgoing Defence Secretary powerfully wrote in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister, “you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.” That is damning. The former Armed Forces Minister said in his letter: “I have sat in the rooms, seen the assessments, and spoken to the commanders who will be asked to do more with less, and I cannot in good conscience stand at the dispatch box and defend a level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task.” Moreover, the outgoing Defence Secretary revealed that he had been offered an increase in defence spending to only 2.68% of GDP by 2030—billions short of what the SDR authors required. The new Defence Secretary has tried to argue that he has been given some additional funding—a bit more than £1 billion—but that takes defence spending to barely 2.69% of GDP by 2030, a difference that does not even touch the sides. Sadly, it is worse than that. The chiefs of staff have been urging the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to invest an additional £28 billion in defence over the next four years, partly to enable them to implement Labour’s SDR. They were offered barely £15 billion instead. On closer examination, even that sum unravels rapidly. As we have heard, £10.7 billion relies on so-called efficiency savings, which is Whitehall code for cuts in MOD spending over the next four years, the bulk of which have not even been identified. On the day of publication, the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee described that as an old accountant’s trick. It still does not disguise the fact that the MOD would have to make massive in-year spending cuts, including from operations and training, to recycle that money to fund the defence investment plan. The Chief of the Defence Staff warned of the implications of doing that only the other day. The disastrous DIP also relies on a further £4.7 billion, which has not yet been cleared by the Treasury and will be subject to another public spending round. In other words, the two sums combined will be more than the £15 billion of extra money that was promised. There is practically no new money for defence at all. All we have been offered is Enron accounting and smoke and mirrors to try to pretend that there is a massive increase in defence spending—barely 0.01% of GDP over four years.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making a very accurate critique. Is he aware that the Treasury Committee, led by the redoubtable hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), was looking at defence funding at lunch time today, and that in that hearing, barely an hour ago, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted under persistent questioning that the Government have done no work on how to get to 3.5% of GDP on defence?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend mentioned reserves. During the debate on the Armed Forces Bill, we talked a lot about enhancing the reserves. Is he aware that while there is some funding for the so-called active reserve, in the DIP there is hardly any funding at all for the strategic reserve, which the Government made a very big thing of for five months while we were debating the Bill? There is hardly any money for it.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right on the funding—I will mention that later—but one important thing that did happen after 2014 was under what was then called Operation Orbital. We began training Ukrainian soldiers on Salisbury plain, because they knew what was coming—and, I think, perhaps so did we. We will talk about the money in a minute, but the training of Ukrainian troops in Britain did start fairly shortly after 2014.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  NATO is the most successful defensive alliance in history, and article 5 is its absolute fulcrum. We must maintain our commitment to article 5 to keep all NATO nations safe. In 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill said that an iron curtain had descended, leading us into the cold war. In the mid-1980s, under Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, defence spending was gusting about 5% of gross domestic product. When the Berlin wall came down in 1989, countries across the west took a peace dividend. Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous book “The End of History” in 1992, and many in the west believed that the threat of world war had finally receded. When the Conservatives left office in 1997, we were spending around 3% of GDP on defence, and that downward trend continued under Tony Blair’s Government—although, in fairness, he was only doing what many other western democracies were also doing. Today, we face a revanchist Russia led by Putin—

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  No, I am summing up. Lord Robertson, the lead author of the SDR, told the Defence Committee only yesterday that “we are running out of years… the challenge is now bigger, more serious and earlier than we had anticipated, yet the defence investment plan does not come up to it.” General Barrons, his co-author, told the same Committee that “the Prime Minister is saying that Russia could attack NATO by 2030, and we essentially lost a year of mobilising for that.” Incredibly, even the DIP says on page 78: “The figures presented are indicative rather than precise cost estimates. They do not constitute binding commitments and are subject to the Government’s approval processes, affordability considerations and contracting procedures. Figures have been rounded and, therefore, may not sum.” You can say that again. In other words, the document isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. The plan relies on extra money that does not exist. We will not deter the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping with such unfunded proposals. If Trotsky was right, and war is interested in us, we must rearm now to deter it. I reluctantly find that the Labour Government are failing the people of this country in the first duty of Government: the defence of the realm. If the incoming Prime Minister cannot plug the £5 billion black hole that he is about to inherit, he should make way for people who can.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  The university’s records do not show how every individual student voted, but we know that many of the students who were present at that famous debate in 1933 subsequently signed up in 1939 and 1940.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Support for Veterans · Hansard source

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  May I endorse your tribute to the late Sir George Howarth, Mr Speaker? May I also take this opportunity to welcome the incoming Minister for Veterans and People, the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey), to his new position? In the two years that he has been in the House, he has already established a reputation for independence of mind and for fearlessly speaking truth to power, regardless of the consequences. I am sure that will stand him in very good stead now. May I ask a specific question about Northern Ireland veterans? When the former Armed Forces Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), resigned on principle, partly over the legacy issue, he famously described Labour’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill as “unfit for purpose”. What does the Secretary of State think he meant by that?

• 6 Jul 2026 · Support for Veterans · Hansard source

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  We have been waiting for those amendments almost as long as we have been waiting for the DIP. Where is the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) on the legacy issue? Many regiments that hail from the north-west—such as the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, which has already mentioned once today, and, before it, the King’s Regiment, which traditionally recruited from both Liverpool and Manchester—did multiple tours in Northern Ireland on Op Banner. Has the Secretary of State had any indications that our likely new Prime Minister is going to do right by those former soldiers from his own region, scrap the benighted Bill, which helps Sinn Féin pursue our veterans via lawfare, and get rid of the whole nonsense altogether?