Speeches by Carns.

“We have an increase in rising one-star females in the military. We are 1% up, and there is actually quite a large proportion, and we try to make sure there is multi-gender representation whenever we engage. Sometimes that is not possible, but we try whenever we can. There is a bit about whether it is superficial, as we…”

“It is really difficult, but we can have some measurement of effect. It may be just a statistic of how many people we have trained, how many people we have seen and, if they conduct surveys at the end of the courses, have they seen it is valuable? It would be very difficult to track, but how many of these women actually…”

“I am the Minister for the Armed Forces.”

“Yes. When I reflect back on my military career, we see this root and branch within the MOD. Almost every element of the single services, whether it be a command and control headquarters or something else, usually has a human security individual who has been trained, which obviously covers WPS within that. Throughout my…”

“In UK defence. In particular, internally within UK defence, but we also have a multitude of different programmes globally, helping other countries to consider both human security and women, peace and security as a key aspect of our outputs.”

“Women in leadership and decision making and how we enhance that and help educate and communicate the benefits of it to others is the critical component. It is quite difficult to put your finger on it, but as a small example we have trained over 400 personnel in our human security adviser courses since 2018, and about 1…”

“In the defence spending and strategic defence review, my view is that WPS and human security is already root and branch throughout defence. It might be useful just to give you a little flavour of some of the stuff that we are doing, because there is a really good story to tell here, and I genuinely mean that. In the la…”

“That is a really good question. I will have to get back if there is a specific description.”

“It should be any woman who wants to realise her ambitions or deliver change in any walk of life. That could be in the private space, all the way through to—from our perspective in defence in particular—the security and national defence architecture, usually, of the country. Also any individual that may benefit from the…”

“It is a bit of both. We have really good structures in place internally. Almost everything I mentioned there was about going out to our allies and partners—like-minded nations—trying to help them realise the advantage of having more women in leadership and indeed in mentoring roles within their national security archit…”

“It should absolutely include women like that, and I will take that away and have a look into that specific detail and get back to you, unless the team can pull that out now.”

“I actually looked through this and it is because it is already there—it is so ingrained in our thinking. I will give an example. I was the chief of staff of the UK Strike Force, which is a big maritime two-star headquarters. I had a dedicated human security officer there, and within their role was the women, peace and …”

“No, I do not; the two are the same. I am a firm believer, in some of these cases, particularly perhaps as we look to Ukraine, in the “fight and talk” strategy. Within that talking space we have to accept that our adversaries—Russia in particular—have used sexual violence as a weapon of war. For example, we work with Op…”

“We should, but the practicalities of delivering that will need to be thought through by the team. In any mediation piece or negotiation, I would always support having the most diverse team you can, because then you end up with the diverse thinking that tends to provide the best solutions to complex problems.”

“Yes, 100%. From our perspective, it will be part of the coalition of the willing. We need to allow Ukraine to win the peace first, but as part of our coalition of the willing we will have human security advisers within there ensuring that diverse groups, and indeed women, are integrated into the future security structu…”

“When I was the Minister for Veterans and People, I sat down with various different groups, one of which was Women in Defence. We would take a plethora of all different ranks from very senior down to the other ranks, and we would just hear their experiences. Some of those were negative; the majority were positive. The k…”

“Absolutely, and this is where we had all the NATO female leaders come together. The UK is leading in some of this space, but we are not ahead in everything. Some of the Nordic countries have a lead on us, and we are learning this collaborative approach to learning best practice in this area. We need to get to a space w…”

“Gunner Jaysley Beck.”

“Absolutely. If you read it, it is a tragic case about a woman stuck in the command chain and not really feeling she can go anywhere. That is exactly where we have designed this from. It obviously happened some time ago. It does not make it easier to deal with, but there has been a lot of action since then, and since th…”

“I can lead from my perspective. Anywhere defence goes, anything defence does, we have human security and therefore women, peace and security bedded in, inculcated into that. The point you mentioned, Chair, about the increase in violence around the world and the reversal of so much good that has been done in the last 10…”