Speeches by Carns.

“I have worked very closely with those in the Northern Ireland Office on this issue, and I will allow them to come up with the answer, but from our perspective the legacy commission as a whole has the most powers to review the evidence that has gone through. It will get to truth, reconciliation and justice better than a…”

“No, I would join the Royal Marines.”

“This Government have an exceptional record on supporting our veterans. We put more money into veterans than any other Government in the past 10 years. We put £50 million into Valour. We have enhanced the Op Restore programme. Op Courage on mental health has now got £21 million and has rolled out. Our career transition …”

“The reality is that the last Government’s legacy Act made promises that could not be kept, and explaining why to our veterans community is exceptionally difficult, and I will not lie on that. On the same hand, we have been clear that inquests that were started by the last Government, but stopped—such as Loughgall in 20…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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 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…”

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

“Re-educating them to send them back, in some cases, to fight for them. It is absolutely horrifying.”

“It comes hand-in-hand. Once you remove the societal norms that a country is structured around, and the law in particular, and the likelihood of surviving a conflict is reduced, some people, groups and organisations use sexual violence as a weapon of war to enact terror. It is really unfortunate, but we see it across th…”

“Agreed, 100%.”

“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…”

“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…”

“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 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.”

“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…”

“I am the Minister for the Armed Forces.”

“Yes. On top of that, since 2015 we have had the gender protection adviser role in the United Nations, focused particularly on the DRC.”