Speeches by Carns.

“I hope war is not interested in you personally, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Iranian threat—Hezbollah, Hamas, lethal aid in Iraq and Afghanistan, and supporting terrorist organisations around the world—is not lost on me at all. However, I will be really clear: I have served in every staff college in the career structure o…”

“There are clear NATO defence spending targets. That is written down, and will be produced in due course.”

“I will give way one more time.”

“I thank the right hon. Member for his comments. I will raise them with the Security Minister, and push exceptionally hard. The motion suggests that we are failing to learn lessons from Ukraine. Let me make it absolutely clear that these are two separate issues. This Government are leading. We committed £4.5 billion in …”

“Let me go back to the point about the 20,000 troops. The motion calls for more troops, but it says nothing about how they would be recruited, trained, housed or equipped. It does not even begin to answer the most basic questions about what those troops would actually be used for. It proposes funding defence through unr…”

“The public sector equality duty has been in force for 15 years and its duty of due regard is working well; we seek to replicate that as we move forward. From my perspective, the amendment risks constraining rather than strengthening that approach. As I have said many times, this is a step in the right direction. It bro…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. We are moving in that direction; the national armaments director is providing professional oversight now and is looking at reviewing the system. I think we can all collectively agree on whether we have got value for money over the past 14 to 20 years. We need to ma…”

“It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank everyone for our progressive and balanced debates so far. I am delighted to introduce clause 2, which extends the armed forces covenant legal duty, delivering a manifesto commitment to strengthen support for our armed forces. The clause will amend par…”

“I am going to a make a bit of ground, and then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman. We come to perhaps the most revealing part of the motion: the suggestion that defence should be funded through changes to the two-child benefit cap. Let me say this plainly: you do not strengthen national security by setting it…”

“Sir Andrew is an exceptionally good man, and few are more knowledgeable than him on veterans matters. We have a position where, in some cases, veterans are seen as victims, but we have no central body that understands the totality of veterans issues across the United Kingdom. Head Valour is therefore coming into place …”

“I thank hon. Members for their contributions on clause 2 and the new clauses. They are based on the right intent, and Members are trying to do the best by our serving and ex-serving population. I will leave the script and step back to look at where we have come on this journey. Under the previous Government, the Office…”

“I am going to make a bit of ground, and then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman in due course. Morale is built on leadership, clarity and trust, and the facts matter. Recruitment is up by 13%, and outflow is down by 8%. For the first time in over a decade, more people are joining the armed forces than leaving…”

“I thank the hon. Member for allowing the intervention. I cannot describe the laughing and bickering that is going on right now, when we have troops in harm’s way. There has to be a level of seriousness, whether we are discussing the nuclear deterrent or investment opportunities and mistakes made. We have troops in harm…”

“The minimum requirement at the moment is to stay in line with the covenant principles. That needs to be balanced with the broader local issues that each local authority is facing. That will never be standardised because our local communities are different, from Cornwall to the north-east, Scotland and Northern Ireland.…”

“I will continue and then give way in a minute. We have taken more action in the past 20 months than the Conservatives managed in the 14 years before that, with more than 1,200 major defence contracts, 86% of which have been awarded to British-based businesses. The Conservatives argued that we should spend 2.5% of GDP o…”

“Once we analyse the tapestry of veterans support, I would like to come to a solution on the English veterans commissioner to align with and amplify what we do on Valour. I think that Valour will take 36 months to be properly embedded in our local councils, with the structures and data network in place. It has taken us …”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. We need three levels of understanding before ever putting someone in harm’s way: a legal mandate, a plan and think-through to the finish.”

“We often talk about not having a frontline with Russia, but the reality is that we do. It is in the north Atlantic and in maritime, where we are facing off against Russian capability on a daily basis. We have seen a 30% increase in surface and subsurface capability, which speaks to the complexity of the defence investm…”

“I completely agree. We have to get the defence investment plan right, and we have to ensure that it balances all the different problems that we face, whether they relate to air defence in the middle east and the lessons identified there or, indeed, the lessons identified in Ukraine.”

“I disagree—the postcode lottery will get better and start to standardise over time. There is a multitude of problems with the covenant that the Bill will try to solve, one of which is education, and communication to our own armed forces personnel about what it is and what it is not. That is a problem for the Ministry o…”