Speeches by Baker.

“We have already talked about the fact that organisations will not necessarily be able to give you that view. I am interested in how far you actually dug into the experience of individuals in this situation.”

“But the general election ultimately did slow the process down?”

“After the injunction was in place, did either of you judge that operating under extreme secrecy was reinforcing existing institutional caution and thereby slowing practical action to reduce potential harm to affected Afghans and did you raise those concerns directly with Ministers?”

“The female contour is the absolutely key piece. I have heard it referred to that you are looking at just getting a smaller plate, but that does not answer the issue I am trying to solve.”

“I have met some of your new recruits, General Sir Roly, who have been seen in selection, yet when they turn up to start their term they do not get kit that fits them, even though you have seen them physically. Cadets have told me how frustrated they are to have gone through that process and not have that kit, so that i…”

“Brilliant.”

“Minister, I want to ask you about properly fitted equipment and body armour. That was a big part of the Atherton report, which had clear recommendations on this. Do you accept that it is unacceptable for women to have less ballistic protection than their male colleagues with the standard issue body armour systems that …”

“And that is specifically female-contoured plates.”

“That is great to hear, and the evidence clearly shows that female-contoured plates make a huge difference—up to 40%—in providing increased ballistic protection, but we still do not have consistent provision or a funded programme to deliver that into service.”

“You can understand why we are concerned. This is billions of pounds of public money, and you fundamentally could not tell our audit function what this was.”

“We have joint procurement mechanisms. We pay into NATO. We have the NSPA.”

“This did not just relate to AWE, from what the NAO said to us. It said that it identified several other balances that were unsupported in line with accounting standards. This is pretty basic stuff that we would expect you to be able to get right.”

“I think we need to jump in to the actual issue, because I do not think any of us are particularly reassured at the moment.”

“The only universal solution to the issue that I have found—and I have spent a year of my work looking at this—is a multilateral bank that gives credit guarantees to our banks, so that they can lend much more freely to our supply chain. That is the only way you are going to fight defence inflation. I really want to be a…”

“Do you think that was effective?”

“Permanent secretary, is there an understanding that the MDM solution—basically a joint procurement mechanism—solves a different problem from a multilateral bank?”

“Director General Finance, we were very appreciative of the National Audit Office taking the time to help us prepare for this session, and we were interested in their opinion from the audit of the accounts in 2024-25 that you could not sufficiently support the valuation of assets under construction to the tune of £6.1 b…”

“Can you get us the list of where you are using NSPA? I asked the Secretary of State for it, and I have not had it yet.”

“We also saw that £9 billion of the new resource DEL funding has been allocated for non-routine impairment or depreciation. The Minister for DPI was asked about that during a recent debate, but we are still none the wiser. Can you tell us which assets that concerns?”

“One is to buy stuff and one is to sort out the fact that businesses in my community cannot borrow the capital they need to be able to expand their businesses to meet the need. These are two different solutions, and it really pains me that you are putting them on a piece of paper and comparing and contrasting, and decid…”