Speeches by Reed.

“Thank you for being with us today, Brigadier and Nina. A number of different mechanisms and structures are being brought into Defence; individually, many of them have merit, but to me, it is the problem between problems. How will the new structure around the Armed Forces Commissioner, and their new powers to go into ba…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I echo the initial comments of the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), in thanking the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), a fellow former Royal Marine, for bringing this debate to the House today. This is a massively imp…”

“Thank you very much for being with us this morning, Sarah. Given your connection to the armed forces community, can you tell us the community’s view on the service justice system’s progress on improving the treatment of serious offences?”

“Thank you.”

“With serious offences, is there less or more trust in convictions, or at least in progressing cases for certain offences?”

“To go into the terminologies of public debt finance: committed, commitment—without the DIP, have you been given a multi-year financial settlement, and do you have a hypothecated, ringfenced budget, linked to inflation, that you now know you can spend over the next few years and that you know you have that in the bank? …”

“Just for my understanding, are we saying it is a commitment from the Defence Secretary that this is going to happen? It is not committed funds.”

“My next question is closely linked to that point. Is whether there is less or more trust based on the themes of serious offences—whether they are violent or sexual, say? Is there a view that a case involving violence might be progressed and might lead to a conviction? Would it be the same for sexual offences?”

“From your perspective, how is the Bill in its entirety being viewed by the armed forces community?”

“David and Nathalie, thank you for being with us this morning. From our perspective, we all want to see the situation improve, but I also want to manage expectations. Going back to the claim of reducing the delivery cost of housing projects and maintenance work by 25%. If we were in the private sector and I was trying t…”

“General, thank you for being with us today. The Prime Minister has set out that he wants to have a national conversation on defence, and that was highlighted very clearly in the SDR. What role do you think reservists should play in having that conversation? Do the measures in the Bill help to support that outcome?”

“Very nice!”

“Blairite policies told 50% of my generation to go to university. Looking back at those conversations, we see that rarely did anyone ever talk about who would pay for those students to go to university, or how the jobs market would then take on that amount of graduates. It is clear that the student finance system does n…”

“A small follow-up: as the international system descends into more volatility, do you feel that the national conversation is being had at the moment? Where do you think we are on that progression?”

“Sir Nick and Lord Lancaster, thank you for being with us today. I am a big fan of zig-zag careers, and an area that I would quite like to push is transferring security clearances between those different environments. If we want to bolster our defence industry or our national security environment, that needs security cl…”

“Picking up on what Vince said about rewards, incentives and good ideas from the cold war, is there anything that we can draw today from those historical lessons?”

“Linked to that point, on the other side of a lot of the measures in the Bill will be employers. From your assessment, what is the current view of employers regarding measures in the Bill?”

“I think we can all agree that international law has an important role to play, but the world is changing and we must adapt to protect our national security. Given that international law is broad in nature and open to interpretation—we have seen that in the differing views of the Attorney General and the shadow Attorney…”

“As a former Royal Marine, Gibraltar has a special place in my heart—we have “Gibraltar” emblazoned above our globe and laurel crest for the valiant efforts of former bootnecks in 1704. Having transferred seamlessly through Gibraltar on previous operations, I know how important it is to be able to transfer kit and equip…”

“I thank my right hon. Friend for the work she and her Committee have done on this report. To my knowledge, this is the first time artificial intelligence has hallucinated and given a response that has been used by a public body to make a decision. To my right hon. Friend’s understanding, has West Midlands police learne…”