Speeches by Williams.

“The question then comes back to the fleet mix in potential further tranches of buying beyond the first two tranches that we have talked about.”

“I would rather talk about the opportunities of defence reform. The programme is looking at structures, processes and, critically, people, ways of working and the relationship between the four areas of the Department that the Secretary of State set out. I think the opportunity is around much clearer accountabilities and…”

“Let me give you a practical example: one of the things we will do is to move to a single approval for our major investment decisions. Some of those approvals, because of their nature, will need to be approved in Main Building, by Ministers, with senior input, but in that instance the case will come straight up, with ap…”

“It is a combination of the right person, the team, and where the priorities are. You can imagine a NAD that spends quite a lot of time trying to run the combination of organisation with 30,000 people. That is not what we are after. We want somebody who makes sure that the leadership team around them is delivering, but …”

“Yes.”

“I would describe the quad as a leadership group. It brings together the CDS, me, the National Armaments Director and the Chief of Defence Nuclear. It is not formal governance; we all sit on the defence board with Ministers, the non-executive directors and other members of the executive team, and we have a formal execut…”

“Yes, and that process—”

“The risk and accountability process works through formal governance—how each of the areas is delivering against its plans, reviewed through regular performance information, through the executive committee, through the defence board. But as the Defence Secretary has also said, we meet both individually—indeed, we had ou…”

“Both sides of this equation—the content of the programme and what we are spending—are changing. The shortfall that we previously identified was a programme that then existed against a budget that we had. The budget has changed, and the SDR says that we need to change the capabilities that we are investing in, so both s…”

“This is why I think it is, with respect, not a particularly productive argument. The shortfall we had in—”

“No, what I am saying is that the shortfall we identified—”

“We have elements of cost growth or variation in individual programmes, but the content of the equipment programme overall, how much we want to invest on which capabilities, and the sequencing of that investment, not least against NATO targets, is a matter for the defence investment plan over the next few weeks. We have…”

“The last fully ministerially endorsed equipment plan the Department had was in 2023. As we were working through the following year, it did not get finalised, because we were expecting the Government of the day to commit to an increase in the budget to 2.5% by 2030. We were not able to work that through. It was not, in …”

“No, what I am saying is that the increase in the defence budget over the next 10 years is substantially larger than the shortfall that was identified in the equipment plan last publication. I think, with respect, there is not an awful lot of value in comparing that new budget against the programme from two years ago, w…”

“It is because in comparison with the last equipment plan that the NAO reported on, we now have a commitment to 2.5% of GDP earlier in this decade, 3% in the next Parliament and 3.5% by 2035, so the budget has changed quite fundamentally.”

“Across a 10-year period against the programme of record, I do not expect there will be shortfall, because—”

“To your second question on the cost of the programme against the budgetary shortfall. Both sides of that equation have changed and are changing.”

“Let me answer the second one first, which is: today, no, I can’t, because we are about to take the conclusions from the SDR into the defence investment plan work, which we have set out will take place over the next few months.”

“First, let me underline the really important contribution that civil servants across defence make in a range of roles—both to support Ministers in their responsibilities and, more generally, to support Armed Forces service personnel and their families. The SDR sets out an ambition to reduce workforce costs for the civi…”

“There have been briefings on the specific incident at Brize Norton. On how we have been approaching the issue, I think the focus in the strategic defence review on the importance of the strategic base, on the threats that we face and on the importance of resilience means that our risk appetite is not in the same place …”