Speeches by Williams.

“The Capita contract relates to Army recruitment. We are currently well advanced in the replacement project for that contract, the armed forces recruitment project, which will operate on a tri-service basis. We are running through the final stages of commercial engagement and expect to be in a position to place a contra…”

“To your first point there, picking up on a specific question from your opening remarks, it was not intended on my part to be an announcement of a new programme to reduce civil service headcount. We have been having discussions over pretty much my entire time as Permanent Secretary about the right level of staffing, wit…”

“Let me clarify my remarks at the last hearing. I was looking to give the Committee a sense, from a personal perspective, of the likely trajectory of civil service headcount within the Department but, just to be clear, no formal targets have been agreed within the Department. We will work through a series of work strand…”

“How we do that assessment, for me, is something that we want to work through, building on the approach that Mr Start has set out, through the work to set out our new defence industrial strategy.”

“You are referring particularly, although maybe not uniquely, to a letter that was sent to me and one of our non-executive directors by 60 or so senior women in the Ministry of Defence about their collective experiences. I am really grateful to them for the courage they have shown in raising those issues. The kind of be…”

“I wonder whether I might look to Mr Start to talk about the approach that is being taken in DE&S, which is a good example of the approach that we are looking at more generally and then, if you need some capping comments, either Ms Blackmore or I will fill in.”

“I might look to my colleagues to the left, who are both setting the requirement and then buying.”

“Yes, you can. It is that, but you can also look at the economic impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or imagine what the economic impact of a conflict of whatever nature over Taiwan might be—I am speculating there. The relative investment in not only defence, but national security, in deterrence to avoid some of thos…”

“It is really important for two reasons. First, if I build on my previous remarks about deterrence, I mentioned in passing that national resilience is part of that. That is not just about investment in infrastructure or how we are thinking about cyber or critical national infrastructure. It is as much about societal rea…”

“Just very quickly on your reference to deterrence, for me, deterrence works at a number of levels. It is a combination of our independent nuclear deterrent, our allies and partners, and particularly our membership of NATO. Yes, it is about the military capability that we have. It is also about the political willingness…”

“The Ministry of Defence is a large operational delivery Department, with just under 60,000 civil servants. The number of SCS we have, just under 1%, benchmarks well against the DWPs and HMRCs of this world. In percentage terms, it is quite a thin top layer. Nevertheless, the number of SCS posts has grown over the last …”

“Again, I would say that is a political choice. The Government’s commitment is to set a pathway to 2.5% in the spring. We will see how quickly we get to that level. It is in the nature of a range of our defence programmes, and the nuclear deterrent is probably the principal one, that we think not one Parliament ahead, b…”

“I will not say, “Let’s see what comes”, tempting though it is. Let me build on my previous point. If I had a concern in the reverse direction, when the review was set up, it was that, in the first phase of information gathering, the Department was invited to submit, alongside lots of other partners, the industry and th…”

“The cost of operations wherever counts towards the NATO spend target.”

“No, the basis for Ukraine would be the same under—”

“In the way in which NATO spend is counted, the spend that we make on operations, both in support of Ukraine and, indeed, elsewhere, counts towards our declarations to NATO. This Government have confirmed that we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. While we are spending that sort of money on Ukraine, it will c…”

“It is 2.3% or possibly 2.29% of GDP.”

“I absolutely understand that. To build on the general’s earlier point, we have not shared a secret version of a 10-year equipment programme with the SDR reviewers. We are responding to questions from them such as, “If we recommended X, what would that cost? If we recommended Y, what would that mean in terms of equipmen…”

“Do you want to have a go at that? Sorry, my hesitation is just that the 10-year programme is the end state for us of the work flowing out of the SDR in terms of the capability choices that the Government want to make, alongside the funding allocation over that period. The current spending review will run until the end …”

“I do not particularly want to pre-empt that publication, although, depending on when we get a clear idea of timelines, we may be able to give the Committee a private update. In headline terms, the number of reds has increased by a couple, from five to seven. Otherwise, it is broadly static.”