Speeches by Thomas.

“Secretary of State, you are very committed to innovation and enhancing and modernising our capabilities—that is clear in the SDR. As part of defence reform, you have created and established UK Defence Innovation, UKDI, which you announced some months ago—there was a press release yesterday about that. Just to get some …”

“Who will it report to? Will it be the NAD?”

“Directly to the NAD; okay. In terms of ministerial portfolio, I assume that the NAD belongs to the defence procurement and industry Minister. Would that be correct?”

“So if you were running UKDI and you were the person in charge of that, would you be a two star or a three star?”

“If you were running UKDI and someone asked you the question, “Who do you see as your political champion? Who is the elected politician of the people in the Defence team who is driving this and championing this agenda for you?”, who would be the one person?”

“Secretary of State, we have had 40 years of peace dividend, with successive Governments enjoying that. You have inherited an alarming situation, and you have laid out during the session lots of strategic aims over the next 10 years to rectify that, including increased spending. I am grateful for all that detail and we …”

“I am going to come to all three of you and ask about other Government Departments. We have mentioned the Treasury a few times, but I think it is important that other Departments help with the issue of access to the right funding for the right companies, for the right kind of growth in the UK. I will frame this by menti…”

“It seems wild to me how quickly other Departments can move companies on to contract, whereas the MoD cannot, unless it is for Kindred to go out the door to Ukraine. We cannot use it ourselves for our own forces. I want to ask about DSIT, and perhaps I can come to you, Nicholas. There are dual-use capabilities. We all k…”

“It is obvious that with companies like Palantir— originally a defence company—providing huge services to the NHS, the lines are going to get more blurred as we go forward. Rob, would you like to come in on any of this?”

“Do you think this Government will deliver that?”

“I have a very short question for Fenella; if possible, I would like a very short answer. You spoke about desire from Governments to make quite sweeping and quite deep reforms to change some of this, which we have talked about for the last hour and a quarter. Do you think the current British Government will have the pol…”

“That is good. Thank you very much.”

“Many new mothers in Plymouth are claiming maternity allowance, not because they are unemployed, but because they do not qualify for statutory maternity pay; they may be self-employed, have recently changed jobs or have had a pregnancy-related sickness. Many of them have contacted me with concerns that maternity allowan…”

“Just to continue the theme about metrics and measuring the success of the review being executed, the SDR lays out that lethality will be improved by 10 times. General Barrons, what is lethality and how can we know if it has improved 10 times?”

“Thank you. On measuring success, Lord Robertson, can you give a sense of timing? How long until the UK should be sending the battle group that we currently send to Estonia capable of fighting with FPV drones?”

“It is a very major part of the SDR.”

“The hon. Member mentions patient outcomes, but in Plymouth we have patients awaiting assessments for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder being left in limbo and unable to move forwards. Does she agree that the current refusal by some GPs to enter into shared care agreements is effectively blocking access to a diag…”

“Admiral, we have spoken for some time about defence reform. That is under way with the military strategic headquarters and the new national armaments director. I am going to ask you how that is going to change things for the actual fighting force, as opposed to within the MOD. The context for that is that we still have…”

“You are right to highlight Kindred. You and all your staff should be very proud of what Kindred has achieved, but also acknowledge that Kindred has been a mechanism to arm the Ukrainian warfighter. That is good, but, respectfully, does not answer my question, which was about why our people are not being trained in this…”

“If I may have another question, you mentioned earlier in this Committee hearing, reflecting on previous change programmes in the MOD, that you found that resistance to change had won out. That speaks to a culture of resistance to change. Looking back now at your time in the military, why do you think there is this cult…”