Speeches by Norman.

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“Arguably, that accountability is reduced by having parliamentary votes on these matters.”

“Thank you all very much for your contributions. I have a very simple framework question. What has come through overwhelmingly from what you have said is how remarkably unserious we are when facing the challenges in front of us and the nature of the escalating defence and security context. Without being too crass about …”

“And that might, in fact, increase the likelihood of war.”

“I just ask the question. Thank you very much.”

“I have a tiny follow-up question. When a drone company tries to indigenise in this country a drone business that is a sovereign capability of another country, should we regard that as adding to our sovereign capability or as a potential strategic weakness?”

“Sir Hew, do you want to come in on anything?”

“It sounds like the defence and security strategies we have are not only failing to acknowledge the point about the substantive requirements, but are just the wrong shape and design to hit the concerns that are being articulated by this panel.”

“I would be very interested to see that, if you want to send it in.”

“Have you written about that?”

“So there is compute, energy and nuclear. Ed, do you want to add on sovereign capability? I've said nuclear, but maybe there is a question mark on that.”

“Okay, that is incredibly helpful. I am going to reverse the order of questions that the Clerks have written—not that I ever ask those questions anyway—and start with the sovereign defence and sovereign capability question. Dr Dear, you have talked about AGI and intelligence—of course, there is a whole series of equivoc…”

“It also does not seem as though we have the strategic intelligence to understand that there are different ways of thinking about model construction and that, for example, China is adopting different approaches from America and that there may therefore be a spectrum in which we could play effectively with sovereign abil…”

“Arguably, the idea of a platform is not compatible with the speed that you are describing. I have a couple of questions related to defence capability and sovereign power. Sir Hew, before we start on that, can I ask you something that picks up on what you said earlier about law? I should declare interests of my own in t…”

“So you are definitely in the three out of 10 area.”

“Great. Dr Dear, maybe you could answer next, as I think we probably know where Ed is coming from.”

“But in terms of actually doing things—”

“I thank the Leader of the House very much for the business. As the House will know, this is the week of Holocaust Memorial Day, and I am delighted that we will be debating it in this Chamber later today. I am sure colleagues will have visited the extraordinary exhibition of shoes in Portcullis House. I visited Auschwit…”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“No, but you are in charge of the national Defence Strategy with No. 10. They have talked about a national conversation, it is inter-departmental and these Departments are looking to you to establish the outlines of this national Defence Strategy. I am asking you what has been done and you are not able to answer. I woul…”