Speeches by Norman.

“I have a couple of preliminary questions, if I may, Minister. When can we expect the defence investment plan?”

“That is helpful. Thank you very much.”

“Therefore, there is not the “not made here” issue that you sometimes find with the Pentagon.”

“Minister, it is always a rule in Parliament that, when people talk about being very clear, they are slightly fibbing. Here, Vice Admiral Gardner has said that in the USA there is “absolute clarity” as to who is doing AUKUS. There is not absolute clarity, is there? We know that Bridge Colby had severe concerns, irrespec…”

“Is it a concern to you that the product could be developed but the DoD will never buy a non-American product?”

“Ministers have made it very clear that AUKUS is a national endeavour. It is national not just in the sense of being MoD and across Government, but also being across the whole of the UK in terms of the kinds of skills and talent that it requires. What is your strategy for pulling in people from other parts of the UK alo…”

“Five is not going to crack many subs. What about security clearances for the ones that they have in place or they are going to have in place? These are very high-security activities. You cannot put an engineer on a sub who has not been appropriately vetted and assessed. You are not concerned about that.”

“You do not think that is true.”

“It has been suggested to us that there are not enough engineers in Australia to service a single Virginia-class sub. What assurances have you had that there will be adequate skills and workforce capability in Australia as part of AUKUS?”

“Would it be a failure of UK policy if we did not have one or two major global drone manufacturers in this space that were UK‑owned and run?”

“It sounds like the Germans have a policy, which is to take three businesses, choose two of them and then make them into the Mercedes-Benz and the BMW of drones over time. We do not have a policy for creating internal, resilient and serious-scale capacity in drones through UK companies. Is that right?”

“We can expect a lot of investment in UK drones businesses from the UK Government and from primes supported by the Government.”

“You are going to get it, but I just want to be sure it is going to be before Christmas. That is all.”

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

“I am sure colleagues across the House will want to join me in wishing a very happy Lancashire Day to Lancastrians everywhere, and perhaps most especially to the only Lancastrian Speaker of the 158 people to have held that office—there will have to be three more before it reaches the number of Herefordians who have held…”

“I am sure that is right. I do not need to tell any of you that, over the last 30 to 50 years, different elements of the British nuclear enterprise have had a pretty inglorious career of building things up and then not leaving much impact. The same would be true in Sizewell A and Sizewell B, and people think, “Hold on a…”

“Lord Case, thank you very much for coming in today. How do you build a town up again? How do you make Barrow a rich, thriving, successful and inclusive place? A lot of people would say that it is about infrastructure and investment, but as you may know, I have a great interest in technical education, and it is also abo…”

“It is not just about sand and cement.”

“Picking up the point you made about MHCLG, Nona, it has been interesting to look at the stronger towns fund and at which areas have been successful in place making and which have not. I say this with a naked personal self-interest because Hereford is an outlier in terms of success. What has driven that is the bottom-up…”

“Thank you. My final question is as much for Ms Buckley-Irvine as it is for you, Lord Case. In a wider context, higher education policy in this country has, without deliberate intention particularly, sucked talent out of the periphery and pulled it into the major cities. The higher education participation rate in Barrow…”