Speeches by Norman.

“I thank the Leader of the House for the business. On this 24th anniversary of 9/11, I know the whole House will want to join me and, I am sure, the Leader of the House in sending our best wishes to the families and the friends of the victims of those horrendous terrorist attacks. So, too, our best wishes go to those gr…”

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

“Ms Gaston, you have been very eloquent, and I am sure that the need for prime ministerial leadership, noise and communications, a genuinely national strategy, and a more inclusive approach to bringing public opinion and specific communities with the AUKUS programme will strike a chord with others. Can you talk a little…”

“I think the special representative on AUKUS is being appointed on a year-to-year basis at the moment. I take it that from your point of view, it would be a major sign of lack of seriousness if that continued, rather than giving it a longer term focus, a much greater level of public backing and a distinguished place wit…”

“Okay, so it is a major geo-strategic defence move in the Indo-Pacific, but it is really about what the UK is, in part, as a defence power, in a way that has not been recognised by painting it as a purely Indo-Pacific initiative. Is that what you are saying?”

“We are only talking about pillar 1 at the moment. We can come to pillar 2.”

“Right, but I thought you were saying that it is a UK thing. It is not just, as it were, an Australia outpost; it is an all-UK defence initiative.”

“Dr Kaushal, if the UK starts to fall behind on the delivery of SSN AUKUS subs, what are the implications? We have heard the worry about drift, lack of leadership and all that stuff. What are the implications for the wider alliance if pillar 1 starts to run slow in the UK?”

“But we know—I think we know—that one of the worries sitting behind the Colby review is about the flow of subs coming out of the US. If we are running slow on SSN AUKUS, will it have collateral effects on that process? Will it place additional stresses on American defence infrastructure and procurement?”

“Right.”

“No, quite. You pointed out the defence implications, with the Yasen subs coming through and so on. I was trying to get to the industrial implications within the alliance of running slow on SSN AUKUS subs, which I think you have just touched on. Sophia, did you want to say anything on that?”

“Okay. Obviously, building up defence capability in Australia and at Osborne, with the capacity to scale up, is going to be enormously testing. It has been said, to me at least, that Australia does not have enough specialist engineers to maintain a Virginia-class sub at the moment, let alone to create the capability req…”

“Finally, the SDR has talked about up to 12 SSN-AUKUS subs. Is that strategic ambiguity designed to keep the other side on the hop, a reflection of the lack of leadership and budget allocation in the Government or just flagging that the Government are not really serious, because they are just putting an aspiration out t…”

“Is that how you read it, Ms Gaston?”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope you and everyone in this Chamber had a very good summer break, with just the right proportions of sun, sleep and family. If I may, let me start with a double round of congratulations: first, to the Prime Minister on his 63rd birthday this week, putting him squarely in the prime o…”

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

“As I say, I am just developing this line of thought in response to the questions you have put; it is not something I have thought through, and if necessary, I could write to the Committee separately with a suggestion in detail. The way I would contemplate it working is that the standards adviser would just have to work…”

“I think, in cases of the most egregious breaches, asking the Prime Minister to explain his decision does not fall against the tradition of the Prime Minister having unfettered—or more or less unfettered—discretion, but it does force him to be accountable even within the civil service and to his own adviser.”

“Just to respond, if I may, to the Chair’s point, my apologies; I was reading this in the context of the ministerial code, and that obviously does have a lot of material about accurate and truthful information to Parliament and the courtesy of engaging with questions rather than ducking them. On the question that Markus…”

“I completely understand. I was interpreting it in the context—”