Speeches by Norman.

“Thank you for that. A mischievous suggestion on my part is that the Secretary of State really has no choice, so you can set your terms now before you finally accept the appointment when it is offered to you. If there is anything that comes out of this hearing or if you have any further thoughts, I think he will have to…”

“Thank you very much.”

“You will be protecting those sharp edges when the civil servants try to knock them off.”

“It is also about the process, so they can improve the process going forward.”

“But it is also about naming things and assembling evidence where everyone knows what the problem is, but no one has quite got to the point of being able to state it authoritatively.”

“Did you find it odd that the medium-lift helicopter contract was announced outside the DIP, almost as a sidebar?”

“Arnab, did you want to say something? You have not spoken yet.”

“Samira, I take it that you didn’t expect that the DIP would be delayed by 10 months.”

“Have you done any work benchmarking this against other Ministries of Defence? If you have, how would you score what we are doing? Is it great, not very good, very poor? Where does it sit in that space?”

“So what has the Government done to mitigate the effect of that, if anything?”

“Andrew, I want to pick up the point that you just made, which is interesting. Obviously, the MoD understands that for some contracts you need longevity. That is why we have submarine contracts in the way that we do. Don’t you think there is something slightly odd about not extending that logic overall to military fundi…”

“Do you mean that there isn’t any execution?”

“Do you get the sense that the actual deployments and the work being done now in response to the Gulf have been affected by internal discussions about the DIP or other preoccupations within the MoD?”

“I have a general question for the panel. What is the impact of the delay in terms of our strategic posture outside industry? Do you think that there has been an effect on allies, capability, training, skills and industrial capacity?”

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

“I congratulate the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) on his excellent speech and on securing this debate, and all those who have participated in it. I thank the Minister for allowing me a few words. On your behalf, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will mention your constituent Steve Mawby, because he has been a key c…”

“Let me begin by paying tribute to President Zelensky. Thanks to you, Mr Speaker, he gave an extraordinary speech here this week. Like Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles”, it was a speech of poetry and hope, but also of steel. He showed that Ukraine, far from being bowed by Russia, is now sharing its expertise in counter-d…”

“I can understand why the Minister thinks those cases are harder; in some respects, they are less hard, because in those cases changes have been made reflecting circumstances. In the cases that I am talking about, there is a policy to discriminate against a settled group of beneficiaries. That is the bit that I think is…”

“Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would be grateful if you could clarify that the House’s position is, and has always been, that we expect Members to show courtesy by informing other Members if they intend to mention them, not their constituency, and that in the normal course of business, Members …”

“I will not detain the Minister long. If a group of trustees never pays a discretionary bonus, even though the scheme is in surplus, it starts to look like it is a policy of theirs to discriminate against a subset of their beneficiaries, and I think that is illegal. I would be grateful for his guidance on that.”