Speeches by Healey.

“Many things become possible, but not everything, and we will settle those in the detailed work that we have now started to produce a defence investment plan. On drones, you may have seen that autonomy, innovation and new tech, combined with some of the heavy metal of our traditional platforms, was very much a theme of …”

“Many things become possible because of the record increase in defence investment in this Parliament, which we have not seen since the end of the Cold War—”

“I think we are less than a week since the NATO summit and the agreement. The Committee will have had the guidance from NATO, because I promised to send it to the Chairman ahead of this session. By the way, that NATO guidance has not been published at the moment, but it gives an indication of the way that NATO is lookin…”

“The total cost is £101 million a year. That is less than 0.2% of the defence budget. At net present value, the total cost of it is £3.4 billion. I have to say, Mr Norman, that for something that sits at the very heart of our unique US-UK defence, intelligence and security relationship—we do things together on and from …”

“As I think has been confirmed in the House, the cost of the Diego Garcia settlement will be split between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.”

“Especially because what was in that letter would be accurate and precise. What we found when we were preparing to release the strategic defence review was that the Department had no established systematic procedure for ensuring that those who need and should have access in advance to something as strategic and importan…”

“If there is anything wrong, I absolutely want to know about it.”

“Mr Norman, I am actually not clear what letter you are referring to that I have written to the Committee about this, especially—”

“I am not looking to make disparaging remarks about the previous Government; I am stating facts and I am drawing differences. But on the important question of any ministerial responsibility and accountability to Parliament, Mr Norman, you and I are entirely on the same page. You have my commitment; you had it in Novembe…”

“What you should expect, what the country can look forward to and what Defence can plan on for the first time is 10 years of rising defence investment—a certainty and a profile that no one serving in uniform today and no one working in Main Building today has ever in their career experienced. In this Parliament, we have…”

“On spending and the NATO summit, for the first time, the 32 NATO allies have recognised, as we argued in our election manifesto, in the strategic defence review and in the recent national security strategy, that an essential part of national security is not just what the Armed Forces and Defence do, but what we do on n…”

“I will start with the strategic defence review, because that will set the nature and framework of the exchanges that I will have with you and your Committee in the coming years of this Parliament. The strategic defence review represents a generational shift in the approach to defence and a determination to move to warf…”

“I think your Committee members, particularly those elected for the first time a year ago this week, will also appreciate that the details of plans that previous Ministers in a previous regime might have had responsibility for and published are rather less relevant than the decisions that we have already taken this year…”

“You asked for a more strategic view of what, as a new Government with a newly elected mandate, the new, different vision of defence to respond to the new-era threats that we face is. A month ago today, we published the strategic defence review, which sets the vision and the framework within which we will now pursue the…”

“By all means. Will you permit me a segue at this point to offer a few opening remarks, which you invited me to do before the Committee? That is not least because you said the Committee wants detail and I can provide a list of the detail of the ways that we as a Government, ministerial team and Department have been deli…”

“If you have written to me with that compilation that you have just put to me, I apologise, because it has not yet come to me. I will respond to that immediately, but will speak on one or two of them now. The latest version of the Armed Forces continuous attitude survey was published in May. It is available to you and y…”

“It is very good to be with you, Chair. Thank you for your welcome, and I thank your Committee members for the passion, the expertise and the challenges that they bring to defence business in the House. You invited me to say a few opening words, but perhaps I will come back to that, after trying to deal with the series …”

“You’re losing your members, Mr Chairman.”

“If I was in the Travellers Inn in Parkgate—which you are familiar with because it is close to where you grew up—and I said “soon”, they would understand what I was talking about.”

“You are dead right, Mr Roome: there are a lot of defence businesses and investors out there that are making a really useful contribution to the work that we are doing on the industrial strategy. It is well advanced, and the answer to your question is “soon”.”