Speeches by Healey.

“It is not information that you have not been allowed; it is just that there is no comprehensive equipment plan to be assessed and audited in the way there has been before, because we have had a general election. We have a different Government, making different and bigger commitments to defence spending. We will make di…”

“You have not had what you are used to: a comprehensive equipment plan of which the NAO can do a proper assessment, including of its affordability. The reason for that is simply that the last equipment plan—and you are right, Mr Twigg, the NAO judged it to be unaffordable, as it has judged five out of the last seven equ…”

“The autumn.”

“The autumn.”

“If that is your preference, then I am happy to deal with it in that way.”

“If you will accept this, Mr Bailey, if you have a series of questions about Wedgetail in particular, rather than try to deal with them in this oral session, supply them through the Clerk and I will answer them.”

“You have heard me talking about needing to renew the nation’s contract with those who serve. If you look through the continuous attitudes survey to find the things that demoralise people most, or the factors that are most likely to make them think about leaving service early, very often, housing is at the heart of it, …”

“When you see the data or if you speak to any of those who have accepted the retention bonus, you will see that they see it as more significant than a sticking plaster, with respect, but it is not the full solution.”

“It is engineers across the services, and then particularly an Army—”

“Does the Committee have the data on the two particular retention incentives that we introduced and their impact? If you do not, we will give you the emerging data.”

“It is almost a $64 million question. Very simply—we have talked about innovation in tech, and we have talked about threats now—we are going to need a wider range of young people with particular computing, tech and cyber skills that traditionally we have not necessarily been recruiting through the basic Army, RAF or Nav…”

“We are making good progress, but we are not doing it with everyone yet. But we will.”

“I think General Nesmith can.”

“I have the time that you require.”

“You have captured the challenge. You want the British public to be aware of what we are facing and sufficiently vigilant for themselves. People are becoming more aware, for instance, of cyber-attacks, some of the threats they personally face and the services they depend on being taken out of action. As Defence Secretar…”

“If we circle round to where we started, one of the things that I think is so important about the new NATO pledge of 5% is that it provides a NATO-level focus for some of the things that you are clearly concerned about, and that we, as a nation, have not been sufficiently concerned about in recent years.”

“Frustratingly and shamefully, that has too often been a pattern. You could say the same about some of the lessons emerging from the covid inquiry—the risks were identified but the action to mitigate and deal with them was not taken. One of the things that the strategic defence review recognises is that there is a patch…”

“It is hard to be specific at this stage about what it looks like in practice. Some suggestions are set out in the strategic defence review—for instance, it recommends that we make much better use of our reservists, that we do more than we do at the moment to maintain a relationship with and an expectation of those who …”

“I would say that, for the first time for us, certainly since the end of the Cold War, the strategic defence review has underlined the potential vulnerabilities. It has drawn attention to the increasing pattern of threat or even attacks and sabotage that we have been seeing—undersea cables, networks, cyber-attacks and t…”

“So you are not talking about the Aldershot base in particular. Are you talking about civilian critical infrastructure?”