Speeches by Healey.

“General Rob, can I ask you to deal with this first, as you are in charge of military capability?”

“I am not implying or suggesting anything at this point. I am saying what I said a moment ago: that will be the point at which to turn our attention, in my view, to these questions.”

“At present, I want to allow a really important inquiry, which Haddon-Cave is leading, to complete its course and conclude. I think that will be the moment at which there may be a case for returning to these sorts of questions.”

“David, do you want to add anything on last year?”

“I can clearly see that I may regret saying that I am an advocate of strong parliamentary scrutiny. My colleagues may want to reflect on last year’s equipment plan. At the moment, with the strategic defence review under way, it is unlikely that we will produce an equipment plan in the same way for this year.”

“I want to add an upbeat note to this: we can do this. It is not just the Defence Department and the military, but the industry too. The recent NAO report on Taskforce Kindred demonstrates that we can do things differently. We can do it rapidly and can meet the demands of supporting, in this case, Ukraine in conflict. W…”

“Let me have a look at the level of classification on that. It is not automatic that I can share everything that the Committee might want at every level of classification.”

“General Rob, this is your area.”

“Yes. To be fair to the previous Government, it is why they said, “Right, we now need a 10-year strategy to do that.””

“One of the flaws has generally been the contract-by-contract approach to industry that this country, unlike many others, has taken. This cannot work. If we want to leverage higher levels of private investment into defence, which we must do and which the Government are looking to do right across the board, we have to be…”

“The General touched on this earlier on. There is a broad recognition that—in part because in previous years we have not sufficiently invested in ensuring that we have the stockpiles we need, but in part because we have rightly donated what we can and supplied Ukraine for its fight—there is a big job to be done, both to…”

“What most keeps me awake is the positions of jeopardy and risk to which we ask our service personnel to deploy. Not all are as risky as others, but we have 10,000 UK forces deployed around the world in over 50 countries at the moment, and some are in very tight spots. It is a special responsibility: we are asking peopl…”

“I will say two brief things first, if I may. In the end, we will deal with veterans’ homelessness to the extent that we deal with rough sleeping homelessness in general. It is not inevitable, and I was proudly part of a Government until 2010 that virtually eliminated rough sleeping homelessness with the proper priority…”

“What the Chair really means is that he wants short answers from me.”

“From the conversations I have had and visits I have done, I know it is a big feature. Frankly, if you are deployed overseas and your kid’s bedroom has mould and your partner cannot get the boiler fixed, those are problems that worry you when they should not. I feel we are letting the forces down on that. It does not re…”

“I am going to be blunter. The permanent secretary has said that we were not able to get the full effect of the additional money—£400 million—that was put in under the previous Government, in a welcome move, in 2023-24 and ’24-25. With all due respect to what the General said as well—it is not either of their responsibi…”

“David, do you want to come in on that?”

“The comment you cited is a reflection of the results of what hollowing out really means in practice over a period. You are a businesswoman, Ms Scrogham; you know that, when there are pressures, the things that very easily get put to the side are the long-term investments that are part of the infrastructure that any org…”

“The short answer is yes, undoubtedly. The opportunities are there not just for full-time recruitment but for reservist recruitment. That sort of hybrid can be attractive to many people, particularly if they have skills like that. Many of those in the medical service who are full-time forces personnel work a lot of thei…”

“Theoretically we could. As I explained earlier, I have a concern about our recruitment across the board rather than one specific group, but I recognise the essential and invaluable contribution that they can make to our forces.”