Speeches by Jopp.

“I want to go all the way back to the breach itself. Can you give us a sense of the extent to which, in your investigations and dealings, it was just assumed that it was a cock-up? Did anyone entertain the notion that it was deliberate?”

“The Secretary of State baulked at the word “equivalence”, so I will have a go with another one. Does he believe that Northern Ireland terrorists should be treated equally to Northern Ireland veterans? If he does, why does he not issue letters of comfort to those Northern Ireland veterans?”

“Now that the Secretary of State has warmed up a bit by calling the SNP a threat to our national security, will he have another go and say whether China is a threat to our national security?”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“When the Committee held its one-off session on investment in life sciences, did it unearth the reasons why Sanofi, Eli Lilly and Merck have recently chosen to disinvest in life sciences in the UK?”

“I sympathise with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell); my Spelthorne constituency is on the southern side of Heathrow airport, and the residents of Stanwell Moor, a village of some 520 homes, are half a mile away from the southern perimeter. They have put up with a lot, including appalling b…”

“On the point of global context, will he give way?”

“On that, will he give way?”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“Mr Carlier, I want to come back to “start on time and stay the course”. In that last conversation, we got a very clear analysis of what “start on time” looks like, and also of the rebalancing—that was very helpful too. In terms of “stay the course”, money is a function of political will. Do the three of you, on your st…”

“I met an SME at DSEI that asked me, “Does the British Government know it is being legged over by the primes by simply adding margin and no value on to the invoices I send them?” So there are other perspectives.”

“Andrew slightly touched on part of the answer to this question. Forgive me, I do not know whether you were in the first session, when we had BAE, Rolls-Royce and Babcock. I do not want you to bite the hand that feeds you, but are our 18 primes doing enough, or investing enough, in the skills they need in order to deliv…”

“It is nice to see the Union represented so well in the accents on display from our witnesses today.”

“That might be a question we can ask when we are out there, in order to get a comparison.”

“Do you have a sense of how long it takes in Australia?”

“Can you put a figure on that? That it used to take x months, but it is now taking y weeks.”

“Well, none of you is jumping forward particularly quickly, I notice.”

“Thank you for coming to bring your expertise today. As a Committee we were in Washington earlier in the year, and we were given quite a rosy picture by the embassy staff who had a specialist in getting on the ITAR train, but we equally have heard—within our own constituencies, I am sure, and when we were over in the St…”

“The hon. and learned Member said he met an asylum seeker at Napier barracks who said that they just wanted to be safe. Assuming that they had come from France, did he investigate with that person why they were unsafe in France?”

“The previous Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), was so excited to hear from me about Manor Mead special school in my constituency that she undertook to visit it. Sadly, she had to cancel that visit and has now clearly moved on to other things, so would the new Schools…”