Speeches by Jopp.

“I will say it, because no one else has: many happy returns for tomorrow. I genuinely thought that you were in your mid-30s—that the Secretary of State was in his mid-30s.”

“I was struck earlier when you said, “There are a million areas that I would love to get into”. I just remind you of that.”

“I am interested in this phenomenon you are describing of the complaining culture increasing rather than the behaviour declining. Is there any clustering effect around a unit or trade? Could you do the analysis from the information you get to see whether that one is becoming traditionally much more complaining than that…”

“Speaking of that, I noticed in your report that three complaints were raised against your office, and that one of them was upheld and an apology issued, which is a pretty shocking strike rate and worse than all three of the services, as far as I can work out. Can you please describe to us the nature of that complaint a…”

“There was only one of three, and you cannot tell us what it was about.”

“What interaction have you had with service families, if any?”

“The German model does not allow armed forces personnel’s family to approach their commissioner. They have to funnel it, as your remit currently is, via the serviceperson. What are the pros and cons of extending the remit of the commissioner to service families?”

“You could be quite broad in your application of the word “welfare”, could you not?”

“Rommel said that the best form of welfare is better training, because better training means fewer widows. The commissioner, by looking at the welfare brief, could be exploring equipment, as the German commissioner is. She interprets it pretty broadly, and it is a sort of “go anywhere” pass so to do.”

“T8. Tower Hamlets planning officers have rejected China’s application to build a super-embassy there, but rather than put this through the appeals process that anyone else would have to go through, the Foreign Secretary has got the Deputy Prime Minister to call in that application. My question to the Foreign Secretary …”

“I have a certain amount of sympathy for the hon. Member for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg), whom the Minister slightly fobbed off with his answer. Now that he has had a chance to calm down and check his notes, I will ask the question again on the hon. Member’s behalf: what have the Government done to advance the cas…”

“I do not know whether the Secretary of State has had a moment to read The Times this morning, but it reports that the Chancellor is using a new AI tool to answer her emails. It is 70% accurate and is “performing as good or better than existing processes”, which does not say a great deal for the ability of the Chancello…”

“We have an anomalous situation in Spelthorne whereby someone can get six London red buses on an Oyster card, but they cannot get the train out to the stations at the end of the line. Major employers, such as BP and Shepperton Studios, are sending buses up the line to bring down those people who cannot use an Oyster car…”

“The people of Spelthorne have been holding their breath during this flood season. Obviously, prevention is better than cure. Can the Minister update us on the River Thames scheme and on when a decision about whether it will go ahead and when will be taken?”

“When the Secretary of State appeared at the Defence Committee recently, he was sitting alongside his permanent secretary when the permanent secretary announced that it was his aspiration to reduce the number of MOD civil servants by 10% within this Parliament. Does the Secretary of State recognise and welcome that aspi…”

“Yesterday I spoke to an elderly gentleman who was taking himself off to his local pharmacy to receive the RSV jab, but because he was over 80 he was going to pay more than £200 for it. Will the Minister please tell us how much the RSV jab costs the Department when it is free for 75 to 80-year-olds, and how much guidanc…”

“General, just picking up on the Pumas in Brunei and Cyprus, a couple of weeks ago the Secretary of State announced that that was ending. You have said that he is being briefed this week on options to fill that capability gap. Presumably that means that you know that all those options are cheaper than Puma because, othe…”

“Building on that theme, we had the review team in and I thought—slightly disappointingly, from my point of view—they acknowledged that their riding instructions are 2.5% and that is it. The idea that it was Treasury-led rather than threat-based was something that we had a discussion about. To a certain extent, I though…”

“Can I just get the sequencing clear? You described that you were into the tendering process for the replacement of Capita across all three services and the Government have subsequently announced these, as some would say, eye-watering new targets in terms of the number of days before you get a place in training. Are you…”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”