Speeches by Pollard.

“The Secretary of State for Scotland and I wrote to the Scottish Government a number of months ago now, but we have still had no reply to our offer of two DTECs in Scotland. I hope that the Scottish National party MPs present will be able to hurry on their Scottish Government to give young people in Scotland the DTECs t…”

“Yes, I can. One of the key pillars of the strategic defence review is learning the lessons from Ukraine. When it comes to autonomous systems and drones, that is not just about the continuing investment that we are making in high-end drone capabilities—intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, one-way strike and ot…”

“The hon. Member knows as well as I do that we have a commitment to get back to 0.7% of GDP on international aid when we can, but I remember his party in government cutting defence spending as well. I appreciate what he is trying to say, but let us unite now in understanding that the threats we face today require invest…”

“This Government have called for a ceasefire. We have called for increased aid to get to the people who need it. We have introduced arms export controls against those weapon systems that could be used in Gaza. We of course keep all export licences under review, but I think the whole House, whichever party we are in, wan…”

“I always welcome recruits to our armed forces and defence debates, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) is absolutely welcome in our defence debate today. I say politely to the right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) that I focus a lot of attention on the hon. Member for…”

“The hon. Member, like me, represents an area with a lot of military personnel and a lot of veterans. That is why I know that she will welcome the fact that veterans spending is at a record high under this Labour Government. We are working to deliver the defence investment plan, but that has not stopped us from investin…”

“No, I need to make progress. Madam Deputy Speaker is clear that I have to finish in a moment, but I thank the right hon. Member for his interest. We know that in a more dangerous world, we need to spend more on defence. Turning to the legislation, I have heard the nonsense about there not being any defence measures in …”

“I know Members across the House will join me and the Prime Minister, who did so earlier, in sending our condolences to the family and friends of Lance Bombardier Ciara Sullivan, a gifted soldier and horsewoman who died on Friday—a young leader, a young life taken too soon. His Majesty opened his Gracious Speech with a …”

“indicated dissent.”

“I give way to my constituency neighbour.”

“We have a brilliant defence industry in Northern Ireland. That is why this Labour Government backed it with a £50 million defence growth deal that I announced only a few weeks ago in Belfast. We will continue to support businesses large and small in Northern Ireland. In the past week alone, this Labour Government have …”

“I am a big fan of Lukes—even Lukes with new beards, as the hon. Gentleman now is—but I am not going to give a running commentary on the DIP. We are working flat out to deliver it and it will be published when it is ready.”

“The right hon. Gentleman was wrong in his first intervention about Type 26 frigates, but he is right in this one. It is important that we do that, and that is why this Government are putting the armed forces covenant fully into law. If it is an issue that he feels passionate about, I can arrange a meeting for him with …”

“I will get the hon. Lady the full details, but we are backing an increase in defence spending for SMEs, with a target of increasing it by 50% in the next two years. It is our mission to do so and that is why we have stood up the new Defence Office for Small Business Growth. I will get the percentages that she asks for,…”

“That is part of the reason why I instructed the introduction of KPIs. As a Minister who signs off letters to people chasing up casework, I did not feel it was acceptable that we were saying to people—especially those with complex cases who have been waiting many years for a decision—that they did not know where in the …”

“As with all decisions on ARAP schemes, it would be made by me initially, and large decisions would then also be taken by the Secretary of State. Both John and I have made this decision to move to self-move, based on the assessment and recommendations of the teams working in this space. That partly reflects the reality …”

“Against this, not everyone has responded so far. We also know that within the cohort of eligible people, there is a cohort of people who I think we call non-progressives, in terms of not moving forward in the chain, who we have granted eligibility to but who are no longer corresponding with the Ministry of Defence. We …”

“We set out very clearly that the model for moving people ended the facilitation model of using a third party to do so. That is partly because we can see an increase in self-move already, and partly because we believe the risk profile of the cohort we are dealing with has now changed, based on the assessment in the Rimm…”

“It is perhaps worth Dominic saying how we communicated to the other agencies and other partners that we worked with. I have just spoken about how we communicated to the individuals on the dataset, but perhaps he could cover the other partners.”

“We did establish the information centre—the call centre. We did not get many calls to it. It was able to refer people to the correct information available. It was one measure, as part of a number of responses that we had, to enable people to check whether they were affected by the breach or not. As Dominic set out, I t…”