Speeches by Martin.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. On Saturday, I met with 200 members of the Paddock Wood Hong Kong community. You are probably wondering, Sir Edward, why 200 people would give up their early Saturday evening to see me. They did so because they were worried, for themselves and for their famili…”

“How many people are needed?”

“I thank the Minister for announcing this Bill to Parliament, and I broadly welcome the provisions within it, particularly the proposal on conversion from leasehold to commonhold—I think that is excellent. By my count, there are about 4.8 million leaseholders in England. Do the Government envisage driving this process s…”

“That is the good. What is the bad? What frustrates you about the process? How would you tweak it or what tweaks have you made as you have been rolling this out?”

“So that shift is going to move from less investment, more operational—”

“Secretary of State, what does success look like for defence reform? We are probably a year, 18 months into it now.”

“Is that going to be different in one, two or five years’ time? Do we see that shifting?”

“What does the end of the defence reform process look like when it has achieved its goals?”

“Secretary of State, I can see that you want to keep this big picture. Following in that theme, I noticed across the Quads you have four budget holders and all their spend is categorised as either invest, readiness or operate, and that seems like a very sensible innovation. Could you tell me the balance or percentages o…”

“What would the percentages be across those three?”

“Can you give some specific examples?”

“Far be it from me to speak in the Minister’s place, but surely the hon. and learned Gentleman has answered his own question. In forcing local authorities that are controlled by Sinn Féin to give due regard to veterans would we not be giving away the identity of those veterans to Sinn Féin controlled councils that may p…”

“My constituent Andrew co-founded Adzuna, a job search website built on artificial intelligence. Its research shows that existing AI tools could improve the DWP’s service and create 250,000 more jobs per year. However, it is reported that the new rebuild of the service is not going to include those AI tools. Can the Sec…”

“You signed off that submission, though.”

“Have you any idea why that might be?”

“I was fascinated to read your Twitter on 17 July 2025. I will just quote from some of it. “Again & again, I said in public what very senior officials & military had briefed me. It is hugely frustrating that proved to be wrong.” You follow that up to point out that “The anger across Govt at the MoD over the breach was p…”

“So they are viewed in quite a negative way, then, because you are shunting costs on to other Departments?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I would like to start by thanking the Minister for all her support. I do not think we realised that we would spend so much time on the same Zoom calls with a vast collection of characters from across Kent and the water sector. I also thank the Secretary of …”

“And fixes our forces in Ukraine.”

“How can you be a Secretary of State if you are not a leader?”