Speeches by Martin.

“Less than three weeks ago, the Home Secretary whipped her Back Benchers against new clause 43 to the Crime and Policing Bill, which had cross-party support and would have criminalised the harassment of women and girls. Her Ministers promised at the Dispatch Box and elsewhere that the new clause was not necessary becaus…”

“What about your strategy?”

“Does the Minister think it more or less likely that, as a result of the American airstrikes, Iran will get a nuclear bomb?”

“With the purchase of the F-35As, we are in effect talking about ending up with broadly 90% of the carrier variants of the F-35s that we were going to purchase. Does that decision, which I support, in any way impact on the capabilities of the carriers, their ability to deploy full air wings and all that kind of stuff?”

“In effect, because you do not have Bs in your training unit.”

“Was that the £30,000 RAF one?”

“How well does the UK measure up against targets?”

“As you know, Secretary of State, the UK, as with all other NATO countries, has to meet NATO capability targets. How would you say we are doing against our NATO capability targets at the moment? And when do you think we might meet them?”

“So you would argue that there is some jam today.”

“Sure.”

“That is a great segue to my last question, which is really about the philosophy of the SDR. The SDR is about a transformation of defence to a hybrid force and increasing lethality. In conceptual terms, it is a great document. In reality, however, with the resource profile, the inputs—inputs of course do matter—we are r…”

“You probably have the same briefings that we have. We have received briefings that some of our NATO allies are concerned about Britain’s ability to meet the targets, particularly when other NATO allies are also failing to meet theirs. The beauty of the alliance is that we all work for each other in collective defence, …”

“It is actually worse than just importing goods from the settlements. We are receiving tariffs from their import, so the British Government are making money from that import of goods. Would the Minister speak to that in his closing remarks?”

“It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cramlington and Killingworth on bringing forward this Bill. By reducing the funding termination agreement period from seven years to two, the Bill aims to make secure 16-to-19 academies more cost effective and adaptable, givin…”

“That’s really interesting. So we don’t really have the financial architecture in place to convert increased defence expenditure into capability without causing massive inflation.”

“Nicholas mentioned a few there—there is Anduril, Shield AI and Helsing, and a few other examples where it has worked. Do we have a sense of what the magic formula is there and why it has worked?”

“See this as a therapy session.”

“I would like to ask a few questions about VC funding specifically. I will start with you, Nicholas. How would you summarise the challenges to VC companies getting into the defence and security sector? Can you give me some colour? I am thinking of things you have been personally involved in that have been deeply frustra…”

“As someone who is about to welcome their second child into the world—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you very much. I am delighted to be discussing parental leave and I welcome this review. The Minister said that one objective of the review is to reset the relationship between men and women—I paraphrase—and to make…”

“It is fascinating that the vast majority of the tourism businesses in West Dorset are microbusinesses. Can my hon. Friend think of a worse policy for those businesses than reducing the NI threshold to the level it was reduced to in the Budget? Can he think of a policy that would do more economic damage to the hospitali…”