Strengthening Community Resilience

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, and I absolutely join him in praising Ben Brook and his team in Warwickshire; they did incredibly important and difficult work over the summer. My hon. Friend may have seen that last week the Prime Minister hosted our inaugural wildfire summit, at which he announced that military planes and helicopters will take to the skies to fight wildfires for the first time, as we prepare for future extreme weather driven by climate change. In his announcement, the Prime Minister paid tribute to those who put on a uniform and serve in our fire and rescue services for the incredibly important work that they do, including, clearly, in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

If rule No. 1, as far as resilience is concerned, is “be prepared”, does the Minister agree that rule No. 2 should be “have a reliable back-up system”? In that connection, does he share my concern that both in the field of telephony and in the field of banking, back-up systems do not seem to exist? In particular, were the Government consulted before British Telecom decided not only to move to an internet-based telephone system, but to dismantle the copper wire system, which could have given us useful resilience in an emergency?

[Dan Jarvis]

I broadly agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s rule No. 2, and he is right to stress the importance of having back-up systems. Essentially, a guiding principle in this campaign is making sure that households have their own back-up systems, but he is right to say that the Government need to think about the bigger picture, and to ensure resilience across our critical national infrastructure and in the areas of business and commerce to which he refers. I can give him an assurance that the Government work very closely with partners in the private sector, and various forums provide opportunities to engage on these matters. We take them very seriously, but I will look more carefully at the point that he has made.

International Update

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee who oversaw the publication of the Russia report as soon as the Committee was reconstituted, may I ask the Prime Minister to explain to the House exactly how he thinks Russia was able to alter the result of the referendum?

[The Prime Minister]

I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I did not say that. I did not at any point say that it altered the result. I simply come back to what I said earlier: it is a matter of record that Russia has sought to interfere in elections—the 2019 general election—and we think it is inconceivable that this was the first time.

Civil Service Pension Scheme

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I will share with the House one particular case that is representative of many. My constituent, Mrs Gillian Pothecary, lost her husband almost a year ago. She wrote to me in July about her valiant but so far unavailing quest to obtain a civil service widow’s pension. She wrote:

“Throughout this process, I have been given differing information about the status of my claim…More recently, I was told that I was at the top of the list for assessment, only to then be informed that some of my paperwork had become out of date and needed to be resubmitted, causing further delay.”

I was very impressed to get a reply, when I forwarded this on, from someone holding the exalted position of deputy director of civil service and Royal Mail pensions in the Cabinet Office. She said:

“Mrs Pothecary’s…case falls under the commitment to be fully resolved by early September at the absolute latest. Capita has assured me that her case is on their escalation log and has been flagged for priority handling.”

I rang up Gill just before coming into this debate and—you’ve guessed it, Dame Siobhain—she has not yet received her pension. She is now dipping into her savings and working longer hours at the supermarket.

Rewiring the State

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his continued work in this important area and on the environment. Tackling the threats posed by climate change requires consistent and co-ordinated action across every Department. From £710 million to fund upgrades to our school estate to the construction of nine new reservoirs across the country, this Government are taking the necessary steps to ensure that our country is more resilient and our communities are kept safe. He will have heard the Prime Minister refer to an upcoming wildfire summit. I hope that he will participate fully in that. I will return to him on our commitment on the national adaptation plan.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Normally when functions and roles are devolved from London to another area, we see a diminution in the capital and an increase in the area concerned. There is an obvious danger of duplication by having a No. 10 North and a No. 10 South, so will the First Secretary, whom I congratulate on her appointment, be transparent about this and agree that the public should be able to see how many people are working permanently in No. 10 North, how many are working permanently in No. 10 South, and how many are going back and forth between the two?

[Louise Haigh]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that traditionally the model of moving people or roles out of London has meant duplication in the centre. That is exactly what we are attempting to fix. We want new senior roles across the country. I pay tribute to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), who created the Darlington campus. That campus is a proper model of delivery, with senior policy making and civil servants in Darlington, based around the Treasury there. It has helped to deliver and change decision making, and that is exactly what No. 10 North is attempting to do.

Direction of Government

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As I said to the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), I believe we need to do more to support the businesses that my hon. Friend talked about, and there will be more to come. The cost of doing business is too high. As I have said this afternoon, energy bills are too high for businesses and households, and we need the determination to bring those bills down and lower the cost of doing business. There will be more to come on that. This will be a pro-business and pro-small-business Government. Nobody should make any mistake about that. The approach that I led in Manchester was all about the public taking control of what they need to do in order to make a place functional for businesses and people. That is Manchesterism, and that is what we will bring nationally. It is all about setting businesses up to succeed. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to improve that business, and her high streets, too.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As someone who was politically active in the Thatcher decade, may I gently remind the Prime Minister that it was the period that she did so well in because the Labour party was in a terrible state? For example, it embraced unilateral nuclear disarmament at the height of the second cold war—mercifully, a position that it has long left behind.

I welcome what the Prime Minister said about wishing to work consensually and across party lines. In that spirit, will he look again at the shameless gerrymandering around the local government reorganisation? At the beginning of the process, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) promised us that there would be no unnecessary fragmentation or boundary changes without strong reason for them, yet my constituency is being torn apart, with the Waterside, which has looked towards the New Forest for centuries, being taken over by Southampton. The same is happening elsewhere. That was not in his party’s manifesto. It is a good opportunity for the Prime Minister to show that he means what he says about consensus.

[The Prime Minister]

I will take on that challenge and ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to consider what the right hon. Gentleman has said this afternoon. These changes do benefit from having the maximum consensus. On the Thatcher Government, we will probably have to agree to disagree, but I make one observation: we have a public housing stock that has 1.5 million fewer homes than in the ’80s and ’90s, and we now have 1.5 million people on housing waiting lists up and down the country. I would put it to him that that is a cause of further public cost, in terms of the number of people who are in a crisis situation. I think we can do better. I have been prepared to criticise the Government that I was in; maybe one day he might criticise the one that he was in, and then we will be able to find some solutions.

Payment Scheme

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Yes. That is why the scheme is designed for both infected and affected people—and not just spouses; it includes children and siblings, and I am proud that it also includes carers. We think about the awful injustice for those who were infected, but we also remember the effect on their families and those around them. The hon. Member makes a powerful point.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

On that point, I acknowledge the huge amount of effort, attention and concentration that the Minister has put into the scheme. I am therefore slightly surprised that the Haemophilia Society, which is a great champion for the community, says that in its opinion, care provided by family members is not being fairly compensated. It says that the scheme does not currently enable carers to make an adequate claim for the full impact of the care they provided, and that it does not sufficiently reflect the financial and personal sacrifices made by those who have delivered that care over decades, with particular reference to children and their educational sacrifices. I know there are no easy answers to this, but has the Minister had an interaction with the Haemophilia Society, which is well placed to represent the affected community?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

As the right hon. Gentleman can imagine, I have interacted with the Haemophilia Society and many other charities over the past two years. It is important to mention that the scheme does include carers; I am perfectly willing to look at what the Haemophilia Society is saying about the precise package for carers, but the fundamental point is that carers should be recognised, and they are within the scheme.

Historical Forced Adoption

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and for the work that she did as children and families Minister; she did a lot on this, and I pay tribute to her for it. She is right about the support that is needed, particularly specialist therapy; I am in no doubt about that. It is important that we are raising funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund to £55 million. Across this House, we need to keep talking to those affected to make sure that we get this right.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has done a good deed today, and he is deservedly getting the united response from the House that he requested. He mentioned the admirable idea of putting the documentation online; will there be a facility on the website for people to upload their own stories, if they wish to do so?

One aspect that is being somewhat skirted around is why this happened in the first place. The answer appears to be that there was too much state respect for dogmatic and fundamentalist interpretations of religious doctrine. Can we look at our society today and say that there is not still, in some parts of that society, too much religious repression of women, and too much respect for cultural sensitivities, which are preventing us from tackling that?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, we can and should say that, and I thank the right hon. Member for reminding us that this is not all about the past. If we mean what we say, we have to tackle the present as well. I was struck not just by the dogmatic adherence to views at the time, but the complete lack of empathy, the complete lack of feeling. That is something else. That goes beyond dogma; that is just how human beings treat each other. I have had examples described to me of individual human beings dehumanising other individual human beings, when they did not have to. They chose to act in that way, adding even more grief and pain to what was an awful injustice in any event.

As for the uploading of stories, there will be the facility for testimonials to be there—obviously, only if people want to share them. We are looking at how that could be done.

Cabinet Office

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

This debate is very timely, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing it. In recent months, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy has been joined by an ever-growing and increasingly anxious chorus of voices despairing at the Government’s failings on national security. Lord Robertson, who this Government commissioned and asked to lead the strategic defence review, warned in April that Britain’s security was “in peril” due to the “corrosive complacency” that was being shown towards defence. He went so far as to accuse the Treasury of “vandalism”.

Earlier this month, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey) resigned as Defence Secretary. He was clear that the reason was a defence investment plan—which, it appears, The Times newspaper has also had sight of—that did not give the armed forces “the resources they need”. He was followed out of the door by the Armed Forces Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who said that the Government’s plans were

“neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded.”

Given that the hon. Member had served in our armed forces, one would have thought that his warning might have been heeded.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Bearing in mind an item that has appeared in the news reports today, does my hon. Friend agree that either the right hon. Gentleman or the hon. and gallant Gentleman to whom she has just referred would be a far more suitable future Secretary-General of NATO than the present Prime Minister, whose lack of proper funding of a defence policy—among other deficiencies—has led him to be looking for a new job?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Dame Angela Eagle)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing the debate. He will, of course, know the importance to this Government of the topics discussed today. Keeping the country safe is the first responsibility of any Government, and as the world changes, the way we uphold that responsibility must change with it. This adaptability is set out in the national security strategy, published last year at the beginning of the NATO summit in The Hague. Alongside it was the commitment to spend 5% of GDP on national security by 2035—3.5% for core defence spending and 1.5% for broader resilience and security spending.

The Majority of the UK’s hard national security capabilities, such as the recently announced 150,000 drones that the Ministry of Defence will supply to Ukraine by the end of the year, are funded and delivered by line departments. The Cabinet Office’s role is ensuring the effective running of government, and co-ordinating cross-cutting policies and operations. More than 90% of the national security and resilience budget for the Cabinet Office is therefore spent on the day-to-day running costs of the National Security Secretariat. That is a vital body that works with Departments to implement the national security strategy. It develops, leads and delivers policy across Government, and aligns, convenes and brokers the collective efforts of our stakeholders and partners on all aspects of national security. It is the nerve centre of our collective cross-Government security response. However, that spending it is not by any means the vast amount that is spent on national security and resilience across Government.

The Cabinet Office does invest in some assets. For example, the National Situation Centre, which is highly regarded internationally, provides situational awareness for crisis response by bringing together data analysis and expertise. The emergency alerts system is one of many public warning and informing capabilities that the UK Government, devolved Governments and category 1 responders have at their disposal. Since its launch, it has become an integral part of keeping the public safe, allowing the quick sharing of lifesaving information, and it is regularly tested to ensure its resilience. The UK Resilience Academy forms an important part of the skills and engagement offer. It was established in April last year to build the skills that are needed across the whole of society to respond to emergencies.

The national security strategy consolidates various reviews and strategies related to national security into a single, coherent framework. It outlines the strategic context, identifies the main challenges we face as a nation in an era of radical uncertainty, and establishes the framework that the UK uses to guide its actions both at home and abroad. It is both a clear-eyed and a hard-edged plan to deal with the breadth of the challenges that we face, setting out a long-term vision for how we will do three crucial things: protect security at home, promote strength abroad, and increase our sovereign and asymmetric capabilities.

The Government have developed an internal implementation approach to ensure the accountability and delivery of the national security strategy, as well as ensuring that we adapt to a volatile geopolitical landscape. That is why our national security is not the remit of one Department or Minister. We have identified specific objectives, and have assigned lead and assisting Departments to deliver them. Departments are responsible for periodic reporting on progress, and taking action to address any deficiencies.

The Government will continue to update the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy on progress, through formal public sessions and confidential sessions where appropriate. As part of the implementation of the strategy, we continue to make ourselves a harder target for hostile actors who seek to exploit our open, democratic society. That includes bolstering our cyber and economic security defences, which are essential to the fostering of innovation and growth.

Additionally, we are strengthening the defence of our borders and territorial waters.

In April the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), exposed covert Russian undersea activity, paying tribute to the readiness of the UK’s armed forces to respond. In May, Baroness Lloyd, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, outlined DSIT’s plans to present new legislative proposals to modernise and strengthen penalties for malicious activity impacting our undersea infrastructure.

As I am sure events in recent weeks have made clear, our overriding priority is ensuring stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic area, starting with our unwavering support for Ukraine. In total, the UK has committed up to £25 billion for Ukraine: £16 billion in military support, £5.6 billion in non-military support, and £3.5 billion in UK export finance. We continue to go further, renewing and deepening our key alliances, particularly those with the United States and the European Union. All this work is bolstered by new international partnerships, especially in emerging policy areas such as technology—for example, the UK-India technology security initiative and the UK-Japan frontier technology partnership.

It remains the Government’s intention to publish the defence investment plan before the NATO summit, which will take place on 7 July. The plan will set out much of our future strategy when it comes to how we will protect and defend our country. Let me give Members some idea of its focus. We will rebuild our core defence industrial base, focusing on achieving greater resilience in our stockpiles and supporting warfighting readiness.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am going to ask the rather obvious question. Given that the plan is to be put forward under the existing Prime Minister, does that mean that if the new Prime Minister wishes to change it, it will be changed, or will the commitment that is to be made to the forthcoming NATO Assembly have to stand as it is?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

As always, the right hon. Gentleman has asked a very important question. I think the key thing to understand is that this work is ongoing, and that there will be co-operation between the current Prime Minister and—I do not want to get ahead of what Labour party members might decide to do—whoever the next Prime Minister will be. I hope that gives the right hon. Gentleman some assurance.

Beyond defence, we will identify, protect and cultivate other sovereign capabilities, such as foundational industries and frontier technologies, that are critical to our industrial base and national competitiveness. I was interested by what my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington said in this connection. We are in close contact and collaboration with states such as Canada to learn as much as we can about how they do resilience, although I might gently suggest that the Canadian landmass is slightly different from the UK landmass when it comes to thinking of organising a defence for it, and slightly different approaches will clearly have to be taken, given the geographical realities. However, there is much on which we can co-operate.

Infected Blood Compensation Scheme

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Like others before me, I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). He is the driving force behind the all-party parliamentary group, which has done so much to highlight this terrible tragedy.

I was struck by what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said about having been alerted to this as far back as 2010. In my case, it was not quite so far back; it was 2015, but that is still more than a decade ago. I spoke in this House about the case of my constituent Lesley, which illustrated how long it often took for victims of contaminated blood to discover that they indeed had been infected. I pointed out that in 1970, she and her future husband had been involved in a serious road traffic accident, and she had to receive no fewer than 44 pints of blood. For many years, she knew nothing about the fact that she had been infected, although over those years she had many visits to GPs and hospitals, with numerous symptoms of illness, and considerable pain and suffering. It was only in 2014 that she finally discovered that she had been infected with hepatitis C by NHS contaminated blood.

Another example of a constituent who is in regular contact with me and my office is Stephen. He came to see me in August 2023. He was diagnosed as haemophiliac as an eight-year-old in the late 1960s. He thinks that he was infected with hepatitis C in 1974, which persisted for nearly 15 years before it eventually cleared from his system. He says that although it did not inhibit his professional life too badly, it had a deep impact on his personal life. He was married in 1986, and he was constantly having to have testing for fear every time that he had to have a transfusion that he might be being infected. He was told in quite firm terms not to have children, and he said that he was often too scared to have treatment. Once he had quite a bad leg injury, which led to complications, and his fear of treatment led to him being effectively disabled for a period of time.

Stephen’s brother’s case was far worse, because he was one of about 400 chronic hepatitis C victims of this scandal. To this day, he can only effectively live on a day-to-day basis; he cannot plan because the complications of his infection mean that whether he will be able to do something will depend on how he is on the day in question.

In Portcullis House on Tuesday, we benefited from briefings from a number of organisations that are concerned with this scandal. I will briefly touch on a couple. One was a campaign about a condition of which I was previously unaware, called thalassaemia. This rare blood disorder requires sufferers to have a transfusion every three to four weeks—a blood transfusion every month. These people are at a very high risk of having been infected, and many of them were. These regular blood transfusions deposit more iron into the major organs, which, coupled with the hepatitis C virus with which they had been infected, maximises the prospect of their developing cirrhosis and liver cancer.

The drug interferon has been mentioned a couple of times already. I am old enough to remember when interferon was first regarded as a great breakthrough in the treatment of some cancers. Sadly, like so many medical interventions, it has side effects that can be harmful. Taken in combination with what these patients are also suffering from by way of infection and, in the case of thalassaemia sufferers, the build-up of iron, the interferon used in their cases also has complicating adverse effects. That was a point impressed on me at the briefing by the representative of the Terrence Higgins Trust, who pointed to the additional negative impact of treatment with interferon, which was for a significant time the only option available for HIV-positive patients.

I am indebted to the Haemophilia Society for briefing material that I hope will simply add to the excellent statement and laying of the groundwork in the opening speech so ably delivered by the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst. The Haemophilia Society draws attention to one or two specific points that I would like to put before the House.

We all acknowledge that the infected blood community has fought valiantly for the truth for decades. We also accept that the Government are clearly committed to compensation following the inquiry. The debate now focuses on how to deliver that commitment and how to make sure that people are compensated without further delay and that the compensation is truly fair.

In this connection, I would like to make reference to a detailed opportunity I had virtually to participate in exchanges with senior people—in fact, the most senior people—at the Infected Blood Compensation Authority back in June last year. Again, that was at the initiative of the chairman of the APPG, the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst. My participation was online, but I was able, as was he, to discuss all these matters with the interim chairman at the time, Sir Robert Francis; the chief executive, David Foley; and other key officials.

In particular, we were able to talk directly with members of IBCA’s cases team. I must say that I, for one, found them to be both compassionate and empathetic. I was very impressed with the calibre of people who are involved in this agency, and I am hopeful that if they are given the direction they need and the resources they require, they can succeed. I got the feeling that this is an organisation that really does want to help the people it has been set up to support, not an organisation that wants to be in any way obstructive. I hope everything can be done to encourage it. I know that it is operating in uncharted waters with a tragedy of this magnitude, but I hope it can succeed in overcoming the obstacles that have been causing the delays.

More than two years have passed since the Government accepted the need for compensation, but the majority of eligible people are still waiting to begin their claims. That includes infected people not previously on a support scheme and affected people—namely, the partners and family members of those who are sadly no longer with us. We have heard concern from the community that progress has slowed while IBCA works out how to grapple with these categories of claims in a process that it calls test and learn.

Every month of delay matters, because many infected and affected people are elderly or seriously ill. We would like to know from the Minister his latest assessment of the timescale by which IBCA will compensate each of the categories of claimant. IBCA’s latest figures show that just 30 affected people have been paid compensation so far. Over 14,000 affected people are waiting to start their claim. At what point does the Minister expect IBCA to truly start making a dent in those very large numbers? In particular, we would like to know what specific steps are being taken to accelerate compensation payments over the next 12 months.

Finally, there is an issue to do with claims that relate to the estates of those who died before the scheme commenced. Those who survived until the scheme commencement are rightly entitled to financial loss compensation from the date of their infection right up to the national age of healthy life expectancy that they should have had. In contrast, those who died before the scheme started have their financial loss calculated only from the date of their infection until the date of their death, which may have been a lot earlier than the normal expectation of a term of life that would have been their lot had this catastrophe not befallen them.

There can be no doubt that this creates a stark and unjust two-tier system. Those who died earlier will often have suffered the same or worse than those who died later, and the financial loss to their estate is clear, yet the Government’s position seems to be that those killed by their infections the soonest deserve less compensation and recognition than those who survived for longer. In many cases, this amounts to a very substantial reduction in compensation—potentially decades of lost earnings. Bereaved families should not receive lesser justice because their loved one died before the scheme was established. The result is that timing, not harm, is determining value, meaning that compensation depends on whether someone survived long enough to see the scheme introduced. As I said, this is about avoiding a two-tier compensation system.

In conclusion, I would like the Minister to explain how it can be in accordance with natural justice for those who died earlier due to their infection to receive less compensation than those who died later from a similar infection. Will the Government commit to reviewing their position on estate claims, to ensure families are not disadvantaged because their relative died earlier?

Belfast: Violent Disorder

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. There will be agreement and recognition that activity online can provide extraordinary opportunities and benefits, but clearly it can also provide a toxic environment that drives the kind of criminality we have seen in recent times.

I hope my hon. Friend will understand that we are working at pace across Government through the defending democracy taskforce, and working with colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and right across law enforcement, as well as with operational partners, to make sure that activity online is monitored in a way that will best enable us to reduce and eliminate the kind of activity she referred to. She will understand that that is not an easy thing to do. We are constantly looking for the social media companies and the tech companies to exercise greater responsibility, but I assure her of the importance we attach to these matters. I have had meetings recently with ministerial colleagues to look at what more we can do, and I assure my hon. Friend that we are looking into that carefully.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Minister share my concern that, irrespective of the personal motivation of the perpetrator, the circumstances by which he came into this country send a signal to those ideological movements abroad that wish us harm that there is a very easy back door by which they can infiltrate this country? If an operation of that sort is mounted in the future, what sort of violent response will there be to a spectacular terrorist attack that could and should have been prevented by secure borders?

[Dan Jarvis]

As always, the right hon. Gentleman raises a very thoughtful series of questions. I know he will understand that I am not going to get into the detail of the potential motivations of the alleged offender in the particular circumstances, but his general challenge is the right one. It is the job of this Government, and of any Government, to ensure that the United Kingdom is the hardest possible target for our adversaries and for those who would do us harm.

The right hon. Gentleman knows, from his previous service on the Intelligence and Security Committee, a lot about the nature and range of threats that we face as a country. I hope he also knows that this Government, like the last Government, do everything they possibly can to make sure that where there are particular points of vulnerability, we are bearing down on them, and that we have in place the right capabilities and resources to keep the public safe. There is no more important duty of any Government than being able to do that, and that is what I as the Security Minister and my colleagues across Government spend each hour of every day making sure that we do.