Cabinet Office

Debate between Julian Lewis and Alicia Kearns

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?

Chinese Embassy

Debate between Julian Lewis and Alicia Kearns

Tuesday 13th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was hoping to ask this point of order of Mr Speaker, because it is a little difficult for you, not having been here for most of the urgent question. At the start of the urgent question, Mr Speaker made it clear that he was surprised that a Minister was being put up who would not be able to answer questions, being a Planning Minister, rather than a Security Minister being put up, who would be able to answer questions.

In my 28 years in this House, I have attended many ministerial statements and the questioning that follows, and many urgent questions since they were introduced. Never before has there been an occasion that I have seen where every question asked on both sides of the House was deeply hostile, as was the case today, regarding what the Government were proposing to do. My question is this: if my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) were to reapply to Mr Speaker for a similar urgent question in anticipation that an appropriate Minister—a Security Minister—will be put up to answer it, would that be within the rules of parliamentary order and practice?

[Alicia Kearns]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. With due respect to the Minister, I submitted this urgent question as the shadow National Security Minister for the Security Minister in the Home Office to answer. How do we in this House get answers on the focus that we have? All questions bar two were on national security, not on planning. The more than capable and diligent Security Minister was forced to sit on the Front Bench, silenced, while his colleague attempted to answer those questions that should have been allowed to be put to him.