Alistair Carmichael
Main Page: Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland)Department Debates - View all Alistair Carmichael's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Maria Eagle
It does both. There is only one way in which we can provide the Ukrainians with increasing amounts of munitions and drones, which are developing and changing rapidly, and that is by boosting the strength of our defence industries. That has the additional importance of enabling us to boost our capacity to deter any potential aggression, so in that sense we can do both, and we are doing so.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Viewed from Washington, the idea of carving up the map in Europe might look like a pragmatic deal, even if history tells us that that always ends badly. Surely we in Europe understand that no matter what we give Vladimir Putin, he will always want more. Is that the context in which the strategic defence review is being carried out, and does the Minister accept that this moment requires a fundamental reset of our relations with our European partners—not just in defence—and that we need to get real about the financial and economic implications?
Maria Eagle
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the strategic defence review is about identifying threats that we face now, rather than threats we perhaps faced before the Ukraine war began, so I can tell him that the review is being conducted with that in mind. On the deterrence that we need to be able to provide and the money we need to spend to provide it, the commitment is as it has been: as the Prime Minister has said, he will set out a path to 2.5% once the strategic defence review has been published, and we expect that to be in the spring.