Armed Forces Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Al Carns]

As an ex-Marine, I have never been known for flying, but I would love to visit East Sussex Veterans’ Hub. When I am going around the country, be it to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or England, it always amazes me to find these little examples of pure community spirit that help our veterans out. Importantly, while the flight simulator may be fun, it also helps people to learn critical skills and get them back into work. I thank Bernard in particular for all his hard work. If I can come and visit, I most definitely will.

Government amendment 48 will ensure that the defence housing service provisions come into force on Royal Assent, so that there are no delays in standing up the service as early as April 2027. I remind the Committee that under defence housing strategy plans, nine in 10 defence houses will be modernised or upgraded for our family personnel—that is 40,000 across the entire estate. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, with over 10,000 defence houses being refurbished or replaced over that period.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am sure the Minister will like to pay tribute to Alabaré, which does great work for service veterans in and around my constituency. However, will he ensure that we do not give the false impression that all veterans are homeless and have mental health problems? Nothing could be further from the truth. Happily, the great majority of people leaving our armed forces are well sorted in their life, and in robust mental health. That is important, since we need to attract people to join our armed forces and our reserve forces, not deter them or put them off.

[Al Carns]

I thank the right hon. Member for that really useful observation. First, I support the work going on in his constituency; Alabaré is doing an amazing job. I think it might have recently received some Valour funding for that—a programme through which we are really trying to change the initiative that we take in looking after veterans. On his second point, I am a firm believer that when people join the military, they contribute to the most important function of government, which is to protect our people and our nation. When they leave as veterans, they go on to contribute to the economy. Actually, a large percentage of them go on to thrive across all sectors of civilian society, and go above and beyond in what they deliver. There is a percentage who need help, and a smaller percentage who need lots of help. That is what we must focus on, and what Valour is there to do. I am sure that over the next couple of years, it will absolutely deliver and readjust our mechanisms for looking after veterans across society.

I turn to the service justice system. Government amendments 57, 59, 66 and 67 relate to the point raised by the director of service prosecutions to the Select Committee. They will ensure that service protection orders can be made by a service court in relation to a service offence, even if the person has left the armed forces.

Government amendments 80 and 84 will make provision for the post-service management of service stalking protection orders in Northern Ireland. They will ensure that such orders can be effectively recognised and enforced, once an individual leaves service. Government amendment 30 will provide for service restraining orders to be enforceable as equivalent orders in Scotland and Northern Ireland in certain circumstances.

New clause 4 will introduce a new power for service courts to make a service image deletion order. The new deletion order will enable the service courts to require offenders to delete and destroy any images or films in their possession or control that are connected with specific offences, and which depict a person in an intimate state. Government amendment 31 will remove the limitation of the powers to search and seize electronically tracked stolen goods without a warrant to relevant residential premises only, and instead applies the broader concept of “relevant premises”, which are any premises occupied or controlled by a person subject to service law, or a civilian subject to service discipline, but those premises need not necessarily be occupied as a residence.

It is worth the Committee noting that since 2021 we have created the defence serious crime command and a witness care unit. We are moving forward with the tri-service complaint system, and are putting in place the violence against women and girls taskforce to improve standards and the culture within defence.

I turn to Government amendments 33 and 34, which will make small but important changes to clause 25. The clause will require the Secretary of State to issue guidance to help a victim reach a view on their preferred jurisdiction. The Select Committee highlighted the importance of victims receiving information in an objective and impartial way, so that they have an informed view. The Government recognise that need, and amendment 33 reflects that. The amendment will also ensure that the needs of victims and the circumstances of the events are taken into account in providing that information, and that an appropriate record is kept of that information. Amendment 34 will add the Lord Advocate to the list of consultees. That will ensure that she is consulted when the Secretary of State issues or revises the new guidance.

Amendment 37 will extend the provision in clause 29 that requires a disclosure of spent cautions for the purpose of administrative action. Cautions are not issued in Scotland as in England and Wales. The amendment will mean that clause 29 applies to spent alternatives to prosecution issued under the Scottish justice system.

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[Mr Francois]

I do not want to pre-empt what will no doubt be an erudite speech, but the key point is that there is a mechanism for doing this—we are halfway there.

If service parents get a transfer order a few months in advance, then unless they can be certain that the receiving LEA will accept their EHCP, which they may have gone through a bureaucratic minefield to achieve—I am sure we all have individual examples from our constituencies—are they going to risk it? Will they stick or twist? Or will they leave the service and try to find somewhere local to live, but at least keep the precious EHCP? The nub of the matter is whether we can make it mandatory that the transfer takes place. Having made the point, I will rest, and wait for the contribution from the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey).

Amendment 4 is similar in spirit to amendments 2 and 3, but relates to the national health service rather than to education. The essence of the amendment is that military personnel who are already on a waiting list for treatment in one NHS integrated care board area should not suffer any disadvantage relative to the civilian community if, again, they have to be transferred for operational or other service-related reasons. In plain English, they should not lose their place in the queue.

[Dr Murrison]

One area that will blight the lives of many of my right hon. Friend’s constituents as it does mine is, of course, primary care dentistry. People can move from one end of the country to another into a dental desert—Wiltshire is one of those. Does he think that there is a case for putting a duty on integrated care boards to translate people’s position with an NHS dentist—where they are lucky enough to find one—to their new area? I am thinking particularly of Wiltshire and the shortage of places, especially for service children and the partners of service personnel.

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend is of course a former MOD Minister himself and represents a large number of service personnel. It is obvious from his intervention that he understands the issue very well. What he has just asked me is wholly in line with the spirit of our amendment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley unfortunately has a competing commitment this afternoon with the Justice Committee and the report on jury trial, which I hope the House accepts is a very important matter. He hopes to join us later in the debate when he has attended to that. Given his medical expertise, he pressed this point with the Minister for Veterans and People at the same meeting that I have referred to. Sadly, again, we received an equally uninspiring reply. For the record, given that the King’s Speech also presaged new legislation on NHS organisation, we sought to suggest that one way to proceed might be to include an amendment in that Bill rather than in this one. In other words, that medical issue could be put in a Bill introduced by Ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care. I reiterate our request, perhaps to the Government more broadly, to consider what we still regard to be a sensible proposal.

I turn now to amendment 5 on court martial boards. One issue highlighted during our visit to see the service justice system was the challenge of finding sufficient officers to serve on court martial boards who are in no way connected with the defendant. That can become more of a challenge as defendants become more senior, as the pool of officers from which to draw narrows as one moves up the promotion pyramid. The essence of the amendment is to allow retired officers to be drawn upon to help comprise the membership of boards for court martial, and therefore to widen the potential pool of those who might be available to undertake this important military and, indeed, civic duty.

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very indulgent. I agree with him and—with respect—not with the Minister, because my recollection from being the Minister at the time was that there was a shortage of officers to populate court martial boards. When in office, we ensured that the process was service agnostic, which gave a bigger pool from which to draw. Would it be a compromise to allow retired officers of a certain seniority or length of time out of service, since that would maintain the currency that clearly is troubling the Minister? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Minister is right to require OR-7s, as well as warrant officers, to serve on court martial boards since that would expand the pool of people available?

[Mr Francois]

Again, my right hon. Friend makes a very important point: allowing tri-service boards increases the potential pool, even of senior officers, who can serve.

When we made that visit, the Minister was not able to be with us. That is no criticism; he is an MOD Minister, and he has a lot to think about—he has a great deal to think about at the moment—but he was not able to be there on that visit, so he did not hear it from the horse’s mouth. This issue was raised with us by practitioners in the service justice system.

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[James MacCleary]

My hon. Friend raises questions for the Minister to answer in closing the debate, but recruitment and retention are key concerns and have been a sort of crisis in the armed forces for many years.

In the context of authorising the maximum numbers of service personnel, it is reasonable that Parliament should be told how the Government plan to treat those people in service. New clause 9 would require publication of a retention strategy alongside the authorisation. It is a modest proposal, and the case for it is straightforward; recruitment alone solves nothing, if the conditions of service drive people back out of the door. We can invest in advertising, outreach and processing, and still find ourselves filling a vessel that will not hold. The problems that cause people to leave are well known: inadequate housing, unsupported families, opaque career structures and a sense that the institution does not value them as individuals.

New clause 10 would require an independent review to examine precisely those factors, including diversity, inclusion, the medical discharge process and the state of defence housing, not because these are peripheral concerns, but because they are operational ones.

[Dr Murrison]

I am concerned by the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. We have the continuous attitude survey, which does its work every year and delivers to Ministers a clear account of what is keeping people in and what is driving them away. Is he seriously proposing another set of reviews, which would add very little to what we already know?

[James MacCleary]

The continuous attitude survey is a survey of service personnel, but a review is quite different, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman appreciates. We are talking about an independent review, which is not the same thing.

On housing, I want to be specific. The Government’s commitment to improving service family accommodation is welcome, but new clause 13 exists because single living accommodation has for too long been treated as a secondary concern. For a significant proportion of serving personnel, that accommodation is not temporary—it is their home. It is where they recover after deployment, where they live between postings and where they begin and end each working day. If it falls below a reasonable standard, that is not merely a welfare issue; it is a retention issue. We cannot speak of our people as our greatest asset while declining to apply that in principle to where they sleep.

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[James MacCleary]

Absolutely. The suicide rate among young men in this country is already high, and the numbers relating to people discharged from the armed forces are deeply troubling.

We have passed motions, published strategies and made commitments, but we have not created proper, sustained oversight. As my hon. Friend mentions, a veterans’ mental health oversight officer with a statutory remit to monitor provision, assess compliance with covenant duties and report annually to Parliament would begin that change. The covenant should not be a postcode lottery; its outcomes should be measurable, consistent and accountable.

I also acknowledge the amendments tabled by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on pension communications, the transfer of medical assessments, the reserve forces estate and the treatment of domestic abuse offences. In each case, they address the same underlying problem—that service personnel, veterans and their families are too often disadvantaged, not by malice, but by systems that do not speak to one another, and processes that were never designed with them in mind.

That brings me to the covenant. New clause 14 would place national standards around the extended covenant duty, requiring statutory guidance, minimum requirements for public bodies, proper training and a framework for monitoring reporting. New clause 15 would require the annual covenant report to assess compliance against those standards, analyse outcomes and make recommendations.

The objection to such measures is rarely principled. Almost no one opposes the covenant; the difficulty has always been with the consistency of delivery. One local authority may understand its obligations well, but another may not. One health body may have invested in this, but another may have done the minimum. One veteran may receive good support, but another with identical needs in a different part of the country may be left to navigate the system alone. These new clauses would make the covenant something more than just a statement of good faith. They would make it a standard that could be measured and enforced.

Finally, amendment 90 would require that allegations of sexual offences and domestic abuse occurring in the United Kingdom be referred immediately to the civilian police, and those offences would be prosecuted through the civilian justice system. Let me be clear: this amendment is recognition that when serious crimes are committed by someone in service—crimes that would, in any other context, be investigated by the police, and would be cases heard in a Crown court—the victims are entitled to the same confidence in the justice system as any other civilian. The Bill introduces new protections for victims of domestic abuse, stalking and sexual harm within the service justice system. Those changes are very welcome, but they do not fully answer the question of whether victims have sufficient confidence that a system embedded in a single institution can handle the most serious offences against them with complete independence.

Sexual offences and domestic abuse are not matters of military discipline; they are serious criminal matters. When they occur in the United Kingdom, there is no compelling reason why investigation and prosecution should default to a separate system. Amendment 90 would remove that ambiguity, give victims clarity, and demonstrate that justice for individuals takes precedence over institutional processes.

[Dr Murrison]

The question is surely whether victims are given a choice. At the moment, they are. The prosecutors’ protocol usually means that these cases are tried through the civilian criminal justice system. That is fine, but does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that justice delayed is justice denied? Through the service justice system, these cases are brought to a conclusion far more rapidly than they currently are in our civilian criminal justice system.

[James MacCleary]

I understand exactly what the right hon. and gallant Member is saying, but failures in the civilian justice system—which, as he rightly observes, has a big backlog of cases—should not be a reason for reducing people’s confidence about coming forward with complaints. We know from the continuous attitude survey, to which he has referred, that the main reasons given by personnel for not making a written, formal complaint continue to be not believing that anything will be done with the complaint, and believing that it might adversely affect their career. It would encourage more people to come forward if they knew that the complaint would be dealt with in the civilian system. The amendments I have spoken to do not unpick the Bill, nor do they reverse its intentions.

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[Jayne Kirkham]

We discussed in the Select Committee that some people simply did not consider themselves veterans for certain reasons, including those she gave or because they had not served for long. An awareness campaign is important so that people can understand that they are entitled to all these things; on leaving the military, a lot of people do not think about it again and they have no idea that these options are open to them. I certainly agree with the hon. Member.

We have talked a bit about SEND provision, and hon. Members here who sit on the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces community know much more about that than me. I simply point out that we know our SEND provision has been broken for a long time and that a White Paper is coming, which should deal with and standardise some of these provisions so that people do not miss out. It will not be a postcode lottery—that is the ideal—and our SEND provision should improve so that whether someone is in Basingstoke, Shawbury or Cornwall, the provision they need will be there and will be transferable.

Finally, and briefly, I would like to attest to the importance of the veteran question in the census, as raised in the Select Committee and in our report. Data from the 2021 census has been vital for the local authorities, including in helping them to find some veterans. It has enabled them to understand where veterans are, the challenges they face, and how best to deliver and design services to meet their needs. Retaining the veteran question in 2031 would allow for standardisation and the ability to track changes in trends. The question has also been essential for veterans’ charities and organisations that rely on the evidence to bid for funding. I very much support its inclusion in the next census.

Cornwall has a proud military heritage. Many families have someone who served or is still serving, making extraordinary sacrifices to keep this country safe. They obviously deserve safe homes, fair treatment and a system that understands the unique demands of military life. I am pleased that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is included in the Bill and that I have played a tiny part in shaping it. I am also pleased that those who keep our armed forces moving around will be properly recognised and protected. As a Government, we promised to renew the nation’s contract with those who serve, and we are starting to deliver on that.

[Dr Murrison]

I am privileged to be called in this debate. I start by declaring my interests as a reservist and as the author of a book called “Tommy This an’ Tommy That: The military covenant”—which is sadly no longer in print, but is available, I am told, from good charity shops.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois). said, the covenant is not about advantaging the men and women of our armed forces, but about not disadvantaging them. It is important to make that clear. Servicemen and servicewomen do not expect to be given anything particularly; they are usually the greatest pragmatists going and do not expect that at all. However, they do expect not to be messed around, if that can be avoided. Much of what is in the Bill, as is always the case now with armed forces Bills, is trying to mitigate some of the disadvantages that they necessarily have to put up with by virtue of the unique circumstances that they find themselves in.

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[Mr Francois]

No, the hon. Gentleman has had his go.

The Committee may remember that we were promised that the DIP would be published in the autumn; then, we were faithfully promised it by Christmas; and then we were absolutely, definitely going to get it in the new year. But here we are in June—and, incredibly, still no DIP.

[Dr Murrison]

Has my right hon. Friend had a chance to look at the report published by techUK, which represents a lot of small and medium-sized companies in the defence tech sector, and seen what it has to say, objectively, about the number of jobs that are being lost in the sector, the lack of investment in the sector, the pressure that its members are coming under and the sector’s lack of viability given this continued, unbearable delay? It needs certainty. When are we going to have it?

[Mr Francois]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. We would all like to know when we are going to have it, but the reason we do not have it is simple. It is not that the staff work has not been completed—it has. It is not that the programmes have not been costed—they have. The fundamental problem is that while Ministers say they are working flat out and knocking themselves out on it, and are reduced to euphemisms about how hard they are working, it was actually done months ago. The problem is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer adamantly refuses to sign it, because if she signed it, she would have to say how she is going to pay for it. That is why MOD Ministers are completely hide-bound: the Prime Minister will not force the Chancellor to sign the equipment plan for the armed forces of the United Kingdom. The delay is becoming a farce. Indeed, we are now being widely criticised by our international partners, including, just the other day, the chairman of the NATO Military Committee.

At Defence questions, the Secretary of State was adamant that the Prime Minister wanted the DIP published by the NATO summit. That raises two questions: which NATO summit, and which Prime Minister? Assuming he means the summit in Ankara on 7 to 8 July, this vital document will be delayed for yet another month. What is worse, last year there were £2.6 billion of in-year operational cuts to the defence budget, and this year there are £3.5 billion of in-year cuts.

We will press new clause 2 to force a vote on a backstop plan to produce the DIP, to remind His Majesty’s Treasury that the first duty of government, above all others, is the defence of the realm. We cannot defend the realm with a lot of bluster and an equipment plan that does not exist.

Defence Readiness

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

The hon. Member, like me, represents an area with a lot of military personnel and a lot of veterans. That is why I know that she will welcome the fact that veterans spending is at a record high under this Labour Government. We are working to deliver the defence investment plan, but that has not stopped us from investing in new capabilities, which I will come to in a moment.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I follow the Minister’s words, as always, with much interest. Has he had a conversation with the former Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who last Thursday spoke of dither and delay, and does he relate that to the extraordinary delay in the defence investment plan?

[Luke Pollard]

I always welcome recruits to our armed forces and defence debates, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) is absolutely welcome in our defence debate today. I say politely to the right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) that I focus a lot of attention on the hon. Member for South Suffolk, who left an unfunded and hollowed-out armed forces, but he too was a Minister in that Government that hollowed out and underfunded our armed forces. While I welcome his intervention and expertise, he cannot escape his record of underfunding our armed forces. We are now working to deliver that funding to our armed forces.

We are on a path to warfighting readiness by 2030. We must be mission ready by 2030 against a peer adversary. That means investing in our armed forces. That mission is backed by our commitment to the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war, backed by our ambitious programme of defence reform—the most ambitious in 50 years—and by the defence industrial strategy, a funded strategy. That is unlike the document worked on by the hon. Member for South Suffolk, which was unfunded and left on a shelf to gather dust.

We are fuelling defence as an engine for growth, creating good jobs up and down the country. Because we are still getting on with the job of defending our country, this Government have signed more than 1,200 defence contracts since the election, nearly nine in 10 of which have gone to UK-based firms.

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[James MacCleary]

As has been pointed out, defence spending has been reduced by successive Governments over a very long period of time, so focusing on the Liberal Democrats’ record alone is somewhat unfair, to say the least.

[Dr Murrison]

Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House which party it was that insisted we delay the replacement of the continuous at sea deterrent by two full years as a condition of the coalition?

[James MacCleary]

The right hon. Member enjoys raising the coalition quite a lot. You are talking about the nuclear submarines, aren’t you? That is what you asked about.

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[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

May I genuinely congratulate the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) on a remarkable speech and wish him well in his future ambitions? His speech and its content were, I am afraid, not as germane as the contribution of the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), who chairs the Defence Committee. I agree with everything that he had to say; I only regret that I could not put it as elegantly as him.

The resignation letter of the right hon. Member for Ilford North is worth reading, and I am sure that Members on the Treasury Bench will have read it closely. He wrote on Thursday that

“where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift”,

and that should worry the Government. I agree with him, and I am thinking in particular of the defence investment plan, which we have not seen. I am conscious that the defence readiness Bill, which we were expecting in this King’s Speech, has yet to materialise, and that is of deep and profound concern.

In the 1930s, we arguably faced a similar situation to what we are up against now, and the Government of the day decided about five years in advance of the outbreak of the second world war that they must gear up our defence industrial base for the future. They created things such as shadow factories, initially with opposition from industry. Those were centred largely, at least initially, on the automotive industry and the production of aircraft, but went on to extend much further than that. It was a truly co-operative venture that led eventually to this country being able to turn out more aircraft in those early years than Germany could.

I would have thought that this Government would have learned those lessons and now be bringing forward, as a matter of urgency, its own defence readiness Bill. The Government have missed an opportunity, and I am sorry about that, because there is no shadow of a doubt that industry is being held back, as has already been mentioned this afternoon, in its ambition to partner with the Ministry of Defence and with Ministers to get things going, whether that is reprovisioning what we have rightly sent to Ukraine or fitting our armed forces for the future.

Some have already mentioned hollowing out. It is worth saying that in 1989, every country in the western world was taking a peace dividend. It would have been extraordinary had they not, and they would have been punished by the voters, but that was then. The big lesson I have learned from what has happened in the years since 1989 is that Governments can afford to titrate what they provide in order to defend this country against the threats facing it—although that is never popular electorally—but they must do nothing to reduce the armed forces below an irreducible minimum, so that armed forces can regrow rapidly, as happened in the years immediately preceding 1914 and 1939.

Governments must also do nothing that will damage long-term projects, because procurement is not something that can be turned on and off like a tap—procurement takes decades. I think we have learned from that mistake. One of the mistakes that the previous Government made was delaying the Dreadnought class. That was because, as I referred to in the intervention that the hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) generously allowed me to make, of pressure from our then partner in the coalition Government.

Right now we are facing the prospect of our principal ally, the United States, backing off in terms of its support for us and our European allies. We can no longer entirely rely on that on which we previously relied heavily. If, as seems likely, the United States proceeds with this particular course of action, we will be the only provider of a nuclear deterrent declared to NATO, and it is therefore important that in the defence readiness Bill—when we see it—we have a reaffirmed commitment to reprovisioning the continuous at-sea deterrent apace. Much work has been done in respect of infrastructure and at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, but we are still facing a rundown Vanguard class that is obliged to go on patrol for upwards of 200 days, with a consequent impact on the men and, now, women who man the submarine service. Of all the pinch point trades in our armed forces, it is those in the submarine service that should keep us awake at night. It is imperative that we accelerate that programme.

I also ask Ministers to look at the F-35A provision, and to agree with me that providing 12 airframes is hardly sufficient given the threat that we now face. I need to know, I should like to know, and I am sure the whole House would like to know when the F-35As will be operational, as opposed to the provision of training airframes. Is it the intention of the Government to expedite that programme? Is it the intention of the Government to exploit the option that they have kept open to have more than 12 of those airframes, and will Ministers confirm that they will be nuclear-enabled?

I strongly urge Ministers to consider the sovereign defence fund Bill in the alternative King’s Speech, which would repurpose the National Wealth Fund to overhaul our vital defence industrial base. Governing is about difficult decisions, and it seems to me that defence is a more urgent priority right now than using the fund—in the words of the Government—to help tackle climate change, and, indeed, a more urgent priority than ramping up welfare, as Lord Robertson has made very clear. The defence industrial base will be pretty useless if it is not populated by men and women with the skills that are necessary to deliver what is needed in order to keep this country safe.

The youth opportunity Bill, which also features in the alternative King’s Speech, has the kind of imaginative content that I would have expected from an incoming Government who had 14 years to think about these matters. Unfortunately not: all that we had from the Prime Minister on young people on Wednesday was a load of waffle. Time and again, it is as if he is a passive observer rather than an active participant. The youth opportunity Bill explains how genuine investment in our young people will power and grow the economy, delivering a virtuous circle from which everyone benefits. It will cap state funding for pointless, work-irrelevant, badly taught degrees from third-rate institutions that are perpetrating a fraud on a generation, and will grow well-focused apprenticeships such as those offered by Wiltshire College in my constituency.

Let me now say a few words about special forces. We must approach these issues with a great deal of care. I am extremely concerned by the messaging that has gone out from this Government in relation to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill—not so much the case that has been put before the House by the Northern Ireland Office and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as the way in which it has been received. The Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who is sitting next to the Secretary of State for Defence, will know very well—because his contacts are probably better than mine—that this messaging has caused a degree of disquiet, particularly among units that are crucial to this country’s defence and security. They will perceive that, in years to come, a future Government may decide that what is happening now, and what is acceptable now, is no longer acceptable.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

This business with what is going on over Northern Ireland is not alone, because it builds on a perception and on the gratuitous pursuit of soldiers involved in Afghanistan and Iraq—partly by the Prime Minister in a previous life, but certainly by lawyers knowing full well that what they were pursuing were in fact complete untruths. That has made those former soldiers wonder what is the point. If politicians will not stand up for them, who will?

[Dr Murrison]

My right hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I absolutely agree with him. This is about more than Northern Ireland, because Northern Ireland has a read-across to a number of theatres where our men and women are actively engaged or could be in the future. The exodus from some of these units will cause irretrievable and irrecoverable damage to our ability to protect the men and women of this country.

I have no doubt that Ministers are acting with the best of intentions, but I urge them to look at the messaging that is being given to the men and women of our armed forces, many of whom I have the honour and privilege to represent, and to decide what they can do to address this legislation. I would say “Scrap it and start again”, but if they cannot do that, I ask them to consider what they can do to prevent the idea from gaining penetrance among those units that the Government are simply not on their side, and in any event even if they were, that Governments in the future might, by the standards of the day, decide that what is being done at the moment in the name of the state and in the King’s name was no longer acceptable. Lawfare is a real and present danger to the men and women of our armed forces, and, knowing him as I do, I feel certain that the Secretary of State is cognisant of the threat that it poses.

Conscious of the frog in your throat, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall end my remarks there.

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[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you do not normally introduce me like that, so thank you very much. It is an honour to share a constituency border with you and to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), who made a heartfelt and powerful speech.

Wars are raging in Europe and in the middle east, and there are extreme tensions in the far east. Moreover, these regional conflicts are starting to knit together: Russia and China supported Iran in the middle east, and North Korea supported Russia in Ukraine. This knitting together of regional conflicts is what we saw in the 1930s in the foothills of the second world war, so there is an argument that we are now in the foothills of another global war.

It is undoubtedly true that the threats we face are increasing, yet at the same time, day by day, UK military capability is decreasing. We must rapidly rearm to narrow this gap; it is the only way that we can deter conflict. Despite that, the King’s Speech contains no programme of rearmament. The Government speak the language of urgency yet refuse even to introduce the necessary policy and legislation. As has been mentioned by Members from all parts of the House, we have been waiting for the defence investment plan since last autumn, and we were promised a defence readiness Bill in this King’s Speech, but where is it?

As an island nation, our Navy is of the utmost importance, but it is also on its knees. While HMS Dragon took a week to deploy to the Mediterranean, the French sent an entire carrier group—an aircraft carrier, eight frigates and a submarine. How did they do that? On paper, France and the United Kingdom have comparable fleets, but in practice France achieves about 80% availability for its escort vessels, while we achieve only 50%. Through better maintenance, France achieves a better outcome. Capability on paper is worthless if it cannot deploy.

It gets worse. We started this year with seven frigates. HMS Richmond will be decommissioned this year, and HMS Iron Duke was withdrawn from service this month. That leaves us with five frigates. Furthermore, three build slots in Glasgow intended for new frigates have been ceded to Norway, because of the lack of guaranteed investment due to delays in the defence investment plan. That is a real-world example of Government inertia affecting our defence.

Putin exploits weakness, and he shies away from strength. It pains me to say it, but our Navy does not project strength, and Putin will continue to mount increasingly flagrant violations of our territorial waters until our Navy is strong enough to make him think twice. Will it take the severing of a data cable to cause us to act?

Moving from the sea to the land, the Ministry of Defence was unable to confirm to the Defence Committee whether it is able to deploy a battlegroup—1,000 soldiers—to the continent of Europe. That comes back to my point about projecting strength. Putin knows that if he were to test article 5, the 900 British soldiers in Estonia would be at extreme risk. We have no ability to deploy reinforcements, and the King’s Speech does not do anything to change that. There is a gaping hole in our deterrence, and every day it goes unaddressed, the risks to our forces already deployed and our nation at home grow.

Our artillery systems have halved in number since 1997. Our precision deep-fire capability has been cut by a third. We have just 14 155 mm artillery systems, although I note that the Government have recently announced a new order. Poland donated 100 systems to Ukraine and rebuilt its own inventory at the same time. It donated and replaced; we just donated, which is why we have 14 artillery systems left.

Meanwhile, warfare has changed, and the UK has not adapted. During a recent NATO training exercise, a British brigade was effectively wiped out by four Ukrainian drone operators. That is not an indictment of our soldiers, but a reflection of modern warfare. We cannot allow that situation to become a reality.

The picture I have painted is one of systematic underfunding across all domains, and unless we rapidly rearm, we will be unable to deter. If we want to deter and to lead in the security of the Euro-Atlantic area, we probably need an Army of about 100,000, with reserves of 50,000, a fleet of 50 ships and about 250 combat aircraft, with crewed systems surrounded by autonomous systems and one-way effectors. That is the capability we must be talking about if we want to lead and deter in the Euro-Atlantic.

[Dr Murrison]

I am following the hon. Member’s remarks with a great deal of interest. He mentioned the reserves, and I am a reservist. Would you give the Government credit where it is due for carrying over the Armed Forces Bill, which will advance the age of retirement for reserves to 65, and agree with me that we can probably go further in looking at people, especially the reserves, who are skilled in particular areas and may be able to help us address the challenges of the future, rather than those of the past?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Dr Andrew Murrison, you know better than to use the term “you”.

Strategic Defence Review: Funding

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I entirely agree with every word that my hon. Friend has said. I know he has been assiduous in asking detailed parliamentary questions about the refurbishment and refit of the Longbridge mess, and I am very happy to meet him to hear directly about his and his constituents’ concerns.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Well-placed sources are suggesting that the number of Type 26 hulls on the order book may be reduced or transferred to our Norwegian allies. I appreciate that Labour has a track record of reducing the number of frigate and destroyer hulls, but can the Minister nevertheless confirm that there are no such plans and that we will proceed with a minimum of eight Type 26 frigates, particularly given the increase in Russian submarine activity discussed by his colleague, the Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), on Monday?

North Atlantic Submarine Activity

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Al Carns]

I completely agree. A more effective and better understood communication and education plan about what those threats really mean to the population is essential. If I were to turn around to the population and say that there was a cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover, people in and around Jaguar Land Rover would be affected and would take notice. If I were to say that the cost of the attack on Jaguar Land Rover was half that of lifting the two-child benefit cap, that would resonate far more widely across the nation. If I were to say that cyber-attacks cost more than £10 billion last year alone, and that the MOD has seen a 50% increase in hostile state attacks, that would start to resonate. We need to ensure that we continue to communicate that narrative in the easiest way, but also that it resonates with every section of society. I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Over decades, the backbone of our ability to detect Russian submarines has been provided by our towed array patrol ships, from Leander right the way through to our increasingly decrepit Type 23. Does the Minister agree that the logic of what he has said, given that the threat has increased significantly over the past several months and over the past couple of years, is that we should be looking again at the orders for eight Type 26s with 2087 towed array on the back of them, and upgrade that to deal with the threat that we now face? Where we are now is not where we were a few short years ago, when that order book for eight Type 26s was constructed.

[Al Carns]

I recognise the right hon. Member’s experience in this space. I would say that eight Type 26 towed array frigates is the right level. I would like to see our ability to cover the ocean expanded through the use of autonomy and some of the lessons that we have learned from Ukraine. That is why I talk about the Atlantic Bastion; major capability platforms matched with mass uncrewed systems will provide us with a far more effective way to find, deter and neutralise subsurface threats in the future.

Defence

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Lady talks about reliance on the US. I remind her that it was the United States that intercepted the ballistic missile heading for our base—our sovereign territory—on Diego Garcia. The point I am making—and it is incredibly important for the House to reflect on this, because it has not been talked about enough, partly for sensitivity reasons—is that we did tremendous things in Ukraine. We supplied drones made by British companies that had an extraordinary impact. I am not going to say any more than that, but that is a statement of fact.

My strategy—it is fairly simple—was that we should, in parallel, do the same for the British armed forces, but in the summer of 2024 we ran into a big problem, and it is the reason why we have no defence investment plan: money. As was the case when we were in government, the Treasury under this Prime Minister has agreed a funding line for Ukraine; that is correct, and we strongly agree with it. But there has been no agreement to fund parallel procurement for our own armed forces.

This golden opportunity to transform our military was lost because the Secretary of State failed to stand up to the Treasury and demand the cash from the Chancellor. So often have I met British SMEs producing amazing battle-tested kit for Ukraine, with nothing ordered by our own armed forces. It is extraordinary, and I think the Minister, who shares my passion for the uncrewed revolution, knows that. As ever, it boils down to hard cash.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another example is Coventry-based NP Aerospace, which I met again this morning? It is producing body armour for Ukrainians, but because of the delay in the DIP, it has no confidence that it will be able to do the same for the British Army. It is a bit reminiscent of 2003, when several in this House went to Iraq with the most shoddy, appalling personal kit that took months to rectify.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Murrison]

I am following the hon. Member with a great deal of interest. Is he able to name a single major western economy that after 1989 did not take a peace dividend?

[Dr Sandher]

To be fair to the right hon. Member, it makes perfect sense to reduce expenditure after the cold war. I take that point, but let us be clear: the world also changed in 2022. The things we depended on for our safety—sacrosanct borders and our force in NATO—were not funded enough. If we truly were to prepare for war, that was the moment to start, and I agree that we have to do more.

Middle East

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

An extra £1 billion is being put now into integrated air and missile defence for Britain. That was not part of the previous Government’s plans and it stems directly from the assessment that the strategic defence review set out when we published it last year.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Given that it takes about a month to move a minor war vessel from Portsmouth to the Gulf, and notwithstanding the meetings that the Secretary of State says that he is having with allies about ensuring freedom of navigation through the strait, would it be a good idea to start shifting those minehunters now, so that when he has the results of his discussions, which I hope will be a bit more than just handwringing, we will be in a position to genuinely do something in an area that we are actually really rather good at?

Middle East: Defence

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend makes important points. I welcome his support for the first concern of this Government, which is the protection of British personnel and British citizens in the wider middle east, our bases and our allies. I know that he supports the action we have taken both before the current conflict broke out and in the week or so since.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Is the problem here not our military capability—we still have the second most capable navy in NATO—but the political will? Why is it that HMS Duncan, the sister ship of HMS Dragon, is alongside in Portsmouth, having spent the summer in a maintenance period? She has been up and ready to go for weeks. Why was she not sent at the beginning of this crisis?

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman is another former Defence Minister from the previous Government, so he knows all about the decisions that left our Navy in the state it is in now. He will also appreciate that we have taken decisions to deploy the things that Britain can best put into the region to protect our allies and our people, both military and civilian. He will recognise and applaud the fact that because of that, from day one, our fast jets have been flying defensive operations in co-ordination with our allies and our US colleagues, and that where circumstances change, we will adapt the action and decisions that we take, which is what we have done from the point that we saw the indiscriminate extent of the Iranian response last Saturday.

Ministry of Defence: Palantir Contracts

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

The hon. Lady’s position would be stronger if the Greens were not so soft on defence. We will continue to invest in our national security, and we will invest in the contracts that keep our troops and our country safe. That will involve investing not only in UK firms, but in international partners at the same time. I have been clear at the Dispatch Box that we will comply fully with the agreement made on the Humble Address last week, and we will publish information in the right way in due course. I hope that will be able to provide more of the answers that the hon. Lady is looking for.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does the Minister appreciate how appallingly bad it looks for the Prime Minister of this country and the then ambassador in Washington, the disgraced Peter Mandelson, to have met Alex Karp, the chief executive of Palantir, in February last year without any written record of the meeting being made? Is he at least able to say which officials—other than, of course, our then ambassador—were present at that meeting?

[Luke Pollard]

The right hon. Gentleman will have seen the photographs that appeared on No. 10’s Twitter feed, to which I referred in response to the earlier question about the publication of information. He will also recall—perhaps from his time as a Defence Minister—that in 2021 the then Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, also met Alex Karp.

Armed Forces Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 26th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The Bill should ensure that if forces families are in such a situation as unpaid carers there is no penalty or disqualification for having an armed forces connection and experience. When they are looking for support from local services, those services will in future have to take into account the unique experience and circumstances that those families and individuals face.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Secretary of State refers to the local connection test. Will he acknowledge that the removal of that test was initiated by the previous Government? That is not the impression he gave in his initial remarks, although it is certainly the case. Secondly, is it his intention to allocate service housing going forward on the basis primarily of rank or primarily on need?

[John Healey]

On the local connection test, as with a lot of things, the previous Government talked a lot but we have got on and done a lot of those things, and the Bill takes that intent and determination several steps further.

Let me move on to housing, because behind many of the men and women who serve our country are husbands, wives, partners and children, who support them in their service, and who bear the weight of their absence during deployments. For those families, the nation has a moral duty to provide safe and decent housing. As recent Governments failed, satisfaction with military family homes fell in 2023 to its lowest level on record. I, and many other Members of the House have seen why: damp, mould, broken boilers, ill-fitting doors and windows, even a hole in the wall of a children’s bedroom. None of us would tolerate our families living in such conditions, and neither should those in our armed forces. It is a betrayal of service, and the crisis in defence housing tracks back directly to perhaps one of the worst ever privatisation deals.

Under the terms of the Annington sale in 1996, the taxpayer picked up all costs for maintenance, repairs and rent, but all the benefits of development opportunities or increases in property value were surrendered to a private equity fund. When I was appointed Defence Secretary 18 months ago, that deal was costing the taxpayer over £600,000 a day. Just six months after the election, our Government reversed that, bringing more than 36,000 military family homes back into public ownership so that we can now plan and invest in the future. Twelve months after the election, we delivered our consumer charter, guaranteeing what should never have been in question: higher move-in standards, quicker repairs, a named housing officer for every family, and renovations of the very worst homes, 1,000 of which were completed ahead of schedule before Christmas. Our charter also tore up rules that should never have been written, so that forces families now have freedom to decorate their own homes, and keep pets without seeking permission.

In November we published our defence housing strategy, and our plan for the wholesale renewal of service family estate, backed by a landmark 10-year investment programme, totalling over £9 billion. All told, nine in 10 of all forces family homes will be upgraded, renewed or rebuilt. Less than three months after the defence housing strategy was published, the Bill delivers a central recommendation of that strategy: the creation of a specialist arm’s length organisation, the Defence Housing Service. With the plan, the investment and now the Defence Housing Service, we will end the scandal of service families living in substandard housing, and we will deliver the homes the country needs. When Labour said at the election that we would stand on the side of our armed forces, this is what we meant.

All those who serve our country rightly expect to be able to do so with the fullest respect, and they must certainly be able to do so free from any fear or abuse. Last year we commissioned and published the UK’s first military-wide survey into sexual harassment. We did that to provide for the first time a no-holds-barred baseline to confront the problem fully. The results were sobering, concluding that two thirds of our servicewomen and one third of our servicemen experience some form of sexualised behaviour. Let me be clear: such behaviour has no place in our armed forces, just as it has no place in any workplace—not now, not ever.

The previous Government took steps to improve victim and witness care. We can see some of the benefits of those steps, but it is also clear that more must be done. We have established a new, single tri-service complaints team to take the most serious complaints out of the single-service chain of command for the first time. We have launched a pioneering new prevention programme in Catterick and Plymouth, working directly with young recruits on our bases, to prevent unacceptable behaviours. Through the Bill we go further to strengthen protections for our service personnel, and ensure that perpetrators have nowhere to hide.

Together, provisions in the Bill will make available in the service justice system a comprehensive range of protection orders, including for sexual harm, domestic abuse and stalking. It will strengthen supervision of offenders on release from prison, and ensure that service restraining orders are enforceable in the criminal justice system once a defendant has left the armed forces. It will place a duty on the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice, setting out the services that victims can expect to receive in the service justice system, and it will allow victims to choose whether they wish to have their case heard in a civil or military court, although the formal decision will be taken by the prosecutor.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Lady says from a sedentary position that I did not do it. The deal was done in 1996. Who was in government between 1997 and 2010 and did nothing about this issue?

Let me speak openly. When I got the job, I went to visit defence accommodation. As I have said many times, I was ashamed, but I said, “I am going to do something about this.” My former colleague Jeremy Quin, who was the Minister before me, had brought test cases, but there was no work, and nothing had happened under successive Governments. I started the work with the Treasury and with people across Government. That deal, which took a heck of a lot of negotiation, was under negotiation with the Annington group when the general election came.

[Dr Murrison]

The truth is that there was a level of serendipity in this matter of which the current Government are the beneficiary, and that is the High Court decision on Annington Homes. My hon. Friend is being characteristically modest, because I clearly remember that he initiated this work while he was at the MOD. I am very pleased to hear that the current Government are taking it forward, which is absolutely right, but we need to lay on record the provenance of all this work and who its author is. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for that.

[James Cartlidge]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We must never forget the reason for the deal in the first place.

New Medium Helicopter Contract

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his advocacy for his constituents who work at Leonardo. I entirely understand what he says. We are already taking steps to reform defence procurement to speed up decisions, but I am clear that a big decision about the future of the NMH and the funding for it needs to be taken as part of the whole programme. The defence investment programme is so important and it is important that we get this decision right, so that everyone can have certainty and confidence in every single line item in the DIP, which is something they have not been able to have with the equipment programme that we inherited.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The delay in the DIP and the procurement of these helicopters has been unexplained and is causing a great deal of concern in my constituency, which is heavily dependent in the south on Yeovil and Yeovilton. Will the Minister do everything in his power to get a move on? A Government who want growth cannot afford this kind of delay. Will he confirm or refute the rumour going around that the one of the reasons for the delay is that he is descoping the number of AW149 airframes that he originally envisaged under this contract, and that there will now be significantly less than the figure of 24 that was originally booted about?

[Luke Pollard]

As the right hon. Gentleman was a Defence Minister in the last Government, he will understand the challenge of having an unfunded equipment programme that we are seeking to address in the defence investment plan. In relation to those he represents who work in Yeovil and Yeovilton—and indeed perhaps also in Culdrose, on the wider servicing of helicopters that Leonardo does, not just the building of them—we will be making a clear decision on the NMH in the defence investment plan. He will be aware that this procurement was bounded by the process. We will make a decision, we will not be timed out and we will not be altering the contract.