Dan Jarvis
Main Page: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley North)Department Debates - View all Dan Jarvis's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
We will be continuously working very closely with Sir Mark—given that a great deal of work has already been done on the NSCR, it would be crazy for us not to do that. What the review identified was that more work needed to be done on the Ministry of Defence budget. If the exercise were fiscally neutral, it would not have been possible to deliver in such a way. We will be working closely with the Cabinet Office to ensure that everything that we have done sits within the priorities of the National Security Council. As for cyber-attack, the Ministry of Defence itself leads on aspects of that. All the work across all those realms is done in conjunction with all the parts of our national security infrastructure—GCHQ, MI5 and MI6. It is essential that that continues going forward.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
Given the Secretary of State’s desire to consult, I think that there would be merit in his coming along to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy so that we could dig into the detail of his announcement more thoroughly. Does he agree, however, that quantity has a quality all of its own, and that, given the threats that we know we face, any further reduction in armed forces personnel would be extremely unwise?
Gavin Williamson
We have made a commitment in relation to the size of our armed forces. I think there is a strong argument that we need forces with not just the very best equipment but mass, if we are to be able to deploy.