Oral Answers to Questions

David Simmonds Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

Indeed it does not, and the hon. Gentleman is perfectly at liberty to table a motion and have a debate in this House. [Interruption.] He says, “Come on!”, but I cannot remember one. The key is making sure that democratically elected Ministers in this House have oversight of our special forces, and we are also bound by law in the same way that anyone else is. There is no exception to the law, whether through investigational powers or the operational prerogative on which we deploy our forces.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

T4. I have heard from a number of Ukrainians now resident in my constituency how much they value the work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to support their armed forces. What lessons are we going to learn from our work to supply ordnance and equipment to the armed forces in Ukraine that will inform our future plans for maintaining appropriate stocks of weapons and equipment?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (James Heappey)]

We learn an awful lot from watching the way that modern conflict is being prosecuted in Ukraine, and that is indeed shaping our analysis of the stockpiles we need to hold, particularly given the intensity of the modern artillery battle.