Oral Answers to Questions

James Sunderland Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I know how important this issue is to the hon. Lady. Differing rates are paid for workers with different skills and qualifications, which is normal practice in both the public and private sectors. I understand that a generous pay offer remains on the table. It would significantly improve the pay of the workers in dispute beyond the recent 2023 pay award, which has already significantly uplifted base pay for those specific workers, alongside over £4,000 in bonuses. It is disappointing that GMB members have voted to continue industrial action, but DE&S officials continue to be open to talks with the GMB on a constructive basis.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

The pursuit of exquisite exclusivity in defence procurement is to be lauded, but can the Minister confirm that his Department is also focused on procuring the logistic platforms that we need to sustain it? Is it perhaps time for a defence operational capability audit to look into that key capability gap?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point—of course, he speaks with great experience. As we have been stressing, the whole point of acquisition reform is, instead of seeking exquisite platforms, to go for 80% to get them into service faster and then to have spiral development. We think that that is the future of procurement.

Middle East: UK Military Deployments

James Sunderland Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I would have thought that the No. 1 concern would be to locate the British hostages, and that is where the surveillance work will focus. The FCDO will be best placed to answer the hon. Gentleman’s specific question.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Defence Secretary for confirming that the MOD is currently rightly focused on regional security and containment but, inasmuch as the UK has a responsibility to Israel, we also have a responsibility to the people of Gaza. Can he therefore reassure me that His Majesty’s forces will not become involved in any military action unless it is in direct support of British interests or British nationals?

[Grant Shapps]

Yes.

Ukraine

James Sunderland Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I suspect the first line of the hon. Gentleman’s question would make it into the leaflets of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace) if he were standing again as that was rare, but much deserved, praise. I am not sure I understand the rest of the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Ukrainians know what they are getting this year and they have seen time and again the UK seeking to lead the world and catalyse donations. We have been the first to go through every capability threshold; they know that and they continue to know that.

UK service personnel will take comfort from the fact that in the autumn statement the Chancellor promised to maintain the 2% commitment—we are actually comfortably exceeding that—and that the complete modernisation and recapitalisation of the fighting echelon across all three services is well under way, with investment, too, in sorting out all the strategic enablers that bring credibility to our warfighting force. I do not see where any further comfort is needed, either on the Ukrainian side or for the men and women of the UK armed forces. In fact, it is quite the reverse; I think they know exactly what the Government are doing.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Will the Minister assure the House that political resolve in NATO will remain as strong as ever in the event that this campaign becomes enduring, protracted and attritional? Will he also assure the House about what is being done to ensure that all NATO countries step up and pay their 2%?

[James Heappey]

NATO’s resolve is clear but its part in this is to deter escalation beyond Ukraine, whereas the donor community that has formed around Ukraine is a rather separate entity that extends beyond NATO’s borders; that is an important distinction. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that as we prepare for a summit in Washington at which our American colleagues will want to see progress in meeting the NATO commitment, all NATO countries that are not meeting the 2% commitment will perhaps want to consider their spending plans before getting on the plane to Washington.

War in Ukraine

James Sunderland Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I am unfamiliar with the issue of which the hon. Lady speaks and I would not want to comment on the fly. Clearly, those who work within our excellent defence industry do very important work. In my experience, many of them see themselves as contributing to a national endeavour and are motivated by patriotism every bit as much as by money. I hope that they will continue to work as hard as they have so that we can support our own armed forces as well as those of Ukraine.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Given that precision, remotely piloted and autonomous weapon systems, not to mention close air support, could be decisive to an attritional land campaign, will the Minister please update the House on the delivery of air power to Ukraine?

[James Heappey]

In response to an earlier question, I mentioned the F-16 coalition, which is a combination of both gifting the jets and munitions and pilot training. I have nothing to add beyond what I said earlier, other than that it is expected that those capabilities will arrive with the Ukrainians within the next 12 months. Clearly, everyone is working as quickly as possible.

Ukraine

James Sunderland Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend thinks deeply about the problem, and his observations are absolutely correct. It would be inelegant to reflect on the private conversations that we have with Ukrainian Ministers and defence chiefs, but I think Ukraine is going through exactly the same as any other country that has been fighting a war: it is very hard to strike the balance between keeping its most combat-experienced and battle-hardened on the frontline, in command of tactical situations, and bringing those people rearwards and making them part of the planning or training effort. That can have an exponential impact, but it is a very big opportunity cost to accept.

The UK remains one of the largest bilateral humanitarian donors to Ukraine. At the Ukraine recovery conference in London in June, co-chaired by the UK and Ukraine, we added a further £127 million of humanitarian support to the £220 million we have already provided. This week, we have proscribed the Wagner Group as a terrorism organisation, a further measure of the UK’s commitment to compete with Russian influence wherever in the world it manifests itself. Through our sanctions, we are frustrating Russia’s attempts to prosecute its war and hindering its efforts to resupply. The UK alone has sanctioned over 1,600 individuals and entities since the start of the invasion, including 29 banks with global assets worth £1 trillion, 129 oligarchs with a combined net worth of over £145 billion, and over £20 billion-worth of UK-Russia trade. In June, we introduced legislation to reinforce our approach by enabling sanctions to remain in place until Russia pays for the damage it has caused in Ukraine.

Russia’s failures on the battlefield demonstrate that its much-vaunted and much-feared capabilities are anything but. Russia has been proven to be an unreliable partner, unable or unwilling to satisfy export orders due to outdated and inferior-quality materials, alongside inadequate logistics and equipment care. Moscow is having to prioritise its own forces over its international order book. Potential Russian export customers see clearly the opportunity to diversify their defence supply and seek out the reliable and effective equipment that Britain and others in the west manufacture.

What is true for defence exports is increasingly true for all other exports, too. That matters, because Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine is increasingly costly to him, not just in blood and treasure on the battlefield, but in influence in the international arena. More and more countries in Russia’s near abroad are looking for other friends because they see that Russia cannot be trusted, while countries that have been in the Russian sphere for decades, and depended on it for their defence and security, now realise the need to diversify. That is not just in NATO, where Finland and Sweden have gone through huge strategic shifts: others around the world are doing likewise. The cost to Russia of Putin’s folly will last for decades.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I commend the Minister for the full range of strategic initiatives being conducted by the British Government, but it strikes me that the best way of supporting Ukraine in toto is for all 32 member nations of NATO to be contributing the agreed 2% per nation. As of today, seven of those 32 are doing so. May I please ask the Minister—with the FCDO Minister, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), in his place as well—what we are doing to compel, or at least coerce or encourage, other NATO nations to do so?

[James Heappey]

At the Vilnius summit earlier in the summer, the Prime Minister and others who are spending 2% of GDP were very clear in their expectation that others quickly move to do likewise. Moreover, they were clear that that cannot be just a short-term capital commitment, but a long-term, enduring commitment to spend 2% for good, as a minimum—a floor—because Euro-Atlantic security has not been so threatened for well over a generation.

One day, the war in Ukraine will cease, so we must make sure that Ukraine is in the best possible shape to help its economy recover, and quickly. To bring prosperity back to Ukraine, the Ukraine recovery conference committed a further £3 billion of guarantees to unlock World Bank lending; £240 million of bilateral assistance; and up to £250 million of new capital for the UK’s development finance institution, British International Investment, to advance Ukraine’s economic recovery. Critically, we are also spending some £62 million on a programme to help Ukraine rebuild a sustainable and resilient energy system and to keep the lights on.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure those in the Kremlin pay particular attention to the Commons when you are in the Chair, so I have no doubt that they are watching this afternoon, and they need to be clear that we recognise the need—

Oral Answers to Questions

James Sunderland Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

Clearly, we want to improve service accommodation all the time. However, 97% of service accommodation meets or exceeds the decent home standard. That is admirable compared with the record of many local authorities. We are investing in accommodation, and it is improving all the time. I very much regret the occasional report of accommodation that falls short of the mark, and we seek to rectify it as soon as we can.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

We have heard this afternoon how important the continuity of education allowance is for service families. Does the Minister assess that Labour’s proposed attack on private schools will make it easier or harder to educate service children?

[Dr Murrison]

It would certainly make it far more expensive. It would also threaten small schools like Warminster School in my constituency, which relies very much on service families. I just reflect on the sacrifices made by all people I know who choose to send their children to independent schools, and in particular members of the defence community who are of course required to make a substantial contribution to their children’s education in the event that they choose to educate them in the independent sector.

Veterans: Handforth

James Sunderland Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Member is spot on. It is absolutely the case that those charities do a wonderful job, but greater structured support is needed. My constituents are asking the Minister to make the process easier even before discharge. They are asking that people be signposted and helped even before leaving, so that they know the local area that they are going back into, the local groups and the local community. That would make leaving so much easier; it would provide them with stability and a clearer transition to their new life.

In my constituency, there is a very interesting group. These people are passionate about not seeing the experience they had repeated. Sebastian and Gianna Edwards-Beech have set up a support group called NAAFI Break. They welcome veterans and their family members for support. Each week, 18 to 25 people turn up, and they have those discussions, those talks and that helping hand, which is offered over, as they say, a hot beverage. It was at one such session that they asked whether I could relay to the Minister their overwhelming concern that, once discharged, they felt they had nowhere to go. They felt there was a distinct lack of signposting and no central point where information was available. While they appreciated that there was an array of charities, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has said, they felt that somehow the Ministry of Defence needed to do a little more and not contract out its responsibilities to others. They felt the support was bitty, piecemeal and the exact opposite of the training they were given to enter the armed forces, which was precise and regimented.

For example, when Sebastian was discharged and started showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, his wife Gianna felt as if she had nowhere to turn. She said that the lack of signposting both by the Government and the MOD left her feeling angry and rejected. She was sent from one organisation to another, and found the delay in receiving support for her husband quite shocking. When I asked Gianna what exactly she would like to see happen, she said she would like to see something simple and quite tangible, such as a book, issued to each service member and/or their family member when leaving the forces, containing a list of contacts and the assistance on offer. That way, they would have a first line of response. Therefore, my first question is: will the Minister look into providing something like a physical booklet? Gianna said that that tangibility—if I can say that—was important. Yes, it would be good if that simple advice were online, but she felt that having a book—which she might not need straight away, on day one, or in week one or year one, but which she could go to later as things emerged—would allow her to feel comforted.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for her excellent speech. I am a serviceman. I left the Army in 2019 with no resettlement and no termination but through choice, to become a candidate for the Conservative party. I do not regret it, but having gone through that process and been left on a cliff edge with that immediate loss from the Department, I would say to my right hon. Friend that I empathise greatly with all the concerns raised by veterans. I am also chair of the all-party parliamentary group on veterans, and my experience of veterans, having left the Army myself, is that the issue in most cases is not that veterans once served, it is that they are no longer serving. There is a distinction.

We have highlighted a number of issues today, and I wish to make two points very quickly. First, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, there are a lot of agencies, charities and organisations that can help, such as RBL and SSAFA. I would urge everyone to make contact with them. I would also want to see the MOD, with the Minister in his place, doing a catch-up, reaching out a bit more to those who have left and having that single point of contact or repository, whereby people do not feel quite so isolated from the organisation they served. Yes, there is a plethora of support out there, but a bit more from the MOD for those who have left the forces would be welcome.

[Dame Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

Before I call Esther to reply, can I say that interventions have to be brief, especially in debates of this kind, where other speeches are not allowed? I have been lenient once; I will not be again.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Defence People, Veterans and Service Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

I start by declaring my interest as a veteran and an active reservist. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) on securing the debate and the way in which she has presented it. I know she has a deep interest in veterans’ affairs, which shines through, and she has been a passionate advocate for her Handforth constituents and veterans in general. Her aim is to make life better for the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way in the service of our country, and I certainly share that goal.

My right hon. Friend reflected thoughtfully on the question of what we might call signposting. At the time of my first stint as a Defence Minister a decade ago, there was an impenetrable maze of veteran provisions without any realistic road map for navigating it. It was bitty—I think that was the term that my right hon. Friend used. In the meantime, there have been significant improvements, although I am the first to admit that we are not there yet. The MOD actively supports vulnerable service leavers to make the most successful transition possible to civilian life, building on the substantial skills and experience they have accrued in the armed forces.

I am bound to represent to my right hon. Friend the Veterans’ Gateway, which offers a pretty good first point of contact for all former personnel and their families who need access to both the state and charitable sectors. It offers help with pretty much everything, from finances to families, housing to health and independent living to mental wellbeing, and I really commend it. We should all be concerned about delays in getting assistance to veterans, which my right hon. Friend touched on. Ideally, there should be no gap between the request for and the provision of help. Realistically, the system caters for approximately 1.85 million veterans, each with individual issues that may or may not be related to service and requiring different contact with myriad organisations, from Government and local authorities to the charitable sector. To give an idea of the scale of the work, some 450,000 veterans receive an armed forces pension—happily, me included—and last year the veterans’ welfare service handled calls from almost 40,000 people.

Unfortunately, even with the best efforts of the dedicated staff who fill out the forms and operate the phone lines, people can slip through the net; usually we hear from them, not from those who are satisfied with the service they receive. I have visited Norcross near Blackpool to talk to those whose job it is to manage those sometimes quite difficult calls, and I have been impressed by a couple of things: first by their longevity in the job, and secondly by the sense of dedication they have to servicing the needs of their clients’ community. Claims for compensation, for example, have long been hampered by a reliance on paper records—a theme that I have talked about before. The staff at Norcross operate in, frankly, an outdated environment that does not match their commitment and expertise. We need to do away with all those paper records. While it may sound boring, I am convinced that those paper records are at the heart of some of the delays we have seen. They are not the only reason, and I am more than happy to describe at greater length the cause of those delays, but we must drag the systems at Norcross kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

[James Sunderland]

The Minister will recall that we met earlier this year in the all-party parliamentary group on veterans and discussed the much-needed reform of Veterans UK. As part of his closing address, or perhaps in the near future, is he able to provide an update to the House on where we are with the review of Veterans UK and any subsequent work that needs to be done?

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He and I have discussed this before. I am afraid that I will not be able to show very much ankle on this occasion, but in my remarks I will certainly touch on where we are with the two commissioned reviews, which will improve matters as part of the process I described. In the meantime, we have invested £40 million to digitally transform veterans’ services and phase out paper, which is so much impeding the quality of the service we want to offer our veterans. We are introducing online verification, which will make it much quicker and easier to establish veteran status, and that is also why we have introduced the reviews to which my hon. Friend refers.

There have been calls for medical checks when people leave active service to allow for the early spotting of traumatic brain injuries, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton rightly touched on. It is an issue that I, as a military medic, have a long-standing interest in. Remarkably, in Afghanistan a British combat soldier was likely to face exposure to between six and nine improvised explosive device explosions, with the consequent risk of mild traumatic brain injury. That is a staggering figure.

Moderate to severe traumatic brain injury should be detected at the time of injury and managed accordingly. The diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury is generally made clinically on referral to the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Stanford Hall, which operates a dedicated treatment programme for TBI of all levels of severity.

As for medical assessments conducted at discharge, their purpose is to assess and record the physical and mental health status of individuals at point of departure. All episodes of ill health during service will be reviewed at that time, and an assessment will be made and recorded about whether there has been any interaction between health and work. Our duty of care to people is principally to ensure that any disadvantage that they have suffered as a result of their service is remedied as best we can; that is at the heart of the military covenant, as my right hon. Friend will well appreciate. That assessment, at that time, is part of that duty.

The real sticking point here is that mild TBI is generally not visible on routine clinical imaging. The US has something called magnetoencephalography, which it has deployed to try to detect who has mild TBI and who does not. We have our own Independent Medical Expert Group that assesses these things, and it has assessed magnetoencephalography twice. It has found that magnetoencephalography is not sensitive and specific enough to be of use as a screening test at the moment, but naturally it keeps all evidence under review and that position may well change. In the meantime, our own Defence Medical Services is part of a national civilian and military collaboration called mTBI-Predict, and that is looking for reliable biomarkers, which may include—but are not confined to—magnetoencephalography.

I turn to the possibility of rewording the armed forces covenant to encourage authorities to treat veterans as a priority more energetically. I share my right hon. Friend’s appreciation of the value of our armed forces covenant. Indeed, I wrote the book on it 12 years ago, which is sadly now out of print, although a colleague said he had seen a copy recently in a charity shop. He then went on to spoil the story by saying that he did not bother buying it! Nevertheless, I am particularly proud that this Government, in their very early days, put the covenant into legislation—at about the time that I was writing my book—and that organisations are now able to sign up to it, as so many have, including all local authorities in Great Britain.

We should not forget that the covenant is not about advantaging members of the armed forces community; it is not about placing them at the front of the queue or mandating outcomes. I do not think that is what veterans and the service community want. The covenant is about ensuring that people are not disadvantaged by virtue of having served. That “no disadvantage” enjoinder lies at the very heart of the covenant we have built.

The Armed Forces Act 2021 introduced a new statutory duty to promote better outcomes for the armed forces community when accessing key public services. That duty came into force in November 2022. It requires certain public bodies to have due regard to the covenant’s principles when carrying out specific functions in the key areas of housing, healthcare and education. In other words, it is there to give veterans a fairer hearing and to ensure that service providers have the needs of the armed forces community in mind when making policy decisions. We will evaluate the impact of the new legislation as it beds in; we will report on it annually in the armed forces covenant and veterans annual report; and in any event, as we are bound by statute, we will report on it formally after five years.

All service people, from private soldiers to Chief of the Defence Staff, come to defence from civilian life, and to civilian life they will return. Preparing for that inevitability is not something that should happen in a rush in someone’s last few weeks spent in uniform, but from day one. That is why accredited training, skills and education are so important and is why issues like facilitating spousal employment and encouraging personnel to buy their own homes early have been, and will continue to be, firmly in our sights.

I would like to sound a cautionary note. The tabloid press likes to suggest that the veteran living in a cardboard box underneath the arches is typical. That is a complete 180° reversal of the truth. Overwhelmingly, our service leavers transition brilliantly, as one might expect considering that they are resourceful, enabled individuals with in-demand skills and attributes, but there are exceptions and we should be constantly kicking the tyres to see what more we can do to maximise the resilience of our service leavers.

Our holistic transition policy, published in October 2019, was designed to better co-ordinate and manage service personnel and their families transitioning from military to civilian life. Whether that means helping with the basics, such as registering with a doctor, or offering more intensive assistance for those with complex needs including those related to housing, budgeting, debt, wellbeing, employment and children’s education, it is there for them. Holistic transition builds on the success of the career transition partnership, which has provided employment support and job finding services for the last 20 years. Last year, 87% of service leavers were employed within six months of leaving their service. I want that to improve, but that is 12% higher than the UK employment rate, which validates the remarks I made about the majority of our service leavers being in a good position by virtue of having served. The holistic transition policy gives tailored interventions to service leavers assessed as needing extra help. That is done through the defence transition service. It is one to one, provides tailored information and guidance and facilitates access to support services, including from other Government Departments, local authorities, the NHS and trusted charities.

I underscore the contribution of charities. Some disparage charities and say that it is all the responsibility of the state. I disagree. I think our service charities do an absolutely fantastic job and need to be encouraged in what they do.

Mindful of the compensation touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton, in July the Ministry of Defence and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs published a review of the Government’s veterans’ welfare services alongside the statutory quinquennial review of the armed forces compensation scheme. I will not pre-empt the Government’s response to the reviews. That will come later this year—I hope very much not too much later. Suffice to say, those reviews prove that the only way to meet our aspiration of making the UK a truly great place to be a veteran is to continue to listen to what they say, both directly and through their elected representatives as in this debate.

A fortnight ago, I was honoured to be asked to speak in Kyiv at a conference for veterans hosted by the Government of Ukraine. I am pleased that a country that will, as a result of Putin’s aggression, have a large number of veterans, some with the most complex of needs, should, at both ministerial and official level, be looking to the UK for advice and looking at our structures as it works out what it should now do. I find endorsement in that and I am humbled by it.

Question put and agreed to.

Veterans Update

James Sunderland Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

In answer to both: yes. Also, some veterans were told that they did not qualify for medals in the first place. They, too, will be able to have their medals from now on.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I thank the Defence Secretary for his statement, which, as a proud LGBTQ+ champion, I strongly support. I wonder if he might indulge me the opportunity, as a former commanding officer, of presenting him with his annual appraisal on his final tour of duty with the MOD. It says here, quite clearly, that Captain Wallace is strident, forthright, spirited and fearless in the pursuit of an outcome, which we have just seen in this statement. I have regretfully graded him A- for potential, given that he is moving on from the top job, but we can all agree that he gets an A+ for performance. Does he agree that he is leaving the MOD a much better place than it was when he arrived, not least for LGBTQ+ personnel?

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. If the truth be known, I do not think I ever got an A in anything. Maybe I am finishing this job without being found out.

Defence Command Paper Refresh

James Sunderland Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that, as the threat rises, we should respond and design our forces to meet whatever is the threat of the day. Do I think 73,000 is enough to meet today’s threats? I do. Do I think defence needs a greater share of public spending? Yes, and that is what the Chancellor said in the autumn statement. Do I think we need 2.5% of GDP? Yes, that is what I have campaigned for and what I have achieved. I do not have a timeline, but I know that is the direction. Should we get the extra money, what is important about it is that it will prepare us to have a range of choices, depending on the threat of the moment.

The Army will still be over 100,000 people. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) raised the challenge. I have instructed that the Army’s modernisation requires us to protect its budget until it is modernised. It is behind the other two services and we will continue to modernise it. I think the Army has currently configured a size, but do I never say never about making it bigger? We should always be prepared to change our courses if the threat changes.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary for his statement and for his fantastic service over many years. Given the current tempo of commitments faced by HM forces worldwide, I am clear, as a former capability planner, that quantity has a quality of its own. It is also incumbent upon the MOD to fulfil all the expectations placed upon it, both by our NATO allies and our own defence tasks. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, post refresh, the MOD remains committed to a fully deployable, scalable and sustainable armoured division at readiness?

[Mr Wallace]

Yes, we are committed to that, but we have also been honest about the time needed to get to being able to do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Sunderland Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the range of mental health support services that are open to our veterans, particularly Op Courage and, he will be interested to note, Op Fortitude. Of course, there is always more we can do, particularly for those who have suffered as a result of their service, but I think it important to say that, in general, service in our armed forces is a positive for mental health, not a negative.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I accept that we will hear a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office statement in due course, but given the events over the weekend, what assessment has the MOD made of Ukraine’s ability to win in Ukraine?

[Mr Wallace]

The United Kingdom has always been confident that, given the right international support, leadership and investment, Ukraine can defend its nation and see off this aggressive, illegal Russian invasion.