Oral Answers to Questions

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is right that one of the priorities that the Ukrainian President and Defence Minister have constantly stressed to us and other allies is the need for stronger air defence. It is one of the reasons we have now let a contract for short-range air defence missiles: the lightweight multirole missiles. We will produce 650 of those—some of them delivered into Ukraine before the end of the year—and we look to go further in 2025.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

10. What progress he has made on delivering the global combat air programme.

[Mr Speaker]

I think you are meant to stand up when you ask a Question formally.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Luke Pollard)]

Let me be absolutely clear that GCAP is an important programme, as the Prime Minister has stated. That is why the Defence Secretary hosted his Japanese and Italian counterparts within weeks of taking office. Progress continues, alongside the strategic defence review, with more than 3,500 people employed on future combat air.

[Jesse Norman]

I apologise if I was hypnotised by your gaze, Mr Speaker.

I worry about the Government’s grip on strategy all together. First, they have given away the Chagos islands before the strategic defence review. Now they are putting at risk the global combat air programme by including it within the SDR. Is the Minister aware of the extreme efforts that our partners in Italy and Japan, visited by the Defence Committee in the last Parliament, have made to discharge their side of the bargain—in Japan’s case for the first time since the second world war in international procurement outside the USA? What measures is he taking to reassure them about the centrality and importance of the programme?

[Luke Pollard]

The Defence Secretary has clear instructions from the manifesto that Britain is to be better defended with a Labour Government. That is why within two weeks of taking office the Prime Minister had commissioned Lord Robertson to conduct the strategic defence review. The Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary and I have all made it clear that GCAP is an important programme. Not only do we have an amazing workforce working on it but I am pleased to tell the House that last month the UK ratified the GCAP convention, the international treaty that sets up the GCAP International Government Organisation. We will continue to make progress.

Defence Personnel Data Breach

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

It is certainly true to say that a malign actor is involved—we know that. It is possible, and I cannot rule it out, that it is attached to a country, but as soon as I say that everyone assumes it therefore is attached to a country. I am not in a position to confirm that at this point, simply because incredibly detailed forensic work is required to get to that point. My right hon. Friend is right that people differentiate, in some senses, between physical attacks and cyber-attacks, but both can be incredibly serious and have enormous consequences. Again, because we do not believe that the information has, in fact, been stolen and because we are monitoring it very carefully through the eight different measures, I stress that in this case there is a degree of feeling that we have caught it and we are controlling it. However, my right hon. Friend’s wider point is absolutely correct.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has been clear about the serious nature of the breach; he has said so several times from the Dispatch Box. He has also said that the contractor failed to follow MOD guidelines and therefore is culpable, to some degree, as far as we can see so far. What sanctions are in place to penalise that contractor? What sanctions will the Secretary of State apply at the limit if that contractor is found to be in breach? Finally, he mentioned addresses. Roughly how many addresses have potentially been leaked? I am deeply concerned not just about bank details but about the safety and wellbeing of those soldiers.

[Grant Shapps]

I share my right hon. Friend’s concern about the safety and wellbeing of those soldiers. Thankfully, the answer is that very few addresses have been leaked—a very tiny number. On sanctions and what will happen, we must not jump the order of events. We have to be confident we are able to run through the audit trail of exactly what has happened. However, I again make it clear from the Dispatch Box that if negligence has been involved, then we will take the strongest possible action as a result. He and the whole House understand that that is our concern this afternoon.

Defence

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I have been quite generous; I will make a little bit of progress.

That is why this Conservative Government will act now. We are going to deliver the greatest strengthening of our national defence since the cold war. Some will argue that the threats we face are perhaps not imminent or existential. They may claim that increased defence spending is not a good use of money, which perhaps should go on other commitments—there are many to discuss—but I argue that we have seen the consequences up and down the country of the more dangerous world that I described in that Lancaster House speech.

In recent years, we have suffered terror attacks. We have also suffered cyber-attacks on business, on Government, as we were just talking about, and on critical national infrastructure. They were mostly not successful, but the amount that it costs to get around them increases all the time none the less. We have suffered intellectual property theft. We have seen Hong Kong protesters dragged into the Chinese consulate in Manchester and beaten. We have seen Iranian journalists threatened and stabbed in London. We have seen former Russian military officers assassinated in hotels in Mayfair and poisoned in suburban homes in Salisbury and, just last month, British citizens charged with setting fire to Ukrainian-linked business units in east London, apparently on the instructions of Russian intelligence.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has compellingly described the current situation as moving from post-war to pre-war. Does he share my concern that the people of this country, as a whole, are not yet in a place to understand the seriousness of the problem, that there is in some sense, therefore, the beginnings of an issue of consent, and that it is harder than it should be for young people to get excited about joining some of our big contractors and supporting the work we are doing for our armed forces on diverse fronts around the country? If that is true, does he think that there is a specific role for the Ministry of Defence to lead the process of building consent across the UK?

[Grant Shapps]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One issue we face is that if you are not Iranian or Russian and living in the UK, you may believe that this does not affect you too much. My entire argument—indeed, the argument I made at Lancaster House—is that this is not just something that impacts on foreign nationals in the distance; we are all, in effect, under attack. For evidence of that, we can see up and down the land the direct impact on every single family as Putin drove into Ukraine. Every single household budget in Britain was under attack. Remember, the winter before last we were paying up to half of the average family’s energy bill. This really does matter back home. It is again why I stress that defence is the cheapest version of looking after ourselves, not the most expensive one. That is why it is so important that, with Putin inflicting that inflation on British households and British business, we wake up to that fact and understand it. I actually think the British people do understand. They do want us to do more. It is popular to make sure that we properly defend these isles and defend our interests overseas. That is why this party has been proud to bring forward this big boost to our national defence.

As was mentioned earlier, this year I have—because this battle is so very important for all of us, not least our Ukrainian friends—provided another half a billion pounds of aid to Ukraine. That will take our total 2024 military package to a record £3 billion, which is the most we have provided in any year. Previously, it was £2.3 billion and £2.3 billion. It brings our total support overall to £12.5 billion, in addition to other aid. In addition, to help Ukraine repel Russia’s mounting attacks, we gave, a couple of weeks ago, the largest tranche of military gifting assistance to date.

It is worth reiterating the size and scale of that, because I fear that with the announcement of the 2.5% and the trajectory—I think all Members believe that Ukraine’s win is absolutely existential and important—the scale of the gifting was perhaps not noticed. It included 4 million rounds of ammunition, 1,600 key munitions, including air defence and precision long-range missiles, all our remaining AS-90 artillery platforms, 60 combat boats, 400 armour-protected and all-terrain vehicles, and hundreds of bombs for Ukraine’s new fleet of F-16 combat aircraft. Just as we initially provided our Ukrainian friends with trained troops, anti-tank missiles, main battle tanks, missiles and so many other firsts, we will now ensure that the aircraft we cannot provide for them—we do not fly F-16s—are properly provided with munitions.

Armed Forces Readiness and Defence Equipment

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

We face a world of complexity and threat unparalleled in our recent modern experience. Scanning across Europe, south-east Asia and the middle east, we see that this is a world where there are threats emerging, or already in place, to which we as a nation, with our allies, must attend and deal with. We do so in an environment where the most powerful—or almost most powerful—mechanisms affecting our lives are working every day: the effect of technology and changes in price. Their effect is to bring forward new ways of making war that might have been unimaginable two years ago. They have the effect of bringing new actors—private actors, not merely states—into the picture; that might have been unimaginable just a few years ago. We see evolution rapidly occurring in the nature of the threat that we must deal with.

The report produced by the Select Committee, which I was proud to join earlier this year, is in my view not just an exemplary piece of work, but testimony to the Committee’s quality. I speak as someone who sat for five years on the Treasury Committee —no slouch when it comes to quality and expertise—and then chaired a Select Committee myself. I have been deeply impressed by the quality of thought, the experience and the attention that my colleagues and Clerks have brought to these matters. The report is a very good example of that.

Crucially, the report brings out some of the foundational assumptions that have not yet been adequately tested in our defence thinking. It is above all about our readiness; not just our operational and warfighting readiness, but our strategic readiness and our capacity to think ahead to where the escalating, multiplying and developing threat might be in future, and how we can, in a full spirit of resilience, prepare for it. I congratulate the Committee on its work. I have been proud to be associated with it, and congratulate those who made previous contributions to this excellent debate.

We know, because there is ample historical evidence, that democracies can fight wars with an intensity and endurance that is not available to autocracies. However, it has historically taken democratic states time to get moving—time to move public opinion; time to bring the people, the demos, with the politicians and with Government, in order to bring the full resources of a nation to bear. In the modern world, we may not have time to do that; we must start to prepare now—and not just our warfighting capability. It has rightly been highlighted today that we are moving from a post-war to a pre-war world. In that sense, we must give the need for resolution and resilience the profile that it requires among people across the country.

It is not the first time that these matters have occurred, as the House will well know. In the 18th century—a time when this country was more or less continuously at war, with relatively small intervals of peace—there was a period when there was tremendous concern about the effects of commercial society and peace. There was a worry that martial virtue might yield to “luxury” and “softness”, as it was put. We must be aware of that problem; we see it everywhere. I myself was in eastern Europe before 1989. I have experienced what it is like to live under a communist country and in the shadow of Russia. It is nothing that anyone in this House should feel the tiniest appetite to even glimpse, let alone endure or invite our citizens or allies to contemplate. We must be absolutely resolute in thinking about how we can ensure a gradual process—without the loss of our democratic values, and given our constraints—to ready our people for strategic decisions in due course. Everyone in this House prays that it will never happen, but we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that there could be some development for which we are, as yet, inadequately prepared. We must address that as a matter of money, organisation and, of course, talent.

We must fill the strategic gap in our thinking—a gap that is only being accelerated by the rapid growth in artificial intelligence, which threatens to upend not just many of the resources and systems that we use in this country, but much of the strategic thinking that we are bringing to the whole question of what it is to be at war. If Members doubt that, they should look at the work that is being done. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) rightly mentioned maskirovka: the use of AI in mimicry, spoofing and false-flag operations. That is something that we as a country are just beginning to get our head around, even at an advanced defence and security level.

We have an escalating series of security challenges. The solution to them is not more state, as such, but a much more intelligent deployment of the relationship between states and markets; between the public and the private; and between the secret, the grey and the not-so-secret. We have to bring all those resources with us if we are going to be successful, and we have to be more emphatic about the desperate need for competence. That means competence not just in our civil service and our military capability, and of course in the agencies that work alongside them, but in this House. Our political parties have a responsibility to develop, recruit, enable, understand, enfranchise and promote talent, and I put it to the House that no political party is doing that adequately at the moment. We should have chief talent officers in political parties—people actively thinking about where we can find competence, capability, knowledge and experience, and how we can deploy those things in this great Chamber in which we have the honour to sit.

The deep issue here, if I may say so, is not just that we have a civil service that is—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford mentioned—preoccupied with process in a way that is understandable in peace but, I am afraid, inadequate to the preparation for war. It is not just that there is a preoccupation with process over outcome, when outcome is the only thing that matters when we are trying to deliver a capability; it is that we as a nation have not yet made the intellectual, moral, emotional and spiritual shift towards deeply preparing for a pre-war situation. If I may make a party political point for a second, the Government have done a splendid job in starting to take control of a very difficult fiscal situation, which they inherited and was built up through crisis over the past few years, but to what end?

As was said famously by a man nearly 250 years ago in Bristol, we come to this House not as a “congress of ambassadors”, but as

“a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest”.

That interest cannot be sectionalised, including within Government. I say that as a former Financial Secretary; my Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), is also a former Financial Secretary, and we do not say that the budget for defence should go up because we want to be profligate, nor that there should be anything less than proper constraint and proper scrutiny of the long-term spending of this country, but it must go up. That must be shared across both parties; it must be something that even the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer should bear in mind and account for in this Chamber as if they were preparing for war, so that we can all know that they have come to terms with the compromises, difficulties and challenges that we all face today.

Ukraine: Military Equipment

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I know that the hon. Gentleman also served and speaks with expertise on these matters. He is right to raise the issue of the strategic importance of the Black sea. We have had huge progress in that area. I believe that since we reopened that corridor, through the success that the Ukrainians have had, with our support, in pushing back the Russian fleet to the east, some 19 million tonnes of grain have got through. That underlines how important that corridor is, but he is right to say that we need to look at what more we can do. Obviously, I am not going to comment on sensitive matters about individual countries’ capabilities, but he can rest assured that we continue to engage with all our allies on these points.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a direct threat to Europe and of course to wider global security. As my hon. Friend will know, Russia has increased, as part of its war mobilisation, its production of shells and ammunition by some factor of 10—or it is planning to do so in the next two or three years. What conversations has he had across Europe and with NATO allies about the longer-term response to this serious challenge?

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend recently joined the Select Committee and I welcome him to it. He makes an excellent point. First, there is a lot of speculation about the level of production by the Russians. They have needed to increase that because they have lost a huge amount of ordnance and armoured vehicles and, tragically, a large number of personnel. On the long term, I draw his attention to the MPIs, which is where we are joining other NATO members for collective orders of ordnance. The first one we have announced is for missiles and for munitions. That is a powerful signal. We hope it will send a strong demand signal to industry in Europe, but it also sends a signal to Putin and the world that we are determined to stand together and stand up to Putin.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

The cost of living crisis has affected all our constituents, has it not? Covid has made life difficult for everybody, but at the Ministry of Defence we have recognised as far as we can the pressures that bear, particularly on the lowest paid. That is why we have accepted the 9.7% uplift in pay, which I think is unique across the public sector for the last year, having accepted in full the recommendations of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on the excellent work that he has done to support our armed forces with their cost of living. May I ask him to be especially aware of the burden that falls on members of our special forces—the additional burdens that they bear within families as well as in the field? Will he consider that when he thinks further about ways to ameliorate and support their living circumstances?

[Dr Murrison]

I understand my right hon. Friend’s interest in this matter. He can be sure that the special forces—although we never talk about them—are always at the forefront of our minds.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Of course, the Government’s position is that there must be an urgent ceasefire and, although we have been saying this for a very long time, there must be progress towards a two-state solution, however challenging achieving that sometimes appears. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will make a statement shortly. The role of the MOD in this matter is not central and I hope it remains not central; it is a Foreign Office lead and I am sure my right hon. Friend will be happy to answer the hon. Lady’s question more fully.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

6. What progress he has made on strengthening the military covenant.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Mark Francois)]

The armed forces covenant is a symbol of the debt we owe to servicemen and women, veterans, and their families. As the House will be aware, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence reports annually to Parliament on progress in implementing the covenant.

Since the last report was published in December 2013, significant achievements include the allocation of £40 million to fund accommodation projects for veterans and the establishment of the £200 million forces Help to Buy Scheme. I am also delighted to say that the vast bulk of local authorities in Great Britain, from borough councils to county councils, have signed a community covenant, a tangible commitment to supporting our armed forces

[Jesse Norman]

I welcome today’s announcement of released extra investment in special forces, which will be very welcome in my constituency. The Royal British Legion and SSAFA have set up a new military charities advice service in Hereford and in Ross-on-Wye, supported by Herefordshire council. Will the Minister join me in praising the volunteers who staff that new service, and the council, which has taken a leading role in promoting the community covenant?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to support small contractors in military procurement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

I recognise that small businesses are an important source of innovation and flexibility in meeting defence and security requirements. I am determined to help small and medium-sized enterprises access defence opportunities, including standardising and simplifying our procurement systems, so from this month we are minimising the use of pre-qualification questionnaires and increasing use of standard contract templates for low-risk requirements of under £100,000.

We are regularly making progress on these and other SME initiatives, but we also need to inform the SME community that it is getting easier to do business with the Ministry of Defence, which is why we publish the SME action plan on the gov.uk website and why I am undertaking a series of regional visits to talk to SMEs, such as the excellent event that my hon. Friend hosted in Hereford on 6 December 2013.

[Jesse Norman]

I very much thank my hon. Friend for that reply and for the extremely encouraging news that he has described. There are a large number of specialist defence suppliers in my constituency in Herefordshire. They provide vital new technologies and training for the troops, but they often face huge and apparently unnecessary mark-ups and delays forced on them by the requirement to be part of prime contracts. What can the MOD do to help these companies compete more fairly?

[Mr Dunne]

I agree with my hon. Friend that SMEs have an important role to play across defence procurement, but in particular in new technologies and in training. That is why the Government are committed to increasing the proportion of our annual spend on SMEs. Last year that rose to 15% by value of all spend, with some £1 billion spent directly and £2 billion spent indirectly through larger prime contractors, but the proportion of new contracts is even greater with over a third of all new contracts placed with SMEs in each of the last three years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

There is always a need to maintain the dialogue, if only to make it clear to Iran that there is no weakening in the position of the international community. It is also essential that, as well as just talking, real measures are taken. If we are serious about the Iran issue, we need to look at it this way. It is a binary question: Iran will either become a nuclear weapons state or it will not. If we are intent on the latter course, the international community needs to act as well as speak. At the present time, that primarily means ensuring that the financial sanctions, which are having an effect on the regime in Tehran, are fully implemented and that no domestic considerations are put ahead of international security and well-being.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

4. What assessment he has made of the value for money of the AirTanker private finance initiative project.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)]

The price for the future strategic tanker aircraft service was set in competition and also assessed against a public sector comparator before the contract was let in March 2008. Nevertheless, because I understand the concerns about the use of PFI for military procurement, I commissioned a thorough, independent review of the contract, which concluded that there was now no persuasive value-for-money case for pursuing an alternative mechanism to secure this urgently needed capability.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the Minister for that reply. This is but one of many apparently wasteful and expensive private finance initiative projects within the Ministry of Defence—including, most recently, dog kennels at the Defence Animal Centre that are reported to cost more than rooms at the Park Lane Hilton hotel. Does the Minister think there is a case for taking a very detailed look at the MOD’s PFI contracts to lower their cost and improve value for money to the taxpayer?

[Peter Luff]

I agree with my hon. Friend and I am glad to say that a lot of work is being done within the work strands on renegotiation of PFI contracts. Three operational PFI projects have been selected and the pilot phase has commenced with the aim of making savings as part of the renegotiation process. The three projects are the Corsham development, Main Building redevelopment and the defence sixth form college. We expect to have the potential savings identified by the end of March.