"My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that we need more patrolling and monitoring of our inshore waters and exclusive economic zone, and that perhaps it would be a good idea to actually have some more ships and a slightly larger Navy?..." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to assist in opening the Strait of Hormuz to merchant traffic; and what advice is being given by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre to UK merchant shipping...." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"My Lords, we cannot allow the highly damaging closure of the Strait of Hormuz to continue indefinitely. We have two bases in the Middle East, HMS “Jufair” in Bahrain and Duqm in Oman. They were established to support our ships that were there to help the American Fifth Fleet and …..." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister confirm that discussions are still going on with Germany about its involvement in the global combat aircraft work?..." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"My Lords, for too long we have had feast and famine within our warship shipbuilding industry. Part of the reason for the dreadful situation we are in today is that orders took too long to make and there was no drum beat. We will very shortly have four frigates—the great …..." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"My Lords, can I ask my noble friend the Minister what the closest Royal Navy ship was to the Philippines when this accident happened—because historically the Navy has been very involved in these things—and was its tasking changed at all as a result of this?..." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the concerns raised by the Chief of Defence Staff in comments to the BBC regarding (1) the threat posed by Russia to the United Kingdom, and (2) the United Kingdom’s defence capability...." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"My Lords, our Armed Forces and our defence industries are, I believe, teetering on the brink of disaster due to lack of investment over certainly the past 15 years but actually even longer and lack of decisions recently about spending the money that apparently is being released for defence. There …..." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech
"My Lords, I am a simple sailor. Recently, I have spoken to a number of simple soldiers, who may be even simpler. When we joined the military, we felt that there was an agreement that, as long as we acted in good faith, the country would support us.
"My Lords, when the ISC did its study on China last year, we were very concerned to find a large number of Chinese students blocking or filling up courses on quantum, AI and the like. When we analysed further, we found that quite a large number of those students were …..." Lord West of Spithead - View Speech