Submarine Service 125th Anniversary

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2026 Westminster Hall

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the 125th anniversary of the submarine service.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger.

Where were we on 12 April this year? It was a Sunday, so perhaps we were spending time with our families, out in the open air or at church. It was a long time ago—seven months. Remarkably, there are around 140 people aboard HMS Vengeance, one of our Vanguard-class SSBN nuclear missile submarines, who know exactly where they were on that date. They were leaving Faslane on the Clyde for who knows where and, incredibly, they are still out there somewhere, setting the record for the longest patrol ever undertaken by a Royal Navy submarine. They are the silent service: the men and, increasingly, women who wear the dolphins of the submarine branch of the Royal Navy. They are a breed apart, affectionately known as the “Fish Heads”, for it takes something special to live and be ready to fight in a tiny metal tube deep beneath the waves.

I have a particular admiration for them as, despite my father enjoying a long and illustrious career in the deep sea as a marine engineer, I get seasick in a bath. Lacking a keel, submarines—boats, as the Navy infuriatingly insists on calling them—are not the best on the surface in choppy waters, and I have gone green just watching them rolling like pigs, coming and going from Faslane on a blowy day in the Clyde. It came as a delight the day that I went aboard HMS Vengeance at HM Naval Base Clyde to find that the boat was out of the water and up on bricks, so to speak, for maintenance.

It is 125 years since the Navy operated HMS Holland 1, our first submarine, which was named for builder John Philip Holland and was laid down, as our submarines are today, in Barrow-in-Furness. So much has changed in that time. Our modern boats are nuclear-powered and, in the case of the Vanguard class that provides today’s continuous at-sea deterrent, nuclear-armed. It was the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated speaking softly while carrying a big stick. Truly, Trident is our big stick—a missile with a range in excess of 2,000 miles when nothing on the planet is more than 2,000 miles from the sea.

In many ways, however, little has changed. Submarine design is such that the ship’s complement must fit in around her essential machinery. There is little enough room for basics and none for luxury. When it comes to attack submarines, nothing has changed: 125 years ago, we had just one submarine, and how many do we have today? Well, just the one Astute class at sea: HMS Agamemnon. She is on the Clyde for sea trial, still months off being ready to patrol, while the remainder of the class is tied up alongside for reasons unknown. Perhaps the Minister, mindful as ever of national security, might be able to shed some light on why that is.

Talking of light, we must remember that the submariners’ world is a windowless, skyless one, where time and date mean little. The menu is on a strict daily rotation. That is the only means by which the sailors can tell what day it is. A roast means it is Sunday, curry means Wednesday, Friday is fish and Saturday is steak. Food is of huge importance not just for sustenance but for morale. Indeed, given that the boats make their own oxygen and fresh water, and have effectively a limitless nuclear fuel supply, food storage is the limit on patrol duration. That means that the boat’s freezers must be packed with exquisite care. Woe betide anyone who buries the entire supply of “snorkers”, or sausages, behind all the “babies’ heads”, as steak and kidney pudding is known—the shiny pastry is said to resemble a newborn’s pate. “Nutty”—chocolate and sweets in the parlance—is pivotal too, and it is said that aboard interminable Vanguard patrols it is all that keeps body and soul together.

Contact with the outside world is, unsurprisingly, limited, and only two people aboard—the commander and the navigator—will know where the boat actually is. Modern insulation design means that the old trick of holding a hand against the pressure hull—warm meant you were in the Med, cold in the Arctic—is now an old wives’ tale.

Let us think about that massive patrol for a second: months under fake light, breathing artificial air, drinking tea made with ersatz Millac milk and water distilled from seawater. In these days of a hyperconnected youth well used to the internet, submariners get a 120-word-maximum message via the Familygram system once a week: word comes in and nothing goes out, and family are warned not to send bad news. They deal with all that while sitting still somewhere in the depths of the ocean as the Russians listen out for them, and while being at readiness to fire. How long it takes to come to readiness is classified, but we know that a boat will be asked multiple times on patrol to come to readiness to unleash Armageddon.

We ask a great deal of our submariners now, and we have always done. We should take a moment to reflect on all those still on eternal patrol in the ocean’s depths, for submariner casualties are grim. In the second world war alone, we lost more than 3,160 submariners aboard 74 boats.

I will highlight just one: Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Wanklyn, one of our most successful submariners, who had strong connections with the exquisite Knockinaam Lodge hotel outside Portpatrick in my Dumfries and Galloway constituency. He and his crew aboard HMS Upholder sank 16 enemy vessels, taking 128,350 tonnes of enemy shipping to the bottom. Highly unusually, they sank three Italian submarines. But it was in action off Sicily in 1941 that he made his name. With its Asdic system—the world’s first working sonar—inoperable, Upholder slipped through heavy rings of Regia Marina defences to torpedo the transatlantic cruise liner Conte Rosso, which was ironically Clyde-built but used as an axis troop ship. It earned Wanklyn the Victoria Cross, our highest gallantry award. However, the following year, Upholder and its 30-year-old skipper went missing somewhere off Tripoli. The wreck has never been found; her fate is still shrouded in mystery.

My constituency defers to no one in terms of how many German U-boats we sank. Operation Deadlight in 1945 saw many of the 156 surrendered U-boats towed from Loch Ryan, off my home town of Stranraer, and scuttled or sunk in gunnery training in the North channel. We are also the final resting place of UB-85, a German submarine of the great war, sunk as it sat on the surface off Galloway in 1918. The captured skipper later said that he could not submerge because of damage inflicted by a strange sea creature that had attacked and was driven off only by small arms fire. Fact or fiction, it is a stark reminder that worse things do happen at sea, and that those who today willingly put themselves in harm’s way in the depths of the ocean are worthy of our gratitude and respect.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned HMS Vengeance. I am sure that, like all of us, he has seen the report in The Sun newspaper of two days ago that says that HMS Vengeance has now been at sea for 210 days, which marks the longest deterrent patrol in western naval history. Does he agree that that is a supremely impressive feat of naval achievement, in that those people have been at sea for so long to keep this nation safe?

[John Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes a fantastic point. It is quite incredible—absolutely jaw-dropping—that those people are out there in incredibly difficult circumstances for so long, beyond what could reasonably be expected. Again, I hope that the Minister can touch on this: it seems that something has gone wrong. The length of patrols is increasing, and this one has reached a record level. It is remarkable.

I mentioned the sea creature, but today’s oceanic terrors are slightly different: ultra-quiet Russian submarines, autonomous uncrewed robot submersibles, and mines triggered by nothing more than the unique sound signature of our boats. Whether operating under the Arctic ice, in the shallow waters of the Med, east of Suez, in the old battlegrounds of the western approaches, in the bitter waters off the Kola peninsula or in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, today’s submariners still play high-stakes cat and mouse with Crazy Ivan, a worthy opponent. Are we supporting them fully when the infamously aggressive all-or-nothing Perisher course for submarine commanders, run in the narrow waters of the Kilbrannan sound in Scotland, has ground to a standstill for a lack of Astute boats? A century and a quarter of silent service must not be torpedoed by defence spending cutbacks. The men and women who earned their dolphins fear no enemy bar the accountants of Whitehall.

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[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) on securing this important debate on the 125th anniversary of the Royal Navy’s submarine service, and for introducing it so ably.

I declare two interests: first, my late father, Stoker First Class Reginald Francois, served in the Royal Navy during the second world war, although he was a minesweeper man, not a submariner; and secondly, I am, by virtue of my father’s service, a long-standing honorary member of the Rayleigh branch of the Royal Naval Association. Members of the Rayleigh RNA were out in force on Remembrance Sunday, led by their chairman Mike Sandbrook, who is a former submariner. I am wearing my RNA tie this evening.

Despite Admiral Wilson’s strictures, which we heard about from the hon. Member for North Devon (Ian Roome), the Royal Navy’s first operational submarine, the Holland 1, entered service in 1901. It was built in Barrow-in Furness, which is where BAE Systems builds our nuclear submarines today. The submarine service began the first world war with some 60 submarines. Those gave good service to the King, as evidenced by the fact that five of the 14 Victoria Crosses awarded to the Royal Navy during the great war went to submariners. The Royal Navy began world war two with a similar number of submarines, although by 1945, that number had more than trebled. RN submarines operated in the Atlantic and Pacific, but perhaps most famously in the Mediterranean—my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway has already mentioned the exploits of HMS Upholder.

During the cold war, the Royal Navy transitioned to primarily nuclear propulsion, and our first nuclear attack submarine, HMS Dreadnought, was commissioned in 1960. RN submarines played an important role in the Falklands war of 1982. That includes the HMS Conqueror famously torpedoing the Argentinian cruiser, the General Belgrano, and returning to port flying a Jolly Roger. Later classes of attack submarine—the Swiftsures and Trafalgars—continued the noble tradition of protecting the seas, as is now performed by the latest Astute class.

In 1968, the Royal Navy assumed the role of providing our nuclear deterrent from the Royal Air Force, and the Resolution class of ballistic missile submarines entered service. From then onwards, at least one Royal Navy nuclear deterrent submarine has always remained at sea, in the ocean depths, providing the ultimate guarantee of our national security. That mission, known as the continuous at-sea deterrent, or Op Relentless, has been successfully performed for more than 57 years. That is an amazing tribute to the professionalism and endurance of Royal Navy submariners.

The Royal Navy also has an extremely proud tradition of utilising its nuclear attack submarines to monitor potential adversaries, particularly the Russian navy as it seeks to operate in the High North and the north Atlantic. Nevertheless, as we have already heard, there are also concerns about the availability of our attack submarine fleet.

It is an oft-forgotten fact that Vladimir Putin’s father was a submariner and Putin has continued to invest heavily in his submarine fleet and increase the monitoring by Russian submarines of undersea cables around the British Isles that are absolutely fundamental to our commercial life.

In the light of that, it is deeply worrying that, for a period of several months earlier this year, not a single one of our attack submarines was at sea, as is well known to the Chinese and the Russians. Perhaps when the Minister responds to this debate, he can explain why that was the case and, even more importantly, what is being done to fix that situation. It is simply unacceptable that the Astutes, which cost £1.5 billion each, are tied up alongside for long periods when the Russians are roving at will in the north Atlantic. The wall of silence about the chronic unavailability of the Astute class cannot go on; I would like the Minister to address that issue when he responds.

In summary, the Royal Navy’s silent service, whose motto is “We Come Unseen”, has an extremely proud tradition of service to this nation. It takes a quite extraordinary individual to be prepared to serve at sea, often for months at a time, especially on deterrent patrols that take them away from friends and family, and without access to so much as a mobile phone. The nation rightly remains proud of those who wear dolphins and will no doubt continue to give valiant and resolute service to the people of these islands, just as successfully as they have done for the past 125 years.

[The Minister for Veterans and People (Mr Calvin Bailey)]

It is a pleasure, Sir Roger, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time in my role.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) on securing this debate and giving us this opportunity to recognise 125 years of the Royal Navy submarine service. This anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on the service’s extraordinary history, to recognise generations of submariners and the families who supported them, and to remember those who gave their lives serving our country. The work of submariners often depends on remaining unseen, but today we can ensure that their contribution is properly recognised.

On 2 October 1901, the launch of Holland 1 marked the beginning of the Royal Navy’s submarine story, as we have already heard. During both world wars, submariners distinguished themselves in conditions that demanded exceptional courage, skill and endurance, engaging in everything from reconnaissance to disrupting enemy supply lines.

The introduction of nuclear propulsion brought another profound change. In 1963, HMS Dreadnought entered service as Britain’s first nuclear-powered submarine. Six years later, the Resolution class of submarines began our continuous at-sea deterrent. Successive generations of submariners have maintained that deterrent without interruption. That unbroken mission depends on a crew at sea, on those preparing to take their place and on everyone ashore whose work makes each patrol possible.

Alongside providing deterrence, our submariners gather intelligence, hunt hostile submarines, protect maritime forces and offer the ability to strike targets at sea and on land. Their ability to operate undetected gives the UK options that few other capabilities can provide, and much of their work cannot be discussed publicly. Operational security rightly limits what we can say about individual deployments and the readiness or availability of particular submarines.

[Mr Francois]

Before the Minister chides me for discussing submarine movements in Parliament, I am not doing so; I am discussing the absence of submarine movements. So, either now or before he ends his speech, will he tell the House why not a single one of our nuclear attack class submarines—the Astute class—was at sea for months?

[Mr Bailey]

I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford for setting himself up, because I will take great pleasure in explaining to him why we are in that position.

However, I will first explain that a central part of democracy is the ability to report responsibly on submarine operations. Crews cannot reply to speculation, and their families cannot be told where their loved ones are. Unfounded guesses about the activities of a boat, particularly a submarine on a deterrent patrol, leave a husband, a mother or a child at home worrying about when they will next see the brave sailors who crew our submarines. For that reason, I urge responsibility in discussions about these matters.

The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway asked me to shed light on why we are here. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford has so passionately set himself up to hear why. It is quite clear that the cuts made in the 2010 strategic defence and security review did the damage that we are trying to recover from now. Let us be clear: it was the Opposition who deferred the replacement of Vanguard by four years, and it was the Opposition who slowed the Astute build.

[Mr Francois]

On that point—

[Mr Bailey]

It was the 8% cut in real terms that they delivered—

[Mr Francois]

That is not correct.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. If the Minister wishes to give way, he will. He does not have to.

Budget Resolutions

Mark Francois Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I just do not know what the Opposition have to moan about. We came into government with the abysmal inheritance that we faced, and we chose straightaway to invest more in defence to clean up their mess. We have now gone even further than the NATO commitment of 3.5% by 2035 by choosing to set our own target of 3% by 2030. That is not just about the future; it is built on our record in our first two years.

Defence spending has gone from 2.3%—

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Will the Defence Secretary give way?

[Wes Streeting]

In a moment. Just so that we are clear, we have gone from spending 2.3% of our GDP on defence when we came into office to spending 2.7% next year. It is very clear that we are on the right trajectory. That is not a record that they can speak to. I do not know how they can be so shameless—

[Mr Francois]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

Let’s find out—I give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Francois]

If it is true that the Defence Secretary has a plan for 2030, I ask him why the Labour Chair of the Defence Committee said yesterday in reaction to the Budget:

“some of the key decisions on defence spending have lamentably been delayed until next year’s spending review. There is a cost to inaction. Investment in our nation’s defence and security cannot be kicked into the long grass. Our adversaries are not bound by fiscal years and spending cycles.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before the Secretary of State responds, may I point out that there are many people wishing to contribute? Hopefully his speech will be coming to a conclusion shortly.

[Wes Streeting]

I have been too generous with allowing interventions, but let me take that point head on. I think that is completely unfounded criticism—

[Mr Francois]

He is the Chair of the Defence Committee!

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[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Before I turn to the Budget, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Sue Holt, whose death Mr Speaker announced to the House this morning. I am a member and former leader of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation, and I worked with Sue over quite a long period. She was always immensely cheerful and efficient, and her death came as a real shock to us all. I send my condolences.

At least there is one part of the Budget that I welcome: the continuing support being given by this Government to Ukraine. That was initiated under the last Government —indeed, over 10 years ago, long before the full-scale invasion by Russia—and we have continued to maintain it. It is a cross-party matter, so that support is very welcome. One of the reasons it is so important that we support Ukraine is that Ukraine is our frontline, and the threat to Ukraine is not just a threat to that country; it is a threat to all of us. That is why it is essential that we increase our defence expenditure now.

The Chancellor has recommitted to spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030, but that is still some way off, and we have heard from the Secretary of State for Defence about the immediacy of the threat. It is a matter of some concern that while we are still debating how we will get to 3%, allies such as Denmark, Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania, Norway and Poland are already exceeding that level and planning to spend more. Perhaps one of the reasons we have not yet been able to explain how we will meet the target is that the essential measures to fund it—in other words, addressing the welfare budget—have again been ducked by this Government. We await the outcome of the reviews by the Minister and Alan Milburn, but we have reached a position in which 6.7 million people are now claiming out-of-work benefits. That is creating a situation that is not just unaffordable; it is actually immoral that so many people of working age are out of work and living on benefits.

The situation in this country is that all the economic signals for the long term are heading in the wrong direction. Borrowing is going up. Our national debt already stands at £3 trillion and is scheduled to increase further. Tax levels are the highest in our history. The Chancellor claims that he wants to cut regulation, but we have heard today from the OBR that the Employment Rights Act 2025 will result in unemployment standing at over 5% next year. That situation destroys incentives to work, drives away investment and causes entrepreneurs to leave the country. It is an unsustainable situation, yet nothing in this Budget does anything to give confidence that those things will be reversed.

I will quickly refer to a couple of measures. In the Prime Minister’s first statement to the House, I raised the situation on our high streets, where so many businesses have been hit by not just the increase in business rates, but the increases in national insurance contributions, energy costs and the minimum wage. Although the measure to increase the threshold for business relief is of some small help, it is nothing like sufficient to help those businesses that are struggling to survive. I regret that there was no mention of VAT, a cut to which UKHospitality has identified as a critical measure that could help, because such businesses have to compete with those in countries such as France, Spain and Italy, which levy rates that are half of those here.

I will quickly mention hair salons, which the Chancellor talked about. They often face unfair competition from identical-looking salons next door, where the chairs are rented out and the staff class themselves as self-employed. That is depriving the Treasury of proper revenue while also creating unfair competition. I hope that is something that the Treasury will listen to.

I am sorry that the gambling sector is yet again being used as a cash cow, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. By increasing the tax on gambling yet again, the effect will hit our high streets even harder, because a lot of betting shops are going to be driven out of business.

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend has been a staunch defender of Ukraine for many years in this House. Would he agree with what President Zelensky said yesterday, as reported in The Sun, when he advised this Government to prioritise UK defence spending and to do so without further delay? Does Zelensky know something the Government do not?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I am extremely grateful to my constituency neighbour for making an excellent point—and for giving me another minute. He is absolutely right that President Zelensky once again has spoken words for the Government to listen to, if only they would. It is absolutely right that we should increase our support for and expenditure on defence.

Finally, my right hon. Friend and I both represent relatively rural constituencies, and I regret that the Budget made no mention of the harm being done to the agriculture sector through the family farming tax, nor did it provide any help to those constituents—I have many, and I know he does as well—who are off the grid and rely on heating oil. They will not benefit from the abolition of the standing charges, yet they have faced huge increases.

Perhaps the only thing to celebrate in this Budget is the fact that the Chancellor did not listen to his Back Benchers who wanted him to go even further, with a wealth tax, a mansion tax and an increase in capital gains tax; long may it continue that he listens to us, not to them.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order. I did not hear any comments in the Chamber and it is not a matter for the Chair—I did not hear it.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. If I caused any offence, I am sorry, but I was reacting to the fact that the hon. Gentleman effectively said that the people on the Conservative Benches could not read, which I humbly suggest is not very polite.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the right hon. Member for his point of order. That is clearly not a matter for the Chair, but a matter of debate. I ask Members yet again to treat each other with the courtesy and respect that we expect in this Chamber.

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[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to sum up for His Majesty’s Opposition this afternoon. Perhaps I can begin on a consensual note by pointing out that yet again, as we are debating these important economic matters, including the defence of the realm, there is no Member of Parliament from the Reform party present. They have taken no part in this debate at all. We know that they do not do Thursday afternoons, and they certainly do not do defence either.

[Dr Evans]

Does my right hon. Friend believe that the reason they cannot be here is that their prayer cards were taken out?

[Mr Francois]

No, I think it is because they are desperately trying to find someone—anyone—to go to one of their press conferences.

Now, according to the Red Book, working-age welfare spending will increase to £221.5 billion in 2031-32. That is almost a quarter of a trillion pounds and an increase of over £57 billion since 2024-25. The Prime Minister famously said at the Dispatch Box just a few weeks ago that

“national security…cannot come at the expense of social security.”—[Official Report, 9 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 1036.]

That really is a segue to what I principally want to say this afternoon.

What the Chancellor announced yesterday was not a detailed programme for how to spend 3% of GDP on defence, but just a plan to have a plan—which is not really a plan at all. He promised to “begin work”—his words—on how this would be achieved by the time of the spending review next year. The Labour Government have already had two years to answer this question, so why do they need a further year now?

When Labour published the strategic defence review in June 2025, all three authors of the review, led by Lord Robertson, a respected former Secretary-General of NATO, were absolutely adamant that the bill for implementing their recommendations was a minimum of 3% of GDP on defence. Unless and until the Government definitively commit to spending that money, it is very difficult for our armed forces realistically to deter a war with any aggressor, and in particular the Russians—not the Trussians!

At the time of the SDR, we were told that that level of detail would be provided in the subsequent defence investment plan. The House was promised this in the autumn, then by Christmas, then by the new year, then in the spring, and it was finally published only in late June 2026. Nevertheless, when the DIP was eventually published, the Government kicked the can down the road for a second time and still failed to provide a definitive date for when, and crucially how, this country would spend 3% of GDP on defence. Indeed, the then Defence Secretary, now the Chancellor, famously resigned, seemingly on a point of honour, because the Government had failed to give a date for 3%. I have here his resignation letter, dated 11 June, and I quote from it directly:

“After explaining to you that I would not be able to accept a DIP settlement that does not give our Forces the resources they need, I am now left with no other option than to submit my resignation as your Defence Secretary.”

It is also worth recalling that the then Veterans Minister, the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), resigned in company with him, partly over this and also because of his very severe reservations about the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill—a wicked Bill—which he famously described as “unfit for purpose”.

Once the previous Prime Minister then fell, miraculously, having resigned as Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey) was immediately reincarnated as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, he then found himself with the boot very much on the other foot. Given his understanding of defence, and the solemn terms in which he wrote his letter, it was not unreasonable to assume that, having now seized control of the bridge at the Treasury, he would be ideally placed to meet his own request to name the date for 3% and how to finance it. Otherwise, why did he resign? I am therefore genuinely deeply saddened to see that, yesterday, he failed his own test. All we were given was an offer to produce a plan for 3% in the Government spending review, which will take place next year. In other words, a man who seemingly resigned on a point of honour, when he had the perfect chance to put that problem right, completely ducked it. All that Labour has done is kick the can down the road for a third time.

Our armed forces therefore cannot realistically plan because they do not know how much money they will really have to spend on this nation’s defence, and they are now going to have to wait at least another year before they do. The House need not take it from me; Chris Mason, the political editor of the BBC, in summarising the Budget on the 6 o’clock news last night, said, “The biggest questions this Government still faces, such as the long-term funding of defence, this Budget didn’t answer.”

In fact, it is even worse than that. When the Defence Secretary agreed the SDR, he also signed up with the Treasury for almost £11 billion of efficiency savings. This was a Labour deal—a Faustian pact—between two warring Government Departments, but the effect of those in-year efficiency savings, or “spending cuts” in pub English, is now proving debilitating for our armed forces. The in-year cuts were some £2.5 billion in the previous financial year and £3.5 billion this year, 2026-27.

One of the reasons it took nearly a month to get HMS Dragon to sea was that maintenance cuts occurred under the efficiency savings programme. We now see the vast bulk of the Royal Navy tied up alongside the quayside, partly because of maintenance issues but also to save money. For many months, we had a period in which not a single one of our nuclear attack submarines was at sea. The Minister might intervene and chide me for discussing submarine movements on the Floor of the House, but I am not—I am discussing the absence of submarine movements on the Floor of the House.

We have also seen Army exercises cancelled on Salisbury plain and flying hours reduced for some of our RAF pilots. These are exactly the wrong things to be doing if we are trying to send messages to Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, to deter him from further adventurism—for instance, in the Baltic states. Yesterday, the Labour Chair of the Defence Committee—I am afraid I am going to quote him again—excellently summed it up by saying that

“some of the key decisions on defence spending have lamentably been delayed until next year’s spending review. There is a cost to inaction. Investment in our nation’s defence and security cannot be kicked into the long grass. Our adversaries are not bound by fiscal years and spending cycles.”

He should know.

Yesterday we even learned from the depths of the Budget Red Book that the Chancellor has effectively cut the overall MOD budget by £1 billion in each of the next two years by pocketing reduced spending estimates on MOD pensions for the Treasury, rather than allowing the MOD to retain the cash and spend it on bolstering our defences. The Treasury has described these two £1 billion cuts in the defence budget as an “accounting adjustment”. Well, it is Enron accounting. It is smoke and mirrors, and it only helps our adversaries, not our armed forces.

On defence housing, there is a similar story. I served for some five months on the Armed Forces Bill Committee, and we were told repeatedly that the money for housing would not be raided for short-term efficiency savings. In fact, the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak told us in the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill on 18 March:

“The £9 billion has been ringfenced; it has absolutely been secured for defence housing. Nothing in the DIP process will stop us getting on with the job of making these improvements and getting the job done. We have made that commitment to not just the armed forces community but the nation. We have said it in the House, and we will see it through.”

That is completely unambiguous, so imagine our anger when we then saw a letter from the permanent secretary to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, dated 25 September, which said not only that some £850 million of that money will be deferred to the next Parliament, but that an additional £1 billion of upgrades to single living accommodation for soldiers will be deferred as well. What the Government have done is cut nearly £2 billion of that investment in this Parliament, in a desperate attempt to meet exactly the Treasury-imposed efficiency savings target that, for five months, they swore blind to us they would not do.

The Defence Secretary, who opened this debate, neglected to mention the MOD’s £3.5 billion efficiency savings target for this year. He talks about being ready for war within 1,000 days, while at the same time imposing crippling cuts on the operations and training of our armed forces, who are there to deter war in the first place—si vis pacem, para bellum. The Budget totally failed to answer the question of how the Government will actually spend 3% of GDP on defence, and they are listening in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang. This is a dereliction of duty by a Government who will the ends but do not will the means, who talk tough but act weak, who have let down the people of this country and will not defend them properly, and who must be held to account at the ballot box for their abject failure in defence of the realm.

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[Lucy Rigby]

Let me talk now about energy security, because it is part of our national security, too. We are reforming our energy system so that Britain is less exposed to volatility. We will freeze new policy costs on bills, pending a comprehensive cost control framework. We are accelerating investment in the grid and we are procuring clean power only where it lowers bills and can connect properly.

When it comes to our public services, this Government have stabilised spending after years of under-investment by the Conservative party.

[Mr Francois]

I am sure the right hon. and learned Lady can confirm to the House that she is a Treasury Minister. I have here the press release issued by—the Treasury—which says, “Exclusive. Chancellor John Healey tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy Labour will not bring welfare bill—”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Mr Francois, we refer to him as the Chancellor, not by his name.

[Mr Francois]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was reading the press release, but I accept your admonition.

Anyway, it says that the bloke who is in charge of the Treasury has told Krishnan Guru-Murthy that Labour will not bring the welfare bill down in this Parliament and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury—to give the right hon. and learned Lady her correct title—has just said that it will. Who is right? Is it the right hon. and learned Lady, or is it her boss? They cannot both be, can they?

[Lucy Rigby]

The Prime Minister confirmed earlier today that we will bring the welfare bill down as soon as possible. I am very happy to confirm that.

As the Chancellor said yesterday, when it comes to public services we will insist on reform, prioritisation and value for money. That is what resilience looks like: sound public finances, secure energy, strong defence and a state that is able to act when the country needs it to.

As hon. Members have made clear, including my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre), for Shipley (Anna Dixon) and for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards), the measures in the Budget will provide breathing room for families and businesses now, while also helping to bring bills down over the long term. We know that energy pressures are not just felt by families but by businesses, too. That is exactly why we are increasing the small business rate relief threshold for retail hospitality and leisure properties, taking around 70,000 more businesses out of business rates altogether. For other businesses in the sector, rates will be frozen in real terms for two years.

We are supporting high streets and the businesses that give them life. We are backing pubs, clubs and music venues. We are reducing the supply-side barriers that firms repeatedly tell us hold them back: energy costs, slow infrastructure decisions, red tape and access to finance. And because of our commitment to fiscal responsibility, all those measures are fully funded.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Part of the growing threat from Russia—and it is growing —includes increased maritime activity, both in the English channel and in the surveillance of critically important undersea cables, including by specialist Russian submarines. Part of our response should surely be to increase our own submarine patrols around our shores. However, for many months, not a single one of our Astute class attack submarines has been on patrol. I know that it is not the Government’s policy to comment on submarine movements, but I am asking about the absence of submarine movements. Why, on Labour’s watch, have our attack submarines been embarrassingly tied up alongside for months at a time, while the Russians are roving in the North sea and the Atlantic?

[Wes Streeting]

However the shadow Minister phrases his question, he is not going to tempt me to comment on operational deployments. He understands perfectly well why we choose not to do that. Secondly, I point him to recent exercises we have conducted in the North sea and to our leadership of the joint expeditionary force. To go to the heart of his question about our armed forces and their readiness, perhaps the next time he or his party want to get to their feet to lecture us about the state of our armed forces, they might begin with an apology for underfunding them for more than a decade.

Ukraine and Russia

Mark Francois Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

On behalf of the shadow Defence team, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new Defence Secretary—Labour’s third in three months—to his place and to thank him for advance sight of this important statement. On a personal note, we have a mutual friend in Labour councillor Gareth Barrett, who I know would be very proud to see his long-time friend standing at the Dispatch Box and representing the Ministry of Defence.

It is over four years since Russia’s brutal and illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but as the Ukrainians reminded me when I visited Kyiv in February, the Russo-Ukrainian war has actually been raging for 12 years, because Putin’s Russia illegally annexed Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014. That is longer than both the first and second world wars combined. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in paying tribute to the Ukrainians for their fierce and determined resistance. They are fighting for the values of freedom and democracy, which this House has represented for centuries, so when we say, “Slava Ukraini!”, we mean it.

On my trip to Ukraine, the Speaker of the Rada said something that I will never forget: “When you go back to London, tell them we know the Russians better than anybody, and if we fall, you’re next.” My hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson), who is joining our shadow Defence team, has just returned from Kyiv overnight. He reports how the Russians cynically suspended missile strikes on the capital while those on the American delegation were present, but resumed the strikes almost immediately after their departure. Tragically, a number of innocent civilians were murdered in Kyiv last night.

On supporting Ukraine and brave President Zelensky, there has been absolute solidarity between ourselves and the Labour party. When I served in the Ministry of Defence following the 2014 invasion, we began training Ukrainian troops on Salisbury Plain via what was then known as Operation Orbital, and that continues today via Operation Interflex. Between them, they have trained over 50,000 Ukrainian troops on British soil. The House will no doubt recall the very powerful footage of columns of Russian tanks being destroyed in 60 seconds in highly co-ordinated anti-tank ambushes north of Kyiv in February 2022, which were carried out by Ukrainian troops using UK-manufactured NLAW anti-tank weapons. Had it not been for that kit and the training that accompanied it, the Russians would likely be having lunch in Kyiv today.

We all want to see a ceasefire in Ukraine but, as the Ukrainians themselves would tell us, not at any price. The Government’s policy is to participate in a “coalition of the willing” in order to help maintain a ceasefire—I hope the Secretary of State can confirm that again. However, were we to deploy the British Army into Ukraine, our troops would need to be adequately trained and equipped. A few moments ago, the Defence Secretary invited the House to hold him to account. Taking him at his word, I must press him on some extremely worrying reports—first published in The Times on 3 September, and amplified in the Defence Eye journal on Tuesday—that British Army training is being seriously curtailed in order to provide in-year efficiency savings— “cuts”, in pub English— at the Treasury’s behest. For the financial year 2026-27, the MOD has been given a ridiculous efficiency savings target of over £3 billion, with much of it to come from operational spending such as training exercises. The Army’s share of that is reportedly £1.2 billion.

Given the seriousness of this situation, I wish to ask the Defence Secretary three very important questions. First, is it true that training in both the regular and the reserves is being materially constricted to save this money at the Treasury’s behest? Secondly, what actions is he as Defence Secretary, no doubt in consultation with the Chief of the General Staff, taking to push back against these pernicious in-year funding cuts imposed by the Treasury? What discussions has he had with the new Chancellor, who, ironically, resigned as Defence Secretary in June because Labour would not commit to spend 3% of GDP on defence by 2030? The Government cannot keep kicking this can down the road. Thirdly, in which year specifically will Labour now commit to spend 3% of GDP on defence, as the Conservatives are now pledged to do by 2030 at the latest? We will not deter the likes of Vladimir Putin by capping bus fares.

In summary, we are four-square with the Ukrainians. We support the Government in supporting them, but they must support our troops, so what are they doing to train them?

[Wes Streeting]

First, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the constructive spirit with which he responded to my statement, and I very much hope we can maintain that on both sides of the House. I have certainly enjoyed my early conversations with the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), so we will continue to work in that spirit, and maximise and project unity globally wherever we possibly can.

The right hon. Gentleman referenced that I am the third Defence Secretary in recent months, for reasons that are evident, and I give him an undertaking to add this to the retention priorities for the workforce. I made that point very firmly to the Prime Minister, and I am very much in favour of retention in this post. On that note, however, I place on record my enormous respect for and thanks to both of my Labour predecessors —the Chancellor and the Security Minister. I particularly want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), who did an outstanding job during his time in this office, doing some considerable heavy lifting to get the defence investment plan over the line. Not only do I thank him for it, but I think the country will thank him for it in the longer term, too. I am enjoying working with him in his post.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned support for Ukraine, particularly the support we have given for a number of years on training. I should reflect back to the House, from my visit to Kyiv, that what is fascinating about the evolution of this terrible war is that, whereas we have spent a considerable amount of time training Ukrainians, we are increasingly finding that it is the other way around. We are seeing the rapid evolution of modern warfare, and the Ukrainians are at the forefront of defence innovation. We are actively learning from our Ukrainian friends, and their ingenuity and expertise. Yes, we have to provide them with the resources they need to fight and to win, but it is also important that we recognise their extraordinary capability under the most unimaginably difficult circumstances.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the multinational force for Ukraine. We hope for the best and plan for the worst in terms of the continuation of this war, but we are also actively working to prepare for conditions in which a ceasefire has been agreed by Ukraine, with Ukraine and, from our perspective, for Ukraine. I am proud of the work we are doing, particularly with our French allies, on the multinational force for Ukraine. I enjoyed seeing the MNFU in Paris during a visit to meet my French counterpart, Madame Vautrin, earlier this summer, and I am looking forward to hosting the MNFU here in the UK later this year. The objective of the MNFU is, in the event that a ceasefire is achieved, to increase Ukraine’s deterrence against war breaking out again, and that is the focus of the mission.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to reports in the media about training, and I just want to unpack a few points. First, we are investing more in training, and it is certainly not true to say that training has ceased. [Interruption.] To be fair to the right hon. Gentleman, he did not make that claim, but I have seen people draw that conclusion from some of the reports. Of course training continues, although there has been some reprioritisation to make sure we are prioritising the activities that will provide most impact at this point in time.

I acknowledge, however, that one of our responsibilities as a Department is to live within our means. One discipline I have to bring to the Ministry of Defence, drawing on my experience at the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS, is to ensure there is no culture of routine overspending, that we are improving productivity, that we deliver value for money and that we recognise that the money we are investing in defence comes with choices and trade-offs that apply across Government and ultimately rest with the taxpayer. Yes, we must make the case for more defence investment and spending, and we will—we will see that across the House—but we should not in the process distract from ensuring that we live within our means, that we deliver capability, effect and impact, and that we treat every penny of taxpayers’ money wisely. [Interruption.] I hear from the Opposition Front Benchers that they agree with that point.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman tempted me to announce the date at which we will hit 3% spending. He will know that getting ahead of a Chancellor and a spending review is a breach of the ministerial code, and having resigned from the Government once already, I have no intention of doing so again today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his place; I knew it would not be long before we saw him back on the Front Bench. I have urged the Government before to use the frozen Russian Central Bank assets. It may be difficult, as he has just said to another hon. Member, but that does not mean it is impossible. Given the leadership that the United Kingdom has shown, can I urge the Secretary of State to lead the way in turning the difficult into the possible?

[Mr Francois]

Speaking of foreign donations.

[Wes Streeting]

To retain the tone of these exchanges, I will resist making the point that the shadow Minister makes. Let me say simply to the hon. Gentleman that that is absolutely the challenge I will take up.

Iran

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bailey]

What a great privilege it is to receive my first intervention from the hon. Gentleman. It is important that he gets a full answer to those questions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer) will cover them adequately in his closing remarks.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

On behalf of the Conservative Front Bench, I place on record our absolute agreement with the Minister’s tribute to all our armed forces personnel serving in the middle east. Will he briefly look around and confirm that yet again when we are debating defence and security, including threats to UK citizens in this country from Iran, there is no Reform Member of Parliament present in the Chamber of the House of Commons to participate?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Evans]

Au contraire—how could my hon. Friend possibly make that suggestion? The public will see what this looks like. Did Labour Back Benchers not listen to the words of the Leader of the House about how important this debate is? Clearly, other hon. Members are too busy dealing with something even more important.

As I was saying, I am actually very pleased to be debating Iran, because the situation there has an impact on all aspects of our lives. The real question is not why we are debating the situation in Iran, but what decisions will be made by the man who will take charge in four or five days’ time. The Government are effectively asking us to debate a storm without understanding how the captain wants to steer us through it. That is why this debate matters.

Let’s start with energy. We have heard from both sides of the House about the impact that the situation in Iran will have on energy. Will the new Prime Minister think about opening new licences? What is he going to do about the cost of living and fuel prices? We do not know the answer, but that is going to have a big impact. We know that the cost of energy is going up in this country, despite the Government’s promises at the election that it would fall, and we do not have an answer on what the right hon. Member for Makerfield will do. We are not 100% sure what he will do on net zero. We have just had an urgent question on resilience and possible blackouts in this country, but we do not understand what he will do. I am quite keen to understand the thoughts of the person who will be in charge in five days’ time on how to deal with that issue and grow resilience in the country.

We have rightly heard from Members on the Government Benches about defence. There has been a lot of turmoil in defence under the Labour Government. We have lost a Defence Secretary. We have had a defence investment plan and, as I rightly pointed out earlier, it was expected to need £28 billion, but it has hit £15 billion. That is the funding that has been committed, but there is a gap there, isn’t there? We are £4.7 billion short. The right hon. Member for Makerfield will have to fill that gap in the handover, so how is he going to do it?

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech, but he should not undersell this point. On top of the £4.7 billion that has not been approved by the Treasury, there is £10.7 billion that has to be generated from cuts to the Ministry of Defence budget and recycled. If we put them together, that is £15 billion, which is more than all the new money put together.

[Dr Evans]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I would love to put that question to the right hon. Member for Makerfield, if he was here, although I expect that it would have come more eruditely from my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) on the Front Bench. This is precisely my point: we do not know how that issue will be resolved.

The hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), who spoke before me, spoke about the humanitarian situation, which is hugely important. We have no idea what the decisions of the right hon. Member for Makerfield will be when it comes to dealing with international aid. After all, the current Prime Minister castigated the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, for making cuts to international aid, then went and made cuts himself. The question is: will the new Prime Minister make the same decision? Will he hold to it or reverse it? I do not know—this Chamber does not know, and that is the point.

The DIP hits our domestic policies too. The funding needed to defend our nation and ensure that we are protected from the likes of Iran must mean a capital expenditure cut, which will be 1% in health and 1% in education. Which frontline services in health are going? Which hospitals in the hospital programme will not be built? There was a negotiation between the US and the UK on pharmaceuticals in our trade deal. That was signed off with the US, which has a tendency to use leverage on us when it comes to international issues such as Iran and tariffs. We still do not know from this Government where that funding will come from, but it has to come from the frontline when it comes to the NHS. I would love to ask the new Prime Minister what that looks like and how he will fund the new drugs that we need, but, alas, we will sadly not get that opportunity.

What does the 1% off education look like for school budgets? When it comes to education, especially when we have the likes of VAT on private schools, which has meant that 100 schools have closed and we have less teachers than when this Government came in—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because that is a point that I was moving towards, given that today’s debate is about Iran, and the consequences of what is happening there for the conflict, for our country and for the defence of Europe. It is now clear that the Russians know how to defeat the weapons that remain in our warehouses, because when we use a weapon, they learn how to defeat it. We therefore have to accelerate our innovation and accelerate how we adapt, and a great deal of that involves drone warfare. Nevertheless, there is always a need for traditional weaponry. I look at the plans for the Royal Navy, and they seem to me to constitute a sensible way forward, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford is in a much stronger position to comment on that.

We have to accept that there are instance when the Ministry of Defence gets it really, really wrong. When, for a short period, I was the procurement Minister, Ajax was landing on my desk every day. My right hon. Friend knows as much about Ajax as most people in this House know about what is in their wardrobe—he knows every nut and bolt—and he is right when he says that we must accept at some point that some projects must be scrapped.

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend generously refers to me. On Ajax, the Government published a written ministerial statement yesterday that had a great deal of verbiage in it, but it still did not say when Ajax would enter operational service, even though it is nine years late.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for clarifying that. I have been speaking to officers who command Ajax tanks. When an officer is interviewed, he has another officer stood behind him, to make sure that he says the right things. When an officer is interviewed on the record, he is not going to say a lot. You have to go to the pub and speak there to the officers who command the tanks; you need to have proper conversation with them. They will tell you that this thing will be useless in a war. The fact that the tanks cannot communicate with each other in real time on the battlefield should send a shiver through us all.

The point I am driving at builds on the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee), who talked about Iran supplying technical drones to Russia, how Ukraine has moved ahead of those, how Russia will catch up, and how we have to adapt. We have to accept that some of our programmes are simply not fit for purpose, because we do not have a budget in place for funding the defence investment plan; it is smoke and mirrors. Labour Members will push back on that, but the figures are there. There is £15 billion to be spent, even though the demand was for £28 billion. Some £5 billion has not been identified, and £10 billion comes from savings in the Ministry of Defence, so there is not a penny more for the MOD. The money is just not there, and we should be terrified by that. Those are not my words, but the words of the man who was the Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough. This is not coming from the Opposition; it is coming from a man who was in office, and who has the Labour movement running through him, like the words in a stick of Brighton rock. There is no way that he wanted to criticise his Labour Government, and neither did the noble Lord Robertson, another man who has the Labour party running through his veins, but they have pointed out just how exposed we are.

Too many people ask—again, this comes down to education—“Why should we defend the Baltic states if Putin wants to go in?”. I have heard people say, “They’re Russian anyway. They were part of the Russian empire.” I have heard people say, “The Ukrainians started the war with Russia. NATO pushed them into it.” I have heard people say all these things, and do you know what they all have in common? They all started off looking at particular right-wing websites—I do not mean far right; I am not talking about extremism—that push these sorts of things, and the Russians and the Chinese have been watching what they click. They are the ones developing the algorithms, and they feed their lines through algorithms that take people further and further down a particular path. That is about undermining what underpins our society. When sensible people whom I have known for years are parroting back exactly what is coming out of the Kremlin, it is clear that this is having an effect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), who, as the whole House knows, spoke extremely well and in detail about the threat posed by the IRGC. I agree with every word he said. I will return to that, although I suspect not as eloquently.

My hon. Friend, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), mentioned the 1933 Oxford Union debate. On that topic, it is worth reminding ourselves of what happened there. The motion, voted on on 9 February 1933—barely a fortnight after Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor of Germany—was that

“This House would, under no circumstances, fight for King and country.”

It went through by a majority of over 2:1 on the night. We do not know how each individual student voted that night, but we have a good idea of those who were there, many of whom subsequently signed up to fight for king and country in 1939. That shows how attitudes can change, and I have great faith that, were it ever to come to it and the young people of this country really believed we were under threat, they would rally to the colours again. It is worth placing that belief on the record.

I wish to reiterate the point I made in an intervention on the new Minister for Veterans and People—it is good to see him in his place. Unfortunately, yet again as we debate defence and security—the first duty of government is the defence of the realm—Reform Members are not here. These plastic patriots love to wrap themselves in the flag, but when we talk about those who serve to defend it, they cannot be bothered to turn up. I do not live in Clacton, but if I did, I would vote for the Bin.

For many years, the Iranian regime has been the most prolific sponsor of global terrorism. From Hezbollah and Hamas to the Houthis, who have been attacking British ships in the Red sea for some time, Iran has been at the heart of it all. The regime has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and uses hostile anti-western rhetoric. Indeed, the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei despicably called for Israel to be “eradicated” and “uprooted and destroyed”.

The Iranian regime has also been accused of supporting proxy conflicts across the middle east, contributing to instability in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, all facilitated by the enforcers, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As the proactive think tank, the Coalition for Global Prosperity, has warned us,

“despite the disruption that Iranian proxies have seen to their activities, there remains the potential for their regrouping due to the weak governance and poor economic stability that engulfs parts of the Middle East”.

That is a sage warning.

In recent months, the Iranian regime has deployed thousands of drones, supported by a variety of ballistic missiles, which have been fired at Israel and a number of fellow middle eastern countries, including Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—all allies of this country. On 1 March 2026, as my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon pointed out, one drone reached as far as Cyprus and hit our airbase at RAF Akrotiri, thus directly endangering the lives of our service personnel. Mercifully, no one was killed or wounded—but they could have been.

Given that, on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition I place on record our admiration and thanks to all our armed forces personnel deployed in the middle east, and crucially to their loved ones who support them, even though many are separated from them, back in the home base in the United Kingdom. Our armed forces are deployed in the gulf in support of our long-standing allies, but also to help defend our nation at home.

The director general of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, speaking at Thames House on 16 October last year revealed:

“Since the start of 2020, MI5 and the police have disrupted 19 late-stage attack plots. And we’ve intervened in many hundreds of developing threats.”

He went on:

“MI5 has tracked more than twenty potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in just the one year”.

The whole House will know that it is very unusual for the director of the security service to be so candid about threats to the home base, and therefore we need to take his words extremely seriously. They offer a stark warning to us all about the threat of the Iranian regime and the IRGC, both in the middle east and in the United Kingdom.

Many of the UK’s closest allies, including the US, already proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, thus increasing pressure on its leadership, restricting its ability to operate internationally and making it clear that support for terrorism and violent destabilisation carries consequences. That is why we on the Opposition Benches welcome the decision to proscribe the IRGC as a foreign state threat. When the Minister for the Middle East sums up, perhaps he will explain to the House exactly where the Government will go from here and whether legislation, either primary or secondary, will be required. If that is the case, they will most certainly have our support.

Turning to nuclear weapons, for decades, the global consensus has rightly been that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is a critical security objective, given the profound risks that would pose to regional stability and the wider global effort to prevent nuclear proliferation. The acquisition of a viable nuclear weapon by the Iranian regime would fundamentally alter the security balance in one of the world’s most volatile regions. The possession of nuclear weapons by the Iranian regime would increase the risk of miscalculation, escalation and a wider nuclear arms race. This would create a far more dangerous security environment, making existing tensions between countries more difficult to manage and increasing the likelihood of future conflict. This was emphasised by the UK’s statement to the United Nations Security Council in June 2024, which stressed:

“Iran’s unabated nuclear escalation…makes the region and the world far more dangerous and makes escalation by others more likely.”

This would create further consequences for UK interests specifically. Any conflict involving a nuclear-capable Iran would risk threatening the security of British personnel and assets in the region, disrupting vital trade routes on which the UK economy relies and undermining global energy stability, with wider consequences for consumers and businesses. A number of hon. Members have referred to that this afternoon. These risks are not theoretical. Following the United Kingdom Government’s decision to grant the United States use of military air bases for strikes on Iran, the Iranian ambassador in London warned that any facilities, properties or bases used against Iran would be considered “legitimate targets”, demonstrating the potential for wider escalation and the direct risks posed to United Kingdom interests. This highlights the broader challenge of responding to Iranian aggression while maintaining the stability of vital international waterways.

That brings me on to the situation in the strait of Hormuz. The strait is one of the world’s most important waterways for global energy supplies and international trade. Iran’s attempts to threaten freedom of navigation and bring shipping through this vital route to a standstill, contrary to international law, represent a deliberate effort to weaponise trade and effectively hold the global economy to ransom. The Iranian regime’s actions, including the reported recent attack on a Cypriot-flagged container ship travelling through the strait, demonstrate the clear need for a firm response to protect international shipping and regional stability. That is why we wholeheartedly support efforts to strengthen maritime security, including through the deployment of minesweeping equipment where necessary. Minesweepers are a defensive capability, designed to protect freedom of navigation, safeguard global energy supplies and prevent any state from using maritime disruption as a tool of coercion. The UK must ensure that no regime can threaten one of the world’s most vital economic lifelines without facing resistance.

The UK’s approach should also recognise the growing importance of technology in modern defence—something I know the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) is very keen on. The Defence drone strategy of 2024, delivered by the then procurement Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), highlighted the potential of uncrewed systems in the maritime domain, including their use for mine countermeasures. These capabilities demonstrate how the United Kingdom could use innovation to protect vital international infrastructure while responding effectively to emerging threats.

At this point, I should declare an interest. As some will know, my late father, Stoker First Class Reginald Francois, served on a minesweeper named HMS Bressay during the second world war, including on D-Day. As the son of a minesweeper man, may I ask the Minister if he could update us on the deployment of RFA Lyme Bay to the Gulf? I realise that there are certain operational constraints on what he can say, but could he give us at least some idea of when those capabilities might be deployed and in what circumstances? Working with the French and others, we have the capability to clear the strait. Can he give us some idea of if and when we might be required to use it?

At present the Iranian strategy appears to be effectively to play cat and mouse with the Trump Administration. Iran will no doubt seek to humiliate the President in the run-up to the mid-term elections in November, approximately four months from now. The Iranians have form on this. The House may remember that they sought to humiliate President Carter over the American hostages and only released them on the day of President Reagan’s inauguration—a quite deliberate act. I may be wrong, but I suspect the Iranians will do everything they can to try to keep the strait blocked between now and the mid-term elections in November. Time will tell if that proves right. I would like the Minister to tell the House what we, working with the Americans and others, are trying to do to prevent that scenario, not least because of the economic consequences for us at home.

Turning to those economic consequences, some 20% of the world’s oil passes through the strait of Hormuz. It would appear at present that very few tanker captains and/or their shipping line owners are prepared to effectively run the gauntlet through the strait. That being the case, surely it is strategic madness to deny the ability to grant future hydrocarbon exploration licences in the North sea. Surely, for reasons of strategic and energy security, we should be encouraging the oil companies to “Drill, baby, drill” in the North sea if we believe the Iranians will continue to block the strait of Hormuz. This strategic imperative overrides any ideological “obsession”—I use the word deliberately—by the current Energy Secretary.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Again, does my right hon. Friend recognise that mincing around with words, saying, “Oil and gas play an important part, and we pump millions of barrels every day” is simply not good enough? We need to exploit what is there because it gives us energy security. Yes, the price is set on the international market, but the gas we would drill in the North sea would go directly into our system. That is what gives us energy security.

[Mr Francois]

My A-level economics is a bit rusty, but price is based on the relationship between supply and demand, and if we can increase the domestic supply of oil and gas, that has to be materially to our advantage.

That brings me on to the defence investment plan.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mr Francois]

No, I will go on to the DIP.

I tread warily because both the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), and the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) honourably resigned because they believed—it is in their resignation letters—that the resources were not sufficient to defend this country. The outgoing Defence Secretary resigned because, as he was very clear, the Treasury was only offering 2.68% of GDP by the year 2030, and yet the new Defence Secretary seems to be content with 2.69% of GDP in the same timeframe.

We should remember that the chiefs of staff wanted £28 billion extra over the next four years, partly to implement the strategic defence review. They have been offered just over £15 billion, and £4.7 billion of that has not even been cleared by the Treasury and is subject to a subsequent public expenditure review. As I said earlier, a further £10.7 billion is actually financed by cuts, including to operational spending and training within the Ministry of Defence, which would then be allowed to recycle that money into the DIP, rather than surrendering it to the centre. When those two figures are added together, they more than match the so-called £15 billion of extra spending, so it is all smoke and mirrors. To all intents and purposes, for all the bluster, for the year of delay and for all the waiting, there is no extra money for defence in the defence investment plan.

I regret to tell Ministers this, but the Russians can read, and so can the Chinese and, indeed, the mullahs in Tehran. We will not deter those people from further adventurism if the Government of this country cannot even tell us in which year they would achieve 3% of GDP. It is laughable to think that the defence investment plan is a credible piece of deterrence to our potential aggressors.

[Mr Bailey]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mr Francois]

Yes. The Minister gave way to me, so I must now return the favour.

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

Will the right hon. Gentleman say why the Conservative Government’s equipment plan had a funding deficit of between £7 billion and £28 billion? It was filled with unfunded programmes for aircraft and ships. I struggle to understand why he calls the DIP “unfunded” when we have provided £298 billion of funding for it.

[Mr Francois]

I have two things to say to the Minister. First, I am not sure if what he says is exactly right, but even if it were true, those programmes are still unfunded, pretty much, because there is no new money in the defence investment plan. Secondly, I have a small revelation—I was not going to mention this, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I now I will—about the “no confidence” debate, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon, that was won at the Oxford Union last autumn, at which Labour was slaughtered: the two proposers of the motion that night were Sir Robert Buckland and me. We have been invited back this autumn, so we will see whether we do better next time.

[Dr Arthur]

On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

Yes, certainly, although I am coming towards the end of my remarks.

[Dr Arthur]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, particularly if he is drawing to a conclusion. Of course, the big “no confidence” debate was the 2024 general election. Before reflecting further on defence, can we go back to his enthusiasm for more exploration of oil and gas? The most optimistic timeline puts the recovery of oil and gas from Jackdaw and Rosebank five years away, but it could be 10 years away. How will that help us with the situation in the strait of Hormuz?

[Mr Francois]

In response to the hon. Gentleman’s second question, that is all the more reason to get on with the exploration. On his first question, I know that we are all on our best behaviour for the Prime Minister’s departure, but he has some brass neck talking about big victories on the day that the Labour party effectively sacked its Prime Minister. I give him marks for chutzpah, but that is going a bit too far. For the benefit of Hansard, the hon. Gentleman is even grinning at me while I say this. We all know why this debate was scheduled: it is because the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) has gone AWOL, and Labour did not want a debate about the fact that he did not want to face scrutiny.

[Dr Arthur]

On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

No. If I were the hon. Gentleman, I would not embarrass myself again. He should sit down and take a break. That is the reason why the Government have scheduled this debate, which is likely to finish more than two hours early—[Interruption.] Around two hours. These silly games that the Government play do not help them, and do not impress. There is a lot of hubris in this. If I were the hon. Gentleman, I would not take too much for granted.

I will finish on what I hope will be a consensual point for the House: there will never be peace in the middle east while the mullahs run Iran. We now know that the horrific 7 October attack carried out by Hamas was almost certainly ordered from Tehran, in order to pre-empt the signing of an Abraham accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia; that is why it was done. The theocratic regime of the mullahs does not want stability. The mullahs do not want peace; they want destruction and death, be it in the Gulf or, if they could achieve it, here in the United Kingdom. In much the same way that Margaret Thatcher hoped and prayed, three years before the Berlin wall came down, that one day people in eastern Europe would be free, I hope and pray—I hope that the House will join me in this—that one day the ordinary, decent people of Iran will be free. They, the Gulf and the world will be all the better for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Falconer]

That is a really important question. In my career as a diplomat, I saw the extent of disinformation and hostile efforts to influence others change incredibly quickly. Iran has been described in this debate as not doing normal diplomacy. It is not just Iran. The right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) mentioned the obvious efforts of Moscow to have influence in a whole range of ways, whether through the Wagner Group—now the Africa Corps—or online. I am afraid to have to inform my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer), if he is not already aware of it, that quite a lot of the state-backed Russian media spend quite a lot of time talking about just how awful we all are in this House.

This is a really important area of work. The Security Minister leads the defending democracy taskforce, which is driven from the centre of Government—of course, we in the Foreign Office have an important role to play, but so do many other arms of Government. There is no lack of urgency on the part of Government in dealing with this problem. It is, of course, difficult to delineate between disinformation and disagreement, but you know it when you see it, and many of us in this House with experience of foreign affairs have seen just how dramatically it has risen as an issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) rightly referred to the noticeable drop in commentary on the merits of Scottish independence following the interventions—I do not wish to disagree with friends in the Chamber on the merits of that case, though as the House might expect, I am an ardent Unionist, with an English mother and a Scottish father.

Madam Deputy Speaker, with your permission, I will make a little progress and turn to what is happening in Iran, lest I leave Conservative Members complaining that I have taken the full two hours. I do not like to do this, but let me gently correct the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold—I am afraid that there are missiles flying, and they are flying towards our friends. I condemn in the strongest terms the reckless attacks on commercial shipping in the strait of Hormuz and, indeed, on countries in the region. These include Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan. The Conservative defence spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), asked what support we have given to those countries. We still have British fighter jets in the air seeking to defend our friends and partners, we have the Sky Sabre programme, and we have forward-deployed a range of support from the RAF. I join the right hon. Member in thanking both our armed forces and their families—I think he referred to the home base. For much of the Royal Air Force, the home base is Lincoln, and I am particularly grateful to the families there.

We have called out what is intolerable aggression from Iran—not just by ourselves, and not just with our counterparts in the region, but with friends elsewhere, including France and Germany. The House should be clear about what Iran has done over the past week; it is seeking not only to strike our friends and partners, but to assert control over what are very clearly Oman’s territorial waters. It has been explicit that one of the things it is most offended by is the passage of ships through what is sometimes called the southern channel of the strait of Hormuz. That is practically the beaches of Oman. Oman is a long-standing friend and ally of this country; it has full rights to its own territory and its own waters, and what Iran is seeking to do is a terrible threat to a principle that this House has valued for a very long time, which is the freedom of navigation. We want to see no tolls and no restrictions, and we want a return to diplomacy. We want the memorandum of understanding to be clearly in force, implemented in good faith, verifiable and in line with international law.

Our priorities remain de-escalation, the protection of civilian shipping and the full reopening of the strait. However, as many hon. and right hon. Members have said, Iran also must never have a nuclear weapon, and we continue to engage closely with our partners in the region and, indeed, to be clear with Iran itself about that. For understandable reasons, we have talked a great deal about the strait, but let me set out the clear and verifiable steps that we expect of Iran in relation to the nuclear issue. We must now have full co-operation with the IAEA, and it must have full access to all nuclear sites in Iran.

To return to the strait of Hormuz, as many hon. and right hon. Members have said, what happens there affects all of our constituents. I unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks on commercial shipping, which have cost innocent seafarers their lives, damaged the environment and left global trade unable to flow freely. Many of those strikes have been in Omani waters; the MOU between the US and Iran in no way abrogated Oman’s rights to its own territorial sea, and we stand with Oman.

As a result of Iran’s reckless actions, particularly over the past few days, we have now seen daily transits decline from around 150 vessels a day before the conflict to just a handful yesterday. No country has the right to hijack international shipping or to hold the global economy hostage. This crisis will be felt by some of the world’s most vulnerable people, who will bear its brunt most extremely. Iran must halt these attacks on international shipping, and it must support the reopening of the strait and a return to de-escalation and diplomacy, as envisaged in the memorandum of understanding that it signed.

The UK will continue to stand for freedom of navigation, both in the strait and across the world. Our priority in the strait negotiation is to ensure unimpeded passage without the threat of violence, tolls, fees or conditions. We will continue to stand up for international law, as reflected in the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, for freedom of navigation, for global navigation rights, and for seafarer safety. We will continue, alongside France, to lead efforts to reassure international shipping. That is why we have established the multinational military mission—the MMM—to support de-mining, to reassure shipping and to help reopen the strait. Some 28 countries have now pledged their support for these efforts.

The Foreign Secretary convened a meeting of more than 40 countries, as well as the International Maritime Organisation and the EU, to build consensus and determination across the international community to secure freedom of navigation and reopen the strait. We welcome the IMO’s evacuation corridor initiative and its mandate to restore safe and unhindered transit through the strait. The IMO must be enabled to resume that work as soon as possible.

[Mr Francois]

Without asking the Minister to reveal any operationally sensitive information, for reasons that we all understand, is the Government’s position that they will not seek to use the capability of the international coalition for de-mining to clear mines from the strait unless, in effect, they have Iranian consent for de-mining?

[Mr Falconer]

We have to be extremely clear about the circumstances of the strait. It is clear that Oman has the right to do what it wishes within its own waters, consistent with international law. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will have seen the statement from France and Britain recently about our intent to support the Omanis in de-mining, if that is what they want. We have been clear that the MMM is intended to be a defensive effort. It is not committing the UK into the wider conflict between the US and Iran; it is a defensive measure. We do not require the consent of Iran to be in Omani or international waters. That is an important principle that this House has upheld for many decades—perhaps even centuries—and we will continue to do so.

I will turn from the strait to what happens here at home. Important points were made in the debate about the role of Persian language media organisations and their associated journalists. I am afraid that it is true that the Iranian intelligence service has a long-standing pattern of targeting Jewish and Israeli people, and there appear to have been efforts to target journalists, too. We are firm in our commitment to protect the Jewish community, and we will continue to work urgently to stamp out vile antisemitism. As foreign states increasingly seek to promote threats on our streets, we are taking concrete measures to crack down on those who try to undermine our country and its security.

Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mike Martin]

I think we have all heard stories of firms such as the one in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, whether in our own constituencies or in the conversations we have as Members of Parliament who are interested in defence. It has been catastrophic for British industry, and rushing out an unfunded DIP, which is effectively what this is, has not helped. It has meant that some small capital investments, one third of the total pot for the next four years, can be made by firms. However, for anything that stretches beyond 2030, nobody can be sure enough to make that investment.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very accurate critique. Is he aware that the Treasury Committee, led by the redoubtable hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), was looking at defence funding at lunch time today, and that in that hearing, barely an hour ago, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted under persistent questioning that the Government have done no work on how to get to 3.5% of GDP on defence?

[Mike Martin]

All I will say is that the defence of the realm is the most serious issue for any Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing the debate. I was proud to join him, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) and Field Marshal Lord Richards of Herstmonceux in creating the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament. We are discussing a topic that we all agree on: the threat that faces the country and the necessity for us to rearm.

I had hoped that the tone of the debate would have been slightly less political. I feel like we have had a little bit of amnesia as to how we have got to where we are. I do not intend to focus on that too much, but I am sure that others will make the point about the decline in the size of the Army over the past 14 years, the decline in the size of the Air Force, and about the frigate fleet—we talk about the frigate gap—and what happened to frigate and destroyer construction.

We should remember that the threat has not just arrived. There was not a meaningful increase in defence spending after the annexation of Crimea, and there was not a meaningful increase after Putin violated Minsk I or Minsk II. Indeed, there was not a significant increase in defence spending after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That context is really important.

[Mr Francois]

The hon. Member is right on the funding—I will mention that later—but one important thing that did happen after 2014 was under what was then called Operation Orbital. We began training Ukrainian soldiers on Salisbury plain, because they knew what was coming—and, I think, perhaps so did we. We will talk about the money in a minute, but the training of Ukrainian troops in Britain did start fairly shortly after 2014.

[Tim Roca]

I agree with the right hon. Member, but I am not sure whether his point is relevant to the one I was making about the broad context of defence procurement. There has been great cross-party consensus on what we are doing with Ukraine, and we should ensure that that continues.

I also want to comment on the defence nuclear enterprise. Under the DIP, we will be spending £45 billion over the forthcoming period on the incredibly important nuclear deterrent. It is right that we do that, but that amounts to 25% of the defence budget. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) is in his place. The other week, I was reading his arguments at the time of the coalition Government, urging them to press ahead with the renewal of Trident, which they did not do. That cost us many years and has cost us many billions of pounds that we could be spending today on conventional forces. It means that we have tired Trident submarines heading out to sea beyond when they should be doing so, and we have crews on extended patrols of 150, 200 or 250 days. That is the cost of the decisions made at that time.

I want to talk a little about ensuring that we do not fall into Russia’s trap. Of course, there is a significant threat from Russia, which is both conventional and hybrid—

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) has highlighted a number of pertinent questions that collectively pointed to the increased threat that we face. I also very much agree with the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca). There is a lot of common ground in the Chamber today. One example of that is that I agree fundamentally with the comment from the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) that we

“must not underestimate the level of change that is required.”

None of that detracts from the point that the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) highlighted in his opening remarks on the structural flaws in the funding allocated through the defence investment plan. The hon. Gentleman elaborated in more depth but, for example, less than half the headline figure announced is new money. Of the £15 billion announced, £6.9 billion over four years is new money, with £4.7 billion for the next budget, and £3.4 billion from asset sales and moving liabilities around. As he said, that is in addition to £10.7 billion of efficiencies.

In addition to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, I want to illustrate how the Government’s narrative contradicts itself with regard to the efficiencies; three Government documents, which the Government agree with, actually contradict each other. For example, on page 79 of the DIP we see the total resource departmental expenditure limit of £7 billion, from savings on staffing, and a capital departmental expenditure limit of £3.4 billion. Those are figures in the Government’s own annex, yet just last year on page 5 of the strategic defence review, the Secretary of State said, in no less than his own foreword:

“We will unlock nearly £6 billion of new savings”.

In a year we have gone from the Secretary of State saying, “We’re going to unlock £6 billion” to “We’re going to unlock over £10 billion.”

As the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells alluded to, there is no clear plan and confidence is low. Confidence is not just low because the defence investment plan states that it is low, although indeed its working states

“of which remaining plans at lower maturity”

with £5 billion on RDEL and £3.4 billion on CDEL—£8.4 billion of low confidence. Let us look, too, at the independent findings of the National Audit Office. It is stated on page 10 of one of its most recent reports, from December 2025, that the accounts were qualified in a number of areas and that:

“Lack of effective departmental oversight of a number of these arrangements has meant that the MOD did not have appropriate information nor assurance to ensure that transactions and balances”—

blah-de-blah. In other words, the Department itself does not have a grip. Quite rightly, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak pointed to the scale of challenge, but we have a set of efficiencies in a 10-year plan that fundamentally contradict the Secretary of State’s own assurances just a year ago.

The main point I wish to highlight—I say this as someone who has spent time in the Treasury, and I keep raising this point with MOD colleagues—is that I continue to be baffled as to why the Department is not highlighting and prioritising the reserves more than it is. Again, I think an area of consensus is the value of the reserves in delivering scale, and the fact that they are value for money as an option. Page 61 of the DIP just states £4.2 billion for reserves over four years—there is no breakdown, no detail, and no information, and it is not even clear if the training days and reserve service days for this year are secured. Can the Minister give us an assurance? Can he say what equipment will be funded for the reserves over the next four years? Can he give any colour on that, and can he explain why the reserves are not being prioritised more than they are?

My next point speaks directly to the issue of national resilience that the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak correctly identified. Looking at the Red Book, £310 million has just been agreed for a digital campus in Manchester, and there is £1.196 million—£1.2 billion—on boiler upgrades over four years. But that is not enough, so the Government are extending that by £400 million this year, £600 million next year, and over £600 million the year after. I am not saying that those programmes are not useful—I am sure they are—but if the Prime Minister’s Munich speech is correct, and given comments from colleagues in the House, is this really the priority? Is £4.7 billion over four years on cycling and walking really this Government’s priority if we are to boost national resilience?

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend mentioned reserves. During the debate on the Armed Forces Bill, we talked a lot about enhancing the reserves. Is he aware that while there is some funding for the so-called active reserve, in the DIP there is hardly any funding at all for the strategic reserve, which the Government made a very big thing of for five months while we were debating the Bill? There is hardly any money for it.

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the broader point, which is the lack of detail on reserves, other than to say that it is all being parked until the next Parliament. That is a wasted opportunity. Reservists also need clearer communication from the Government, including on the training days and reserve service days this year. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will say a bit more about that.

Finally, we know that a Government reshuffle is coming, and if issues such as national resilience are to be addressed, they quite rightly require an all-of-Government response. Yet there is very little detail. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar said regarding the answer to his written question, the MOD is often reluctant to answer on national security grounds, and there is very little detail on how other Departments will prioritise their budgets and what the key performance indicators are, particularly when new Ministers are likely to be coming in. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be KPIs relating to the defence investment plan for those Departments, and if so, when will they be set out?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord]

Forgive me, but I understood that Grangemouth was a crude oil refinery.

We need only look to Eurasia—we need only look at what has been happening in Ukraine and Russia—to see that war comes to those who do not really want it to come to them at all. Yes, that is a failure of diplomacy, but it is also a failure of preparedness. Today, I will focus my remarks on the business of readiness.

We are currently spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, and the target is 3.5% by 2035. We really ought to be getting midway between those two by 2030, yet we are projected to be at only 2.68% by then. Of course, the Prime Minister is currently at the NATO summit in Ankara. Nye Bevan said to the Labour conference in 1957 that his party members should not send him

“naked into the conference chamber”,

and I fear that the Prime Minister has been sent naked into the Ankara conference chamber. The defence investment plan is indeed a skinny dip.

The hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) talked about the famous “King and country” debate at the Oxford Union in 1933. I completely agree with him that people who thought that they would not fight for King and country in 1933 found that, by 1939, they had no choice but to do so because of the circumstances. He knows a great deal about that from his time on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

[Mr Francois]

The university’s records do not show how every individual student voted, but we know that many of the students who were present at that famous debate in 1933 subsequently signed up in 1939 and 1940.

[Richard Foord]

The shadow Minister is exactly right. Of course, those people’s parents fought in the first world war. They were a generation who really did not want to meet war, but war came to them none the less.

Clausewitz, the philosopher of war, talked about government, military and people being the remarkable trinity concerned with war. A lot of today’s debate has centred on the military, on defence, on procurement, and perhaps a little on government as it pertains to policy. We have talked a bit less about people, although the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) did talk about our servicepeople. I want to add to that by talking about people in the country more broadly—the people we represent. We need to think about defence as a national endeavour that builds on everyone’s understanding of the threat and the need to defend the nation. When we discuss warfighting readiness, we are talking about not just platforms, ships, tanks and aircraft, but information.

The Foreign Affairs Committee published a report on disinformation. We talked about the use of military and non-military—overt and covert—methods to blur the lines between war and peace, to sow doubt in the minds of target populations, and to destabilise and undermine societies. Last year’s strategic defence review covers sub-threshold attacks, and it talks about how such attacks are difficult to attribute to a perpetrator with certainty due to the methods used and the frequent reliance on proxy actors. The focus has to be on countering Russia’s hostile activities in the information space, as well as thinking about preparing to fight a war and have war readiness, because that is the reality of modern conflict.

Conflict does not necessarily begin when a missile is fired or a border is crossed. It can begin when public trust is systemically eroded, when elections are manipulated, when information is weaponised or when hostile actors succeed in weakening a society’s confidence in its own institutions. The objective is often not mere propaganda or the spreading of false information, but to persuade societies that a particular lie is true. The aim is to persuade people that objective truth no longer exists. I want us to think about war readiness in the round, including in the information space.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this important and timely debate, which coincides with the NATO summit. I will make what is perhaps a point of consensus: yet again, when we debate the defence of the realm—the first duty of Government—the Reform Bench is empty; yet again, the plastic patriots have gone AWOL when we discuss the defence of this country. Count Binface clearly has them worried in Clacton.

As I am a historian by training, perhaps I can offer some historical context. Arguments about military readiness are not new. The Roman military theorist, Vegetius, some two millennia ago, coined the now-famous phrase, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—he who desires peace should prepare for war, in order to deter it. There have been times in British history where we have disregarded Vegetius’s sage advice. For instance, in 1919, following the first world war, when Britain had fought at great cost—both human and financial—a Liberal-led Government introduced the concept of a 10-year rule: a pan-Whitehall edict that no major war was likely for at least a decade. That continued on a rolling basis into the 1930s. On 9 February 1933, just 10 days after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, in the now famous Oxford Union debate, referred to several times already, the students resolved by more than two to one that:

“This House would, under no circumstances, fight for King and country.”

And yet, a few years later, we know that many of them did.

The 10-year rule was only finally rescinded in the mid-1930s. Nevertheless, as General Lord Dannatt pointed out in his excellent recent book “Victory to Defeat”, our armed forces still did not recover sufficiently in time to deter Hitler from launching what eventually became world war two, in which some 60 million people perished worldwide.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Having spoken on this very subject the week before last, I thought that I would, for once, sit and listen to what others have to say. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons for the failure of deterrence at the beginning of both the second world war and the first world war was that the United States was detached from the future of security in Europe? The success of NATO has hinged on the knowledge that an attack on any NATO country would mean war with the United States from the outset. Does he share my concern that the United States is at present led by someone with insufficient regard for that history?

[Mr Francois]

NATO is the most successful defensive alliance in history, and article 5 is its absolute fulcrum. We must maintain our commitment to article 5 to keep all NATO nations safe.

In 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill said that an iron curtain had descended, leading us into the cold war. In the mid-1980s, under Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, defence spending was gusting about 5% of gross domestic product. When the Berlin wall came down in 1989, countries across the west took a peace dividend. Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous book “The End of History” in 1992, and many in the west believed that the threat of world war had finally receded. When the Conservatives left office in 1997, we were spending around 3% of GDP on defence, and that downward trend continued under Tony Blair’s Government—although, in fairness, he was only doing what many other western democracies were also doing.

Today, we face a revanchist Russia led by Putin—

[The Minister for Veterans and People (Mr Calvin Bailey)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

In a moment.

We face a revanchist Russian led by Putin, who launched an invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and then an even more brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As someone who visited Ukraine in February of this year, I remind the House that the Ukrainians would argue that they have therefore been at war with Russia not for four years, but for 12 years—longer than the first and second world wars combined.

Against that rising threat, Labour produced its much-vaunted strategic defence review, and there was much good in it. However, it still contained echoes of the 10-year rule, declaring the Government’s intention, on page 43,

“to deter, fight and win—with allies—against states with advanced military forces by 2035.”

That is nine years away. The Chief of the General Staff has warned that we might have to fight Russia by 2027, the First Sea Lord said 2029, and even the outgoing Prime Minister said that this might happen by 2030. How are we supposed to deter Putin without a single attack submarine currently at sea, with no new AWACS aircraft in service in the Royal Air Force, still, and with Ajax almost a decade late and still not in operational service, despite Ministers previously promising us that it was fine? That really is corrosive complacency, is not it? The threat is now, and we need to rearm accordingly, including by spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2029 at the very latest, if not earlier.

The three co-authors of the SDR were adamant that the cost of implementing it was spending 3% of GDP on defence, and a year after the SDR was published, we finally received Labour’s plan for how to pay for it: the so-called defence investment plan. But that was not before Labour’s Defence Secretary and Armed Forces Minister—the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who is in his place—both resigned on 11 June after months of frustration with the Treasury over the paucity of funding in the plan.

As the outgoing Defence Secretary powerfully wrote in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister,

“you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.”

That is damning. The former Armed Forces Minister said in his letter:

“I have sat in the rooms, seen the assessments, and spoken to the commanders who will be asked to do more with less, and I cannot in good conscience stand at the dispatch box and defend a level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task.”

Moreover, the outgoing Defence Secretary revealed that he had been offered an increase in defence spending to only 2.68% of GDP by 2030—billions short of what the SDR authors required.

The new Defence Secretary has tried to argue that he has been given some additional funding—a bit more than £1 billion—but that takes defence spending to barely 2.69% of GDP by 2030, a difference that does not even touch the sides. Sadly, it is worse than that. The chiefs of staff have been urging the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to invest an additional £28 billion in defence over the next four years, partly to enable them to implement Labour’s SDR. They were offered barely £15 billion instead. On closer examination, even that sum unravels rapidly.

As we have heard, £10.7 billion relies on so-called efficiency savings, which is Whitehall code for cuts in MOD spending over the next four years, the bulk of which have not even been identified. On the day of publication, the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee described that as an old accountant’s trick. It still does not disguise the fact that the MOD would have to make massive in-year spending cuts, including from operations and training, to recycle that money to fund the defence investment plan. The Chief of the Defence Staff warned of the implications of doing that only the other day.

The disastrous DIP also relies on a further £4.7 billion, which has not yet been cleared by the Treasury and will be subject to another public spending round. In other words, the two sums combined will be more than the £15 billion of extra money that was promised. There is practically no new money for defence at all. All we have been offered is Enron accounting and smoke and mirrors to try to pretend that there is a massive increase in defence spending—barely 0.01% of GDP over four years.

[Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mr Francois]

No, I am summing up.

Lord Robertson, the lead author of the SDR, told the Defence Committee only yesterday that

“we are running out of years… the challenge is now bigger, more serious and earlier than we had anticipated, yet the defence investment plan does not come up to it.”

General Barrons, his co-author, told the same Committee that

“the Prime Minister is saying that Russia could attack NATO by 2030, and we essentially lost a year of mobilising for that.”

Incredibly, even the DIP says on page 78:

“The figures presented are indicative rather than precise cost estimates. They do not constitute binding commitments and are subject to the Government’s approval processes, affordability considerations and contracting procedures. Figures have been rounded and, therefore, may not sum.”

You can say that again. In other words, the document isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. The plan relies on extra money that does not exist. We will not deter the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping with such unfunded proposals. If Trotsky was right, and war is interested in us, we must rearm now to deter it.

I reluctantly find that the Labour Government are failing the people of this country in the first duty of Government: the defence of the realm. If the incoming Prime Minister cannot plug the £5 billion black hole that he is about to inherit, he should make way for people who can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

May I endorse your tribute to the late Sir George Howarth, Mr Speaker? May I also take this opportunity to welcome the incoming Minister for Veterans and People, the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey), to his new position? In the two years that he has been in the House, he has already established a reputation for independence of mind and for fearlessly speaking truth to power, regardless of the consequences. I am sure that will stand him in very good stead now.

May I ask a specific question about Northern Ireland veterans? When the former Armed Forces Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), resigned on principle, partly over the legacy issue, he famously described Labour’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill as “unfit for purpose”. What does the Secretary of State think he meant by that?

[Dan Jarvis]

I should begin by declaring an interest as a veteran who served in Northern Ireland. This Government are absolutely committed to the troubles Bill, but we are also determined to ensure that everyone involved, including families and veterans, is treated with fairness, dignity and respect. The Government will introduce a substantial package of amendments to strengthen protections for veterans and to provide greater confidence that those who served our country are afforded the appropriate safeguards. We are engaging with stakeholders to ensure that the measures reflect the interests of our defence community, and to deliver a balanced and fair approach to addressing the legacy of the troubles.

[Mr Francois]

We have been waiting for those amendments almost as long as we have been waiting for the DIP. Where is the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) on the legacy issue? Many regiments that hail from the north-west—such as the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, which has already mentioned once today, and, before it, the King’s Regiment, which traditionally recruited from both Liverpool and Manchester—did multiple tours in Northern Ireland on Op Banner. Has the Secretary of State had any indications that our likely new Prime Minister is going to do right by those former soldiers from his own region, scrap the benighted Bill, which helps Sinn Féin pursue our veterans via lawfare, and get rid of the whole nonsense altogether?

[Dan Jarvis]

I genuinely want to find a way forward on this that can attract cross-party support, but I remind the shadow Minister and some other Conservative Members that the previous Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 left our veterans with no certainty and no protection, and left victims and families with no justice. No veteran ever received immunity through the law, and it risked giving immunity to terrorists. This Government will bring forward new primary legislation that is legally compliant and recognises our veterans’ interests in order to deal properly with the legacy of the troubles.

Defence Spending and Readiness

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

We have a plea for defence spending to hit 3% by 2030 from a party whose manifesto committed to spending just 2.5% by that date, and calls for a fully funded defence investment plan fit for the modern battlefield from a former Government whose fantasy equipment plan was overcommitted, underfitted and unsuited. They left 47 out of 49 major defence programmes delayed or over budget.

It is a motion that claims to understand the delicate legacy issues in Northern Ireland, from a party whose own plan was struck down as unlawful—it protected nobody. We have had many debates on the issue that the Government are reflecting on. I have set out my position many times, and in partnership with colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, we will progress the Bill in due course. As I have said before, I am mindful of the responsibility to get it right.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way on that matter?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

No, I am going to finish. Armed Forces Week is a moment to give thanks. But the best thanks a Government can give our servicemen and women is not warm words from these Benches, but our full backing. There are more officer-cadets, lieutenants, and Captain Joneses serving today—we are a big family. I say to them that the Conservative Government failed me; this Labour Government will deliver for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Pinkerton]

My hon. Friend puts her finger on an incredibly important point that is intrinsic to the publication of the DIP. We should never ignore the experiences of women in our armed forces, who perform brave service every day.

[Mr Francois]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. I want to turn to legacy. Our motion calls on the Government to drop the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which the Liberal Democrats, like the Conservatives, voted against on Second Reading. That Bill has now famously been described by the outgoing Armed Forces Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), as “unfit for purpose”. Is the hon. Gentleman’s party, like us, still opposed to the Bill, and does that also apply to his colleagues in the House of Lords?

[Dr Pinkerton]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman—and, if I may say so, my friend; he has supported me in debates in the past—for his intervention. We are opposed to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which delivers neither justice for victims nor protection for veterans. I will talk a little more about that as I conclude my speech—in fact, I will move on now to talk about the issue of legacy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), who is both gracious with his time and entertaining to listen to. I thank him for that.

I begin by thanking all armed forces personnel who are protecting our country at the moment. Importantly, this debate is taking place in Armed Forces Week; I give credit to the Opposition—this once at least—for bringing forward this debate today, though I am not sure that we have quite reached the level of consensus across the House that we might hope for on defence.

[Mr Francois]

Perhaps we can achieve some consensus on this: yet again, we are debating defence, our armed forces, and the people who keep us safe, but the plastic patriots of Reform cannot be bothered to turn up. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that people who wrap themselves in the flag should at least turn up to debate the future of the people whose job it is to defend it?

[Graeme Downie]

I was slightly concerned that I was going to have to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman at this early stage, but I absolutely agree with him. Any politician who wraps themselves in a flag, without there being any substance to their reason for doing so, is not worthy of leading any constituency or party—and certainly not any country.

As I have mentioned previously in the House, I grew up in Berlin from 1987 to 1990, and I was there when the Berlin wall came down. That gives me an unusual insight for someone of my age. I grew up hearing Russian artillery one mile away, and seeing Russian helicopters testing and firing. I was there when Rudolf Hess died, and I saw the various security measures in place. That makes me unusual among people who are my age or younger, most of whom have not seen what a cold war threat is. Most have been used to a safe world, and have not seen the necessity of increased defence spending, unless they have a member of the armed forces in their family, or have served in the armed forces themselves. The majority of people in this country who are my age or younger do not know what a threat from Russia, or indeed any other country, looks like.

I have said before that I believe that the UK is already in a conflict with Russia. Not only that, but we are a frontline nation and should always consider ourselves as such, whether we are talking about our RAF jets taking off from Lossiemouth or Coningsby to defend our airspace, or our Royal Navy ships and Royal Air Force aircraft in the High North protecting our subsea cables from Russian threats. This country is in conflict with Russia, and Russia considers itself to be in conflict with us. We must always respond accordingly. The attacks extend into cyber-space. Every day we see thousands of attacks, whether on private businesses or on our defence and energy infrastructure. The threats are there. We also see misinformation peddled online that seeks to undermine our democracy. This country is in conflict with Russia. In order to respond effectively to that, the public need to understand the direct implications for them. They must recognise that a cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover has consequences for our economy. A cyber-attack on Marks & Spencer has consequences for people’s ability to buy a jumper, and for the staff working there as well, but these attacks also have a direct impact on our economy and society every single day.

It is always slightly daunting to be in the Chamber for debates like these—there are Members present who have served in the military, and who know far more than I do—but I believe that there is a conversation that we must have across this House. We must, wherever possible, draw lines between the threats that we face, and the detailed military programmes that we talk about, and what they mean for the day-to-day lives of people in this country. Otherwise, those people will not grant any Government the licence to increase defence spending and capability in the way that Members from across this House want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is a tremendous privilege to take part in this debate. It has to be clear to us on both sides of the House that this is the most critical debate that we will be involved with. This is the most critical thing that we face but it often escapes our notice, and I credit my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) for centring on the very thing that is important. I say gently to those on the Government Benches that it is very easy to go around the whole time saying, “Well, of course, you did this and we didn’t.” The truth is, we can go right back and see how much previous Governments failed with regard to defence.

I was serving in the late 1970s when the Labour Government were in terrible difficulty. They were slashing the budgets, and military personnel from the captain and senior sergeant ranks were leaving the Army in droves. I remember having one depressed conversation after another—helped by a certain amount of Scottish water. [Laughter.]

[Mr Francois]

Highland Spring!

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. [Laughter.]

In those conversations, we decided that there was clearly no future for us in the Army. Now, I did stay on a bit longer, but many left who I knew were very competent and very good people, and it is difficult to fill those posts. That is the bit in the armed forces that is critical to everything else that happens. If we do not have a cadre of middle-ranking and senior non-commissioned officers, we do not have an Army. We just have a lot of orders from the top down but are unable to do them.

What we speak about today is critical, because we have to send a message to our armed forces that we believe in them fully and strongly and will support them in every way. That is why it is a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) sitting in his place after his resignation. He has the respect of many of my colleagues on these Benches, without question, not only for his past but for his present. I know what it is like to resign when you disagree with the Government—I have done it a few times myself—but the reality is that he will never regret it. The thing that matters most of all when we come to this place is not us or the debates that we have here and away; it is the people out there who put us here. If we do not plan to speak up, even when our own side does not want us to, we are not worthy of being in this place. I therefore congratulate him, not because I am in a party political game but because I respect him for having called out a problem that the Government face. All the Ministers on the Front Bench know that, as does he. The question is: what will we do about it?

I want to start by talking about Northern Ireland, and I shall be here on 4 September, cheering my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne on with his private Member’s Bill. We cannot for one moment forget that we have reduced the morale of British soldiers who have served—veterans who are now often in their late 70s and 80s—and who find themselves persecuted. I say to the Defence Ministers that this really started in the Northern Ireland Office, which was overly persuaded by Sinn Féin that they could somehow change what had happened and come out as victors. As the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak said in his resignation speech, they lost; they lost because of the efforts of the armed forces, and of all those who did not see another day and who died in the service of their country.

More importantly, we forget that walking down the streets in your own country armed and trying to protect civilians against aggression is quite different from anything else that the armed forces were trained to do. In doing it, they had to figure out all sorts of complications. The trouble with the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is that it does not deal with the sense of what we asked our soldiers to do in risking their lives to protect the British public on the streets of the United Kingdom. We therefore have to understand that the legislation that the Government have brought forward is wrong. That does not mean to say that what the Conservative Government brought through was fantastic. It was not. There were many flaws and failings in it, but many of us felt that we would support it because it did one major thing: it stopped the constant attacks on those poor veterans whose lives are now coming to an end and who see themselves being dragged through the courts all over again.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

That is exactly the point. I hope that we will be able to drag this point out again on 4 September and make it very clear that if we in this House do not stand by those whom we order to go to war or to bear arms for the sake of the country, who is going to do that? We have the power to sweep things away or to make them. I have disagreed with my own Government many times, but I say gently to this Government: think again. Do not allow the Northern Ireland Office to drive this thing through when Ministers know full well that it is wrong; they need to defend those soldiers, despite the rows that might take place in Cabinet or among Ministers.

[Mr Francois]

Does my right hon. Friend recall he and I and others having multiple meetings in the Northern Ireland Office when we were Back Benchers, going through the detail of the Bill—almost line by line on occasions—and trying to defend the interests of veterans, and bit by bit overcoming the resistance of civil servants at the Northern Ireland Office? Does he recall how difficult that was, and does he still believe, like me, that it was worth it?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I do; it was difficult and we stuck to the task. We were not very popular at the time, but that has been a constant in my life. [Laughter.] I think you only know you are successful when you are not popular, and we were not popular on that. What we were trying to get was not perfect, but it was better than what we now have, and that is the key. At the heart of it was the aim of protecting those who have been sent, bearing arms, to defend the British people. We need to defend them and respect the sacrifice they made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Lewin]

I will make some progress and talk about the record of this Government. [Interruption.] I know Opposition Members are enjoying it.

It is important that we reflect on the progress and the investment we have made. The aid-to-defence spending switch was not a policy that was universally welcomed on this side of the House, but I believe it was a necessary decision and the right decision to make. We have the Type 26 frigate deal, the Typhoon deal with Turkey, 13 new sites for munitions and factories, which are so important for our rearmament, and the armed forces pay rise—the most generous and urgently overdue pay rise for 20 years, which again was delivered by this Government.

We have had some authoritative interventions about the changing nature of warfare, and I have much to learn from other colleagues. It is to be applauded that this Government are investing in drone warfare. My hon. Friend the Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) has been a champion for investing in drone factories in his constituency. In just the last week, we have learned about the development of long-range missiles that the UK and Ukraine are working on together without the need for US components. That is a significant and welcome step forward.

While I admire many people on the Opposition side of the House, I regret to have to say that at every opportunity to increase investment in defence spending, the last Government did not take that option. I am afraid that the enduring image that has been left with the public is of the last Conservative Prime Minister leaving the beaches on D-Day early. It was a picture that told a thousand words.

In politics, parties need to be judged by their record, not just their rhetoric.

[Mr Francois]

On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Lewin]

I am going to come to a conclusion.

I recognise that this Government have lots more work to do, but under this Prime Minister’s watch, defence spending is up—it is higher than at any point in the last 14 years or under the last five Conservative Prime Ministers—and whoever is the next leader of the Labour party will have my support in increasing it further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. and gallant Friend. The UK military flying training system is on its uppers. I do not necessarily hold this Government responsible for that—there are longer-term issues with the flying training system. I believe the average length of time it takes pilots to qualify is somewhere in the region of six years; most of the pilots who are now hitting the frontline have spent as long in training as I spent in my entire military career, by which point I had done numerous operational tours. Significant work needs to be done in that area, and there are questions to be asked of the company that we have outsourced flying training to, as well as about the Hawk jets—which I will not cover in this debate. The Minister knows that that topic is a hobby horse of mine; I will not speak about it today, but he realises that there is a sense of urgency there.

[Mr Francois]

When I served on the Defence Committee, just before the election, we went to RAF Marham and spoke to two F-35 pilots. We asked them how long it had taken since they first walked through the door of a recruiting office for them to be allowed to fly the F-35. One said he had been lucky, and it had been six years; the other said he had been unlucky, and it had been 10 years. Does my hon. Friend agree that the MFTS programme requires fundamental reform?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I do—we need to get more pilots through the door, and I have asked numerous questions about our ratio of pilots to aircraft. I appreciate that the Minister does not want to divulge that information, but I would suggest that currently, it is not as good as it could be.

The joint programme office that should fix the F-35 is undergoing a global support solution reset that will cost an additional $13.7 billion. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether any of that figure will be paid for by us in the UK. As a result, there is no timeline for completing technology refresh 3, which 72% of our F-35Bs still require, and no timeline for the completion of the block 4 upgrade. Talk of the 12 F-35As for the NATO nuclear mission—which the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) mentioned—has gone suspiciously quiet, with rumours that they will be cut, and that is before we talk about the four-year lead times for low rate initial production material required to build them. Crucially, though, there is currently no more money allocated to the F-35 Lightning programme. The departmental budget laid out in the integrated review defence Command Paper back in 2021 only included the procurement of the 48 we now have; all new funding for the F-35 will need to be outlined in the defence investment plan.

That brings us on to drones. We know that the RAF is committed to having the Tempest as a manned platform, but by the time it comes into service, the US will be a decade deep into its collaborative combat aircraft programme. It has just awarded General Atomics and Anduril sizeable contracts for the FQ-42A Dark Merlin and FQ-44A Fury uncrewed fighter jets. The Secretary of the Air Force has stated that the US plans to

“procure over 150 combat capable CCA by the end of the decade.”

The US has budgeted $1 billion for CCA procurement, $822 million for modifications, and another $1.4 billion for research and development. How much of the £10 billion of additional funds available for our entire defence budget do we think we are planning to spend? When the defence investment plan is published, we will need to look closely at investment in those projects that should deliver drones.

How does this all tie together? I have spoken briefly about Project ASGARD before—the Chief of the General Staff, speaking at the RUSI land warfare conference earlier, talked about the need to be able to strike Russia within 30 minutes—but whether or not this is properly resourced in the DIP will be instrumental to our fortunes. We need to move past our current squeamishness and invest properly in both Project ASGARD and its RAF cousin, Project BOYD. I was fortunate enough to visit a demonstration of ASGARD during Exercise Arrcade Strike last month, which gave a glimpse of how the next war might be fought. My takeaway, however, was how desperately it will need to be invested in. We risk being a day late and a dollar short when it comes to an integrated anti-access/area denial and integrated air and missile defence solution. The reluctance of our senior leaders to move from an in-the-loop and on-the-loop approach to the kill chain to an on-the-loop and out-of-the-loop posture concerns me—it is better to have the capability and not need it than need it and not have it. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry confirmed to me last week that the MOD is looking at machine vision for lock-on in the terminal phase of one-way effectors, but we must move further and faster.

For all the talk of defence investment in exquisite capabilities, nobody is suggesting that we increase the mass of the Army significantly. That is before we consider that every single vehicle platform the Army operates, except for Foxhound, is due to go out of service by 2030. Our ability to field an armoured division is at best optimistic; in reality, it is laughable. My own background is in armoured infantry, as is that of my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), and were we to try and field an armoured battlegroup—let alone a division—I would be interested to see what form it would take.

At the front of any armoured push is formation reconnaissance. That role should by now be delivered by Ajax. My views on Ajax are well documented, as I delivered a debate on the topic in Westminster Hall earlier this year, but what progress has been made since then? In the wake of Exercise Titan Storm, the Government commissioned an independent expert panel review. The results of that review have been submitted via a final report, but the Minister appears hesitant to publish the outcome. I would be grateful if he published those findings for scrutiny in the House now that the review has concluded. In his summing up, could the Minister outline when the House will receive an update on that review’s findings?

We know that the first phase of bringing Ajax up to speed will require the restarting of trials with the current version of Ajax, but the Minister has also informed me that the current platform requires a number of upgrades outside the scope of work in upgrading from capability drop 3 to capability drop 4, including improvements to the electrical power generation system, the crew compartment heating and the air filtration system. Although those sound like gremlins that need to be worked through on any new platform, can he tell me which of those modifications, if any, will mitigate the injuries sustained by service personnel on Exercise Titan Storm?

Ajax must be a success—we cannot afford to be stuck with a platform that no other country is willing to buy. The reputational damage to the platform is in danger of being baked in if the Government do not get the fix right first time. All 589 hulls have been built, and the factory will have no further work once those vehicles are assembled and rolled out. What work will the General Dynamics facility in Merthyr Tydfil then have to do? When I raised that question with the Government, they stated that it is an issue for General Dynamics. There is a reason the Government did not include that facility within the scope of the defence growth deal for Wales. Put simply, the Government cannot afford for Ajax to fail, neither from a defence exports perspective—and there are currently no pending orders—nor from a capability perspective. The Government know this, having made no assessment of any potential replacement platforms such as the Combat Vehicle 90, so when will we finally see Ajax realise its potential?

Sadly, though, that is not the only issue. Behind Ajax should be Challenger 3, but Challenger 3 remains in the demonstration phase and, based on reports in The Telegraph last week, is now beset by problems. The turret power traverse gearbox is potentially proving to be a problem that may push back delivery of the tank by years—to put that in layman’s terms, that is the part that makes the turret rotate. The Government have now said that this is not the case, but it is concerning that they are yet to declare the planning assumption for service entry for the new tank, despite all 148 remaining Challenger 2 tanks being in scope for upgrade and conversion.

The Government have also previously told me that they are continuing to explore export opportunities for Challenger 3. What export opportunities? We have 148 main battle tanks; how many are we planning to sell, and who would buy them? We have no plans to replace them. I would be interested to understand the full scope of the Army’s heavy armour automotive improvement programme. In January, the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry told me:

“Manufacturing will begin once the tank’s performance is proven, rather than being tied to a specific deadline.”

By when does he anticipate the tank’s performance will be assessed to have made the grade? Meanwhile, our allies look elsewhere to rearm. With both the Franco-German main ground combat system to replace the Leclerc and Leopard 2 respectively and other fledgling initiatives, what is the future of armour? “Behind the tanks” Warrior is due to go out of service next year, currently with no realistic replacement. Warrior is due to be replaced by a mixture of Boxer and the Ajax-derived Ares, but neither looks set to be ready in time. More concerningly, the Government’s position appears to have shifted once again, with the Minister telling me last week:

“Under current plans, Boxer is initially being fielded as a supporting capability to Armoured Units within 3rd (UK) Division, before being fielded to Mechanised Infantry Units between 2030-2035.”

Warrior goes out of service next year, so what is filling this capability gap? We have not yet seen an order for the Patria 6x6 as part of the common armoured vehicle system. The Government told me recently that they were continuing to monitor the market for potential future platforms, but the defence investment plan is supposedly to be published next week, so why have these decisions not already been made?

From a Royal Navy perspective, it is no secret that the hybrid Navy concept is the direction in which they are sailing. The commitment of the Royal Marines to the High North and potential investment in a joint commando craft or littoral strike craft would illustrate a longer-term commitment to that force posture, but the hybrid Navy concept means that the Type 83 is dead in the water. The decision to gift Type 26 build slots to the Royal Norwegian Navy kicks the can down the road when it comes to the sticky issue of when we need to pay for the new ships, with just eight to be built for us and a further five for the Norwegians. Given our significant commitment to global operations in comparison with the commitment of the Norwegians, do we really think that just three more ships will cover our global commitments?

This has been a whistlestop tour through just some of the myriad capabilities that will need to be detailed in the defence investment plan within the next week or so. [Laughter.] I left a lot out! Members are chuckling, but I could have gone on for another hour.

We need to spend more on defence. We need to resource our military to meet the threats that we face, not the ones that we would like to. If this Prime Minister, this Chancellor and this Defence Secretary will not find the funding required by cutting the welfare budget or changing the fiscal rules, they should make way for someone who will—but perhaps that will happen sooner rather than later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I declare an interest: I am a trustee of the armed forces parliamentary scheme. I encourage all Members of the House to undertake their placement on that scheme, if they can.

The Prime Minister has been generating some sympathy with the dignified way in which he is choosing to leave office, and I add my voice to those who have stated that we are fortunate to live in a country with a political system that values leaders who put their country and the dignity of their office before personal gain. The Prime Minister is many things, and I disagree with him profusely, but first and foremost he is a gentleman who won a mandate, and everybody across this House should respect that and wish him well going forward.

Others who have shown personal strength of character and commitment to public office include the former Secretary of State of Defence—the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey)—and the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns). I know that both of them took their decision to resign seriously and with the intense reflection that it deserves. I also understand that their resignations came as a great surprise to the Prime Minister and No. 10, as they were expected to stay loyal, keep calm and carry on. Well, for those of us on the Opposition Benches, it was no surprise whatsoever.

We do not know exactly what was said in Cabinet, let alone in the private discussions between the Defence Secretary and the Chancellor, and nor should we. But from what we have seen and what has been reported about the complete fiasco around the defence investment plan, and about the failure to plan and meet the expectations that the public and our allies around the world have of us, it is no wonder that the Defence Secretary felt that he was unable to work under those conditions any longer. For six months—a quarter of the time the Prime Minister has been in office—he could not make a decision.

Since January, it has been clear to the Government that there is a gargantuan shortfall in the Ministry of Defence budget. The paltry sum that the Treasury deemed suitable to shower on the MOD was barely enough to replace a few helmets, let alone build a next-generation fighting force that can deliver on the priorities outlined in the strategic defence review. Let us be clear: the indecision may be based on process—the Prime Minister’s favourite wall to hide behind—and, yes, there must be a process to prioritise, delegate and decide, but his indecision will cost lives if and when this country faces a crisis that requires a military response. The question remains: why did the Prime Minister and the Chancellor not see this coming? The answer, of course, is that they did. They saw the threat of being exposed as weak on defence, and they chose to do nothing.

I respect the Minister for the Armed Forces and thank her for her past service, but she has added to this. She has spent a lot of time criticising the last Government—quite rightly, because she is a Minister of the Crown—but she now sits in the Department, and she stands at the Dispatch Box saying that all is now well and that she is proud of the process she is putting forward, when one of the Ministers she served alongside in the Department has resigned, as has the Secretary of State, who said that things were not going in the right direction. I think she needs to look at their speeches again.

There are few things more damning for the leader of a country to be accused of than being incapable of protecting the people they were elected to govern. That is not a party political point, but a point that has been made by the former Defence Secretary and the former Minister for the Armed Forces and one increasingly made across the defence sector, including by the Labour man, Lord Robertson, who wrote the strategic defence review in the first place. I sometimes wonder if Labour Members are deaf, because all these Labour voices are telling the Government that their strategic defence review, the lack of a defence investment plan and the lack of funding going into our armed forces are damning, but the Ministers at the Dispatch Box do not seem to hear.

[Mr Francois]

I have great respect for Lord Robertson, an accomplished former Defence Secretary and a former Secretary-General of NATO, who joined the Labour party in 1961. He is a Labour lifer, and when even he accuses the Prime Minister of “corrosive complacency”, does that not prove how utterly out of touch this Government now are?

[Paul Holmes]

My right hon. Friend the shadow Minister for the Armed Forces is absolutely correct. I think we can add somebody else, and that is the former Defence Secretary. He is known not as a party political man, but as a deep statesman. He is known as a Minister on whom Prime Ministers from across the Labour party could rely. When we reach the stage of a former Labour statesman who wrote the SDR and the recently serving Secretary of State saying the Government are not listening to them, I think the country at large needs to listen, and so do Ministers standing at the Dispatch Box.

If I may, I will briefly mention specific points on the DIP and resilience. On the DIP, I know that the Ministers sitting on the Front Bench accept that the defence of the realm is the most important duty of any Government, and while I wish them success, I just think that this Government are falling short. There is no clearer sign of that than the lack of a defence investment plan, which they have promised. It has been much touted by this Government, but it is delayed by the latest drama. It is likely to be delayed again, which will spread uncertainty in our defence sector, including defence businesses in my constituency of Hamble Valley. Most importantly, it will spread uncertainty among our allies internationally.

The elephant in the room is that the Ministers sitting here today may not be in their jobs in three weeks’ time. I do not wish that to happen—I believe they are good Ministers—but that is the nature of the job we are in, or that they are in. Again, that will add to the uncertainty faced by businesses in the defence sector that are looking to the Government for the investment they were promised two and a half years ago.

In Hamble Valley, we have a thriving defence sector. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry has been there: he kindly came down to a roundtable in the constituency. We have companies such as Domo Tactical Communications, Kraken, Safran, Saab and Windracers, but the constant feedback I get is that, without a defence investment plan, they do not know what they are supposed to do or where to invest. If the Minister and the new Secretary of State do not do this very quickly, those companies will suffer, and the United Kingdom as a whole will suffer. The figure of £13 billion is not the £18 billion identified by the National Security Adviser as needed just to maintain the status quo, which means that the United Kingdom will lose its credibility on the international stage.

My final point is about resilience. Last week, I was in Finland with the European Leadership Network. With Finnish MPs, we were looking at some of the defence co-operation in the NATO framework in which the United Kingdom, Israel and Finland play their part. I have to say that I was left shocked by the comparison between Finland’s resilience and preparedness and the United Kingdom’s. Hon. Members may challenge me—I know that some went to Norway last week—and point to the fact that Finland has a population of 5 million and a 1,500 mile border with Russia, whereas we have 70 million people on an island, but I think a lot of comparisons can be made. Very early on in the school system and when young people are growing up, defence resilience and preparedness are embedded in them, as it is in civil society and Government Departments.

As a former special adviser at the Cabinet Office, I know we have such documents, but what we urgently need to do—that is why this is in our motion—is not just look at international resilience and defence spending in order to attack, but make our population ready and willing to play their part in defending the homeland. The population in the Nordic countries have been polled about whether they would go to war if there was a threat. In Finland the figure is in the high 80s, but in the United Kingdom it is in the high teens, which worries me. Personally, I am a bit sceptical about how low it is here, because I believe our population would defend this country.

I am looking for answers from Ministers about how they plan—whether through the national curriculum or by reversing the cuts they have made to cadet forces in our schools—to very quickly embed in people from a very young age and entering civil society a sense that they are prepared to defend this country should that be needed.

[Mr Francois]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generosity in giving way. The Finns have what they call a total defence concept, which is that in the event of an attack from Russia—they have much experience of that, historically—it is not just the armed forces who resist, but the whole of society. They have planned that for decades. We had something a bit like that during the cold war, but the Finns take it to a greater degree. Having been there, does he agree that we could learn a great deal from Finland?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is a privilege to sum up this debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition in Armed Forces Week, when the nation pays particular attention and gives thanks to our armed forces, their families, veterans and cadets, for all that they do to ensure the security of this nation and its people.

This debate has a historical aspect, too. A week tomorrow is the 110th anniversary of the first day of the Somme, the fateful occasion on which the British Army suffered some 60,000 casualties, killed and wounded—the greatest loss our Army has ever suffered in a single day. Their sacrifice must never be forgotten. Indeed, we must not forget the sacrifice of those who died in subsequent conflicts, up to and including Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his emotive poem, “The Soldier”, the war poet Rupert Brooke famously said:

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England.

Those fields are still there, as are the cemeteries, lovingly and respectfully tended by the staff of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In Armed Forces Week, we pay tribute to their highly professional efforts, too.

We still live in an extremely dangerous world. Across the House we stand four-square with the noble people of Ukraine, who have been fighting against Russian aggression not just for four years, since the full-scale invasion in 2022, but for 12 years, since the original Russian invasion of Crimea and the Donbas—a period longer than the first and second world wars combined.

I say respectfully to the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), who has just rejoined us, that it was a Conservative Government who, in 2014—after that first invasion, when the Ukrainians realised what was coming—began the programme known as Operation Orbital to train the Ukrainian armed forces to resist the full-scale invasion that they knew was coming. Had it not been for that programme—had it not been for the soldier’s instinct of Ben Wallace and the determination of Boris Johnson to equip and train the Ukrainians to resist the Russian invasion—the Russians would be having supper in Kyiv this evening. Perhaps, despite his incredibly partisan speech, the hon. Gentleman could give us some credit for that.

[Andrew Lewin]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

No. [Laughter.]

In February of this year, along with some 20 Members from this House—the largest ever parliamentary delegation to Ukraine as far as I am aware—I visited Odesa, Chernobyl and Kyiv. On 24 February, we were privileged to take part in the commemoration in Maidan Square to mark the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion. It is, in effect, Ukraine’s equivalent of Remembrance Sunday, and it was extremely poignant to be part of it. They lay lanterns with a candle at their memorial in much the same way as we lay wreaths in Britain. The principle is exactly the same: it is to remember those who gave their lives in defence of freedom and democracy. The Ukrainians are fighting for our values and, ultimately, for our freedom too. We absolutely stand shoulder to shoulder with them in their brave struggle, which we all hope that they will one day win.

In order to help them, we need armed forces that can fight too. As the hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) reminded us in his resignation letter, we need to plan for the next war and not the last. With that in mind, I would like to ask Ministers some questions on programmatics this afternoon. Having been in government for nearly two years now, Labour has to begin to take responsibility for something. I have three very specific questions for the Minister on military capability.

First, where are we on the much delayed E-7 Wedgetail programme? When, if ever, will this vitally needed eye in the sky enter Royal Air Force service? When, if ever, will Boeing actually make it work properly?

Secondly, turning to the Army, there are media reports that it will cost an additional £1 billion—above the £5.5 billion already allocated—to fix the Ajax programme and bring it fully into service. Is that true? If it is, can we be assured that General Dynamics will pick up the bill, per its current £5.5 billion firm-price contract, and that not a single extra penny will fall on the British taxpayer? Incidentally, where are we on the Morpheus tactical communication system?

Thirdly, how can it be that our entire fleet of Astute-class nuclear attack submarines are currently laid up for maintenance? The new Secretary of State chided me last week for discussing submarine movements on the floor of the House. I did no such thing. I was, in fact, discussing the total absence of submarine movements. Given the First Sea Lord’s increasingly, and rightly, dire warnings about Russian naval activity in the English channel and the North sea, perhaps the Minister could tell us how we are supposed to credibly deter Russia when not a single one of our £1.5 billion attack submarines is currently at sea?

That brings me to the question of what has happened to the defence investment plan. The three well-respected authors of Labour’s much-vaunted strategic defence review were adamant when it was published, over a year ago now, that the price of implementing the measures in the SDR would be to spend 3% of GDP on defence. The detail of how that would be afforded and the actual programmatics were to be provided subsequently in the defence investment plan.

We were faithfully promised the plan in the autumn. Then we were absolutely promised it by Christmas. Then we were definitely going to get it early in the new year. Now we are in the middle of June and still do not have the DIP. Ministers tell us that they have been working flat out. Well, they are now comatose.

The new Armed Forces Minister assured the House last night that it would be published by the time of the Ankara summit in July, yet The Times reported this morning that the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) is minded to delay the publication of the DIP because he wants to take these decisions himself. Presumably whoever his new Chancellor turns out to be—we all pray that there will be one—will have something to say about that too. Can the Armed Forces Minister commit absolutely that after crying wolf so many times, the Government are going to stick to the timetable and publish the DIP within the next fortnight, prior to Ankara? Or is it going to slip yet again? She laughs, but this is not funny. This is about the defence of the United Kingdom. Do Ministers not realise that what little credibility they have left is rapidly disappearing?

Indeed, after Cabinet this morning, and even during the course of this debate, the BBC has reported:

“No new major policies or spending decisions until new PM appointed, No 10 says”.

Where does that leave the defence investment plan? Who is in charge of the clattering train? Who actually runs this country? Is it the current Prime Minister or the next one?

[Paul Holmes]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) and I mentioned a number of businesses that are not growing—and I know that the shadow Secretary of State went to Kraken yesterday. Businesses are trying to get orders and grow, but are holding off because they do not have the defence investment plan. This lack of action is costing jobs, is it not?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

Absolutely; industry is exasperated, from BAE Systems down to the smallest defence suppliers in the land. When we were in government, we published—with one year’s exception, I think—a detailed equipment plan every year so that industry could plan accordingly. That is what the DIP is meant to be, but still we do not have it.

Labour Ministers tell us and their own Back Benchers again and again that they are increasing defence spending to the greatest extent since the end of the cold war. That is literally untrue. The Defence Secretary told the world in his resignation letter that Labour’s spending plans envisage going from 2.6% of GDP this year to 2.68% of GDP by 2030. That is a 0.08% increase over four years. How is that the largest increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war? Help me out, someone over there.

It gets worse. Labour is also seeking £3.5 billion of in-year, self-inflicted, Treasury-driven cuts to the operational and readiness spending of our armed forces. That means fewer ships at sea, fewer planes in the air and fewer exercises on Salisbury plain—and the Russian and Chinese embassies must be laughing themselves silly. If Members will not take it from me, take it from the Chief of the Defence Staff—the professional head of the armed forces—who warned just a few days ago that if Labour continues on its financial path and does not fund the DIP properly, he will have no option but to cut back on readiness and training, which is exactly the activity that is meant to deter a potential aggressor in the first place.

The blunt truth—as a Brit, I take no joy in saying it—is that this Government are the laughing stock of NATO. Indeed, in NATO’s own readiness index, the United Kingdom ranks 31st out of 32 NATO countries, with the only one below us Iceland by virtue of having no armed forces to ready. As the Government disintegrate before our eyes, we can only hope that their successors are both competent and courageous and actually believe in defending this country, which clearly this collapsing Administration do not.

Another area that we want to press Ministers hard on is the fate of their benighted Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. The hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak, who famously described it as “not fit for purpose”, spoke powerfully in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister in defence of Northern Ireland veterans. He mentioned his battle in government, where he

“set out the changes I believed were necessary, and the lines which I could not in good conscience go beyond. Those lines have not been accepted. I have run out of room to argue this case honourably from inside government. A serving minister cannot ask fellow veterans to trust a process he no longer trusts himself.”

He went on:

“We ask soldiers to fight for this country. In return, we owe them the kit to do the job and the loyalty to stand by them when it’s done. We are failing on both.”

Nine former four-star officers have told the world that the troubles Bill represents a “direct threat to national security.” A group of former SAS commanders who were at the sharp end of the battle against republican terrorism told us:

“Today every British soldier deployed must consider not only the enemy in front of them but the lawyer behind them… Make no mistake, our closest allies are watching uneasily, and our enemies will be rubbing their hands.”

We absolutely cannot allow this situation to continue against those who defended the rule of law. Those who served in Operation Banner stood effectively as piggy-in-the-middle for decades between two warring communities. Over 700 of them were killed and thousands more suffered life-changing injuries. They and their comrades are now to be pursued through the courts via lawfare, actively aided and abetted by a Government who for months have promised multiple times to produce amendments to the Bill to protect veterans and, just as with the DIP, we have seen nothing of substance on which the House can rely, with no amendments and no letters of comfort for them, either.

It is a matter of record that a number of those regiments who served in Northern Ireland on Op Banner came from the north-west of England, including from in and around the Manchester area. I think of the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment and its antecedent regiments, including the King’s Regiment, which traditionally recruited from Liverpool and Manchester—they did many tours of Northern Ireland. I therefore ask, in all seriousness, what is the attitude of the right hon. Member for Makerfield towards the benighted Northern Ireland Troubles Bill?

If the new Prime Minister seeks some kind of reset for the Labour party, A good place to start would be to drop this dreadful piece of legislation, which threatens to put our soldiers in the dock solely to the advantage of those who sought to kill them. In lieu of that, he could agree to back the Northern Ireland Troubles (Criminal Investigations etc) Bill, the excellent new private Member’s Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), which will have its Second Reading on 4 September and which in essence seeks to curtail any further investigations, inquests or inquiries against our Op Banner veterans unless compelling new evidence as certified by a UK Supreme Court Justice is produced. Some of us on these Benches have literally spent years seeking to defend those who defended us; let us hope that the new Prime Minister will agree.

There has been consensus on one point this afternoon—I heard it again and again—which is that the first duty of Government above all others is the defence of the realm, yet the Armed Forces Minister resigned, the Secretary of State for Defence resigned and now the Prime Minister has resigned. This Administration has failed. It is broken. It is going. It made many mistakes, but worst of all, it failed to defend this country. For that, it deserves to come to an end.

Armed Forces Bill

Mark Francois Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 22nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who I may refer to again in a few minutes. It is important to place on record the respect he has engendered across the House by resigning on an important issue of principle relating to the defence of the realm, which is, after all, the most important duty of Government, above all others. He and I have debated for five months on this Bill. We have not always agreed, but we have always dealt with each other respectfully. That respect has only been enhanced by his recent decision.

I rise to speak to new clause 11 and amendments 3, 4, 5 and 11 in my name and that of my hon. Friends. I will get into the detail of those amendments and the new clause in a moment, but before I do, I observe the courtesies of debate and congratulate the new Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Sandher-Jones), on her recent field promotion. We hope that she enjoys herself in her new post, but I caution her that there appear to have been further command changes back at the chateau as of today. We shall have to see how she fares in the re-brigading exercise that will inevitably follow, but for today, well done.

In the meantime, this Bill, which had its Second Reading back on 26 January, has been extensively debated—when the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill received both oral and written evidence; in the Select Committee’s debate phase; in Committee of the whole House on 2 June; and now on Report and Third Reading. The Opposition’s summing-up speech tonight will come from my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed).

Over nearly five months, we have spent more than 40 hours taking evidence, conducting visits and debating this important Bill. As today is the culmination of its consideration in the Commons before it moves on to further scrutiny in the other place, I should say that throughout, we Opposition Members have attempted to act as a critical friend to the Bill. We have been able to do that mostly in a relatively consensual manner, although there have been occasional points of disagreement, as I suspect there may yet be this evening.

New clause 11 relates to a derogation from the European convention on human rights in the event of overseas operations under the auspices of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021. I am afraid that I cannot agree with the proposition of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), despite the fact that I was born in his constituency, in Crouch End—or “Creuche Ende”, as the estate agents call it today. When we debated this matter in Committee, we tabled a similar new clause, based on the wording of the 2021 Act. It said that Ministers should at least consider derogating from the ECHR, if not doing so might constrain the operation of our troops when deployed overseas and leave them potentially fighting a ruthless enemy with no moral scruples, who behaved as the Russians did in Bucha during the invasion of Ukraine. Because of the ECHR, our troops could effectively be fighting with one hand tied behind their back, and could fear lawfare being used against them, perhaps even decades later, potentially at Russia’s behest. Unfortunately, the Government have been completely hopeless on this, and we have therefore firmed up the wording in our revised new clause; it says that Ministers “should” derogate in such circumstances. The principal argument, however, remains the same, and I hope that Ministers might yet be persuaded to accept the new clause.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I remind the Opposition spokesperson that new clause 1, which I tabled, would prevent the Secretary of State authorising the entry of members of visiting forces from states whose commanders are subject to International Criminal Court arrest warrants or proceedings of the International Court of Justice. I do not see how that is a problem for anyone who respects and understands the importance of international law in bringing an end to conflict, or preventing conflict. Surely the Secretary of State should not allow people to come and operate here when they have an ICC arrest warrant against them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

I am old school, and I was taught that in a debate, it is polite to refer to the Member who moved the lead amendment. That is what I was seeking to do. As I think the House would realise, I am making a very different point and a different argument from him. I will have to respectfully disagree, particularly given events earlier today.

New clause 4, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), has been signed by 64 MPs from across the House, including me. The law was changed many years ago to permit foreign, Commonwealth and Gurkha personnel who have served in our armed forces for four years or more to apply for UK citizenship in return for their willingness to risk their life in service of the Crown. That is now a well-established procedure. However, there is a long-running issue about their immediate family, who may also wish to apply for citizenship, being charged visa fees. Both the Conservative and Labour parties in their 2024 general election manifestos pledged to change that. Indeed, the Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland have been campaigning on it for some time. The case will no doubt be made eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, just as it was in Committee, if he is lucky enough to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker.

When we debated this issue in Committee some three weeks ago, the then Armed Forces Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak, sought to offer the House some comfort that progress might be made on this issue by the time we got to Report. That being the case, and given that the Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland have been doing their best to press the case—including at an event in the House earlier today—I hope that his replacement as the Armed Forces Minister will be able to give us a positive update tonight.

It is not really the money that is the impediment. We in the Conservative party have pledged that if we were in government, the Ministry of Defence would cover the additional cost of these visas, which would realistically run at most to a few million pounds a year. However, as everyone knows, the real blocker is not the MOD, but the Home Office. I very much hope that the Armed Forces Minister can tell us today that she has put some vim down the pipe, as it were, and that the Government will now accept new clause 4. If not, I feel sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon will be present to press his new clause at the conclusion of our debate.

Our amendments 3, 4 and 5 are on the subjects of special educational needs, the related matters of fostering and adoption, and care in the national health service. In essence, our argument is that if military personnel who have children with special educational needs are ordered to transfer from one military garrison or base to another, any support that they have for that child—including an education, health and care plan or its equivalent in the devolved Governments—should automatically be portable from one local education authority to the one that covers their new posting.

One of the two overriding principles of the armed forces covenant, which is an important aspect of the Bill, is that military personnel and their families should suffer no disadvantage as a result of their service relative to the civilian population. Given that they may sometimes be compelled to move by order from one part of the country to another, this is a perfect example of where that principle should now bite.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

I thank my hon. Friend him for his intervention. As patron of the Rayleigh branch of the Royal British Legion, I too am very glad to pay tribute to the amazing work that it does in support of serving personnel, veterans and the wider armed forces family. It has also played an important part in lobbying for what is now new clause 4, on which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon will elaborate.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the shadow Minister again for all his endeavours on behalf of the defence forces. He is an example to us all.

I understand that the Government have extended the armed forces covenant to Northern Ireland, but there is a question mark over the responsibility of local borough and district councils in Northern Ireland that may have adverse feelings about the covenant. Does the right hon. Gentleman think it is important that the Government bring forward legislation tonight to ensure that every district and borough council in Northern Ireland must adhere to the same rules as those here on the mainland?

[Mr Francois]

Yes, the armed forces covenant should apply equally throughout the four nations of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman and I know that some local authorities in Northern Ireland take a different view on this matter, but even in Sinn Féin-run councils the covenant should still apply. Northern Ireland has a very proud tradition of providing troops for the United Kingdom’s armed forces, and those troops are as entitled to be recognised and supported by the civilian population as those drawn from any other part of the United Kingdom. So, again, my in-principle answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is yes.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

I suspect that this might be about the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, in which case I am very happy to give way.

[Jayne Kirkham]

It is not, actually, although I can always talk about the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in the context of clause 31, in which it is brilliantly included and which will give the RFA a commissioner at last, which is fantastic.

May I ask the Minister to confirm—because I have had some correspondence about this—that clause 2 covers unitary authorities, single foundation strategic authorities and borough councils outside outer London? Some members of the Local Government Association have raised that with me. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm, just for clarification, that those authorities are covered by the duties in the covenant?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for referring to me as the Minister. I was the Minister once and—who knows?—I may be one day again. I must say, in fairness to the previous Minister, that I believe the Government tabled amendments in Committee to clarify the matter that the hon. Lady has raised, and I think that on their behalf, if it is not precocious, I can give her and the LGA an absolute reassurance in that regard.

We believe that as military personnel are often moving at the behest of the state, the state has a moral duty under the covenant to ensure that any EHCP—and, as we all know from our constituency work, obtaining EHCPs is often a tortuous process—is then fully transferable. When we debated that in Committee, we received considerable support from the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey), who has received a field promotion of his own in recent days, and will therefore hopefully be a friend to these measures within the Department. I would welcome him too, but I am saving him up for Defence questions in July.

[Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)]

We in the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces community—including my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey)—have been working on these issues with the Royal British Legion for the past year. The Minister for School Standards, my hon. Friend the Member for Queen's Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould), has come before us, has listened to the views of service personnel and their families, and has committed to ensuring that serving personnel are included in the SEND reforms process. I want to thank her for her work, alongside that of the Royal British Legion and the APPG.

[Mr Francois]

I thank the hon. Lady for a very helpful intervention. I will come to the NHS in a moment, but during the Bill’s earlier stages we have suggested that if the Government do not feel that they can accept this amendment—amendment 3—in this primary legislation, which was our preferred route, now that we know there will be a new Bill on special educational needs, they should seek to address the problem in that Bill, and because it is a Department for Education Bill, hopefully local education authorities will then give it considerable weight. So we are in absolute agreement about that route, and, if I may say so, what the hon. Lady has said about education Ministers is heartening.

Amendment 4 makes, in a sense, the same argument as we have made on the EHCPs with regard to fostering or adoption by service personnel. Amendment 5 argues, in a similar vein, that military personnel who transfer from one military location to another should not lose their place on any NHS waiting list as a result. Again, there is forthcoming legislation on NHS reorganisation, and we hope that this issue can be tackled via that legislative route. I believe this is a relatively straightforward moral argument, in all three cases, and I hope that the Government may yet accept the logic of what we are putting forward this evening.

Let me now turn to the subject of funding for the proposed new Defence Housing Service. As I said during the Select Committee stage of the Bill, there is almost universal agreement that we want to improve the quality of accommodation for service personnel and their families. The remaining area of contention is how best to achieve that, given that there is almost complete unanimity on the desired end state.

Nevertheless, following media reports—especially in The Sunday Times—Opposition Members are increasingly concerned about the possibility that money for capital improvements, and even maintenance, may now be taken away from the Defence Housing Service before it is even born, and reallocated to other priorities in Labour’s very long-awaited defence investment plan. We know from evidence sessions on the Bill that there is already a plan for the Defence Housing Service to reduce the spending on housing maintenance by 25%, compared to current practice. That sounds worrying, although officials, and indeed the previous Minister, were keen to stress that they believed the new Defence Housing Service would be able, by renegotiating certain contracts and the actual operation of maintenance, to do this more efficiently.

The proof of the pudding for all that will be very much in the eating. However, what we understand is now being proposed is that the capital allocations for the Defence Housing Service will be raided in order to fund other defence priorities elsewhere. That process will only be exacerbated if, as has been widely reported, the amount of money that will be available for the DIP—if and when it is finally published—will be the lowest of the three options widely canvassed in the press, namely an additional £10 billion of spending on defence over the next four years.

Given the challenges faced by defence—which were laid out starkly by both the former Defence Secretary and the former Armed Forces Minister in their powerful resignation letters—£10 billion over four years will not even touch the sides. Let me humbly remind Labour Members that all three authors of the strategic defence review, which was published over a year ago on 2 June 2025, were adamant that the price tag for delivering Labour’s much-vaunted SDR would be defence spending of at least 3% of GDP. What is on offer is clearly nowhere near that. Indeed, in his scathing resignation letter, the former Defence Secretary said that all that was being offered to him was an increase in defence spending from 2.6% of GDP this year to 2.68% of GDP by 2030—in other words, a 0.08% increase over four years. Those numbers completely and utterly demolish Labour’s constantly repeated mantra that they are now funding

“the biggest…increase in defence spending since the Cold War.”

That is simply not true.

However, the situation is even worse than that. In addition to the headline “increases”, which are now minuscule, as the resignation letter starkly reveals, last year, at the Treasury’s behest, the Labour Government introduced a target of making efficiency savings—“cuts” in plain English—of some £2.6 billion from operational and revenue spending in the Ministry of Defence. What that means in practice is fewer ship days at sea, fewer hours for our pilots to fly, and fewer exercises on Salisbury plain. Incredibly, in this financial year—2026-27—the efficiency savings target has now been increased to £3.5 billion of cuts, which means even more operational and revenue spending reductions than last year.

For Labour to continue the mantra that it has provided the largest increase in defence spending since the cold war, in the face of these self-imposed, Treasury-driven in-year cuts, simply destroys any credibility that the Government had that they really are striving to keep this country safe. This is not the result of enemy action—unless one regards the Treasury as the enemy, which many in the military now do. This is a self-inflicted wound brought about by a Labour Government who are completely paralysed by inaction, and who now have no idea whatsoever of how to credibly fund the defence of this country.

In the light of today’s events, it remains to be seen whether the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) will attempt to introduce any order into this chaos. If he does, he and his new Chancellor—whoever that turns out to be—will still have to say how the Labour Government are going to pay for it. Are they going to increase borrowing, which will frighten the bond markets, or are they going to cut welfare, which would probably provoke a Back-Bench revolt?

[Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)]

Which would you do?

[Mr Francois]

We would reduce welfare spending and spend it on the defence of the realm. That is our policy.

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

In a moment.

I come back to the Defence Housing Service. Ministers have promised us ad nauseum that their plan will include £9.2 billion of investment in military accommodation over the next 10 years—that point has been repeated again and again over the five months that I have referred to. Given that the DIP has still not been published, I ask the Minister for the Armed Forces whether she can still repeat Labour’s mantra on the Floor of the House this evening. Is that £9.2 billion still there? Has it been definitively signed off by the Chancellor of the Exchequer —yes or no?

Moreover, can the Minister advise us when the DIP will finally be published? I see that the Secretary of State has kindly joined us, so he can bob up and answer if he wants. Will it be published prior to the NATO summit in Ankara on 7 and 8 July, as we have been told multiple times? Will it be published prior to the House rising for the summer recess on 16 July? Will it ever be published, or will we have to go round the loop all over again with a new Government? Are they going to publish it, and if so, when? We have now transitioned from frustration to filibustering from Ministers, and from there to farce. Our adversaries can see this as clearly as our friends can.

We have already rightly spent five months on this very important Bill, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give the House at least some comfort on some of the points that we have raised. Otherwise, we will have to test the will of the House, almost certainly in the matter of the ECHR and potentially on the Defence Housing Service and the DIP as well. Finally, when—if ever—will Labour publish the defence investment plan?

[Alex Baker]

May I begin by congratulating my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Sandher-Jones) on being appointed the Minister for the Armed Forces? She did an outstanding job as the Minister for Veterans and People, and I pay particular tribute to her work with the Gurkha community. I saw at first hand how she engaged with a community that for too long felt ignored and unheard, and she helped many feel that their voices were finally being listened to. I am delighted to see her promoted, and I look forward to her making many visits to Aldershot and Farnborough in her new role.

This weekend, Aldershot and Farnborough will have the privilege of hosting the national Armed Forces Day celebrations. As the historic home of the British Army, it is a huge honour for our community. I thank everyone involved in making it happen, including Rushmoor borough council and our headline sponsors: QinetiQ, BAE Systems and KBR Aspire Defence. Armed Forces Day matters because it gives us an opportunity to say thank you, but it should also be an opportunity to listen.

On Saturday, I was privileged to attend the launch of the Commonwealth military hub in Aldershot, which has been delivered by Op Belonging under the leadership of Samuel T. Reddy, in partnership with Aldershot Town football club. It was an extraordinary event. Serving personnel, veterans, families and organisations from across the Commonwealth came together to celebrate service and support each other. In some regiments based in Aldershot, more than 15 different nationalities are represented, and what struck me most was the theme of belonging. These are people who have served our country, and their families have sacrificed alongside them. They deserve to feel that they belong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

We are committed to publishing the DIP before the Ankara summit in July.

Amendment 11 concerns the Defence Housing Service’s budget and the defence investment plan. I hope that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) will understand that I will not comment on any figures in the DIP—it will be published soon enough. Our defence housing strategy will deliver a decade of renewal for defence family housing. Previously, military housing was subject to insufficient, stop-start funding. That did not deliver value for money for the taxpayer, or the improvements that our service families deserve. The Defence Housing Service’s budget will be clearly set out, and it will account for its spending to Parliament via an annual report. As the Select Committee heard during the evidence sessions, there is nothing in the defence investment plan process that stops the Department getting work under way. The Defence Housing Service will be up and running from April 2027, and the work of renewing the estate can continue.

[Mr Francois]

We were told multiple times—loads of times—over five months that the Government would invest £9.2 billion over 10 years to achieve the objectives of the Defence Housing Service, so I ask the Minister again: will she give a commitment to the House that that figure has not been reduced? If she cannot do that, people will believe that it has been reduced.

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

I will not comment, piece by piece, on what might be in the defence investment plan. We are getting on with the job of making improvements for service families now, and we are preparing for the launch of the new Defence Housing Service.

Amendment 11 states that the Defence Housing Service must operate within a budget set out in the DIP. That risks constraining the Defence Housing Service in a scenario where investment is set out in the plan, but has to rise thereafter. Any additional spending then risks being in breach of this requirement, unless and until a new defence investment plan is published. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that that would constrain the service’s ability to respond swiftly and appropriately to changing requirements.

New clause 11 would require any future Secretary of State to consider whether to make a derogation under article 15 of the ECHR, which provides that

“in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation…a State may take measures derogating from its obligations under the Convention only to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation”,

provided that such measures are

“not…inconsistent with the State’s other obligations under international law”.

When the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill was being considered, concerns were raised that its clause 12 risked damaging the UK’s reputation for upholding the rule of law. It was also seen as unnecessary, because the Government can already derogate under article 15 of the ECHR, so the provision did not add any additional legal power and was largely symbolic. It was the last Government who agreed to its removal from that Bill, and I have not heard a convincing case for its inclusion in this Bill.

I will address new clauses 3 and 5 together, as they both deal with how we care for our veterans. I thank hon. Members for tabling them. I appreciate their concerns about our armed forces veterans, and I acknowledge the sentiments behind the new clauses. We have published our new 10-year veterans strategy, which sets out a new narrative around the remarkable men and women who have served in our armed forces. It applies UK-wide, is cross-Government and cross-sector in scope, and will provide significant opportunity for both data collection and data sharing, and we do not wish to distract from the progression of this work.

Armed Forces Bill

Mark Francois Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)]

It is a pleasure to speak in Committee of the whole House on the Armed Forces Bill. I start by placing on the record my thanks to the members of the Select Committee on the Bill for their thorough and constructive consideration of the Bill, and their extensive special report.

There are a considerable number of amendments and new clauses before the Committee. I will speak first to the amendments in my name, and then I will focus principally on other amendments. I will endeavour to address as many of the new clauses as possible in my closing remarks, after listening to the points raised in the debate.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I apologise for interrupting so early, but before the Minister gets into his stride, I would like to place firmly on the record that we are debating legislation of material importance, relating to the care of our armed forces, and yet again, there is no Reform Member of Parliament present. Does the Minister agree that there is a massive irony here? These plastic patriots love to wrap themselves in the flag, but they cannot be bothered to turn up in Parliament to debate the fate of those who serve to defend it.

[The Chairman]

Order. Obviously interventions are taken by those who wish to take them, but we need to make sure that interventions and speeches stay within the scope of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman]

Marvellous. I call the shadow Minister.

[Mr Francois]

I rise to speak to amendments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, and new clauses 1, 2, 3 and 6, which appear in my name and those of my hon. Friends. I will say a little about each amendment and new clause in turn. I will also refer to new clause 5, which appears in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), and say at least a little about the multiplicity of Government amendments that have just been tabled, in particular Government amendment 54 on the proposed Crown immunity for the defence housing service. By your leave, Madam Chairman, I propose to speak to the amendments first and then to refer to the new clauses a little later in the debate so as not to try the patience of the Committee with an inordinately long speech.

I hope that we have collectively done the House and, indeed, the armed forces a service in our scrutiny of the Bill so far. The Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill, most of whose members are here, held seven oral evidence sessions on the Bill’s contents, as well as making a fact-finding visit to the Defence Serious Crime Command in Fareham and to defence housing sites at Emsworth near His Majesty’s Naval Base Portsmouth. As a Committee, we received 47 pieces of written evidence and heard from 42 witnesses. Having held the evidence sessions, we then went through a detailed process of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill and produced our subsequent report to the House, which was published on 29 April.

The Bill has already had quite a detailed amount of scrutiny; however, it is right that a measure of such importance is now in Committee on the Floor of the House. I reiterate my disappointment that Reform does not regard these proceedings as important. I am sure that the rest of us do; that is why we are here.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I reiterate the fact that there are no Members here from the party led by the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), in particular because so many of the local authorities responsible for implementing the armed forces covenant are led by that particular party. It is grossly incompetent that they are not here to listen and learn.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. May I reiterate the comments made by the Chairman of Ways and Means earlier? The point that the hon. Lady and others have raised is not in the scope of this Bill, so perhaps it is best if we move on.

[Mr Francois]

Thank you, Ms Nokes. I will not cut across your ruling, but I do nevertheless say that I wholly agree with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor).

During the process of the Bill so far, we in His Majesty’s Opposition have sought to act as critical friends, agreeing with the Government when we think they have done the right thing and probing them when we think they could perhaps have done better. The Government have now tabled some 81 new clauses and amendments in toto. Many, as the Minister has said, are relatively minor or technical drafting improvements, but some are quite substantial, in particular those relating to the proposed new defence housing service and the service justice system.

I would like to ask the Minister a specific question about Government amendment 54, the essence of which is that, where property held by the defence housing service is to be treated as property held on behalf of the Crown, the defence housing service should have

“the same immunities, privileges and exemptions in respect of its holding of that property as would apply if it were property held by or on behalf of the Crown.”

It would be helpful if the Minister could explain to the House exactly what that means in practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

The right hon. Member is making a powerful point, and it is something I hope that I can expand on as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the armed forces community. We have worked extensively with the Department for Education on this matter, and I hope to be able to address the right hon. Member’s concerns in my speech later. Does he recognise that special educational needs and disability policy should fall under the Department for Education, and that the point of the armed forces covenant is that we can have some leverage over the Department for Education rather than placing this detail in the Bill?

[Mr Francois]

There has been a leak: the hon. Gentleman has clearly had access to my speech. He has put a lot of work into this issue, so perhaps I can meet him halfway with what I am about to say.

In fairness, there are already DFE guidelines that can facilitate the portability of an EHCP from one local education authority to another. The crucial point, however, is that that is by voluntary agreement, and there is no guarantee that if service personnel are transferred at the behest of their commanders, the LEA into which they will move will accept the EHCP on transfer. The essence of amendment 2 is that it would ensure that that process does take place, rather than leaving it as a matter of discretion for the receiving LEA, which itself may be under considerable pressure to meet the demand for SEN support.

Amendment 3, which relates to adoption and fostering, is similar in spirit. It would mean that service personnel who have begun the fostering and adoption process under one local education authority would not have to go again to the back of the queue, as it were, if they were to transfer to another. The spirit of both amendments is the same.

[Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)]

I place on record my thanks to the shadow Minister, the APPG and others for their work on this matter. I have constituents—I am very proud to represent Weeton barracks—who have had to make that choice because of the postcode lottery to which my right hon. Friend refers. Whether an LEA accepts the transfer is down to its discretion. That is such an important point, and I thank him for making it.

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend is bearing out the point that there are real-world examples of this issue coming into play, and he has done the Committee a service by reiterating that.

The Minister for Veterans and People kindly met me and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) last month to discuss whether the Government might be able to do more on this subject, and in fact the Minister for the Armed Forces referred to that meeting in his remarks a few minutes ago. During the meeting with the Minister for Veterans and People, we suggested—here is the leak—that, given the announcement in the King’s Speech that there would be a new Bill on the whole topic of special educational needs, one way of achieving the aim of the amendment might be to include such a provision in that Bill—in a DFE Bill, rather than an MOD Bill. That would still, at the end of the day, achieve the same desirable outcome. The Minister undertook to go away and look at the matter, including potentially in consultation with colleagues from the DFE. Having received her letter of yesterday, I have to say, more in sorrow than in anger, that I was extremely disappointed in its tone. It was a classic civil service boilerplate reply that bore little relation to the discussion that we had in the Minister’s office. I can only ask her to look at this again, perhaps in the context of the new DFE legislation, as I have just suggested.

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

Rather than the shadow Minister extending his speech, I urge Members concerned with this area to perhaps listen to what I will explain, which is the work that we have been doing with the DFE. We have had members from the armed forces community from across the country liaising directly with the Department for Education and the Minister for Veterans and People. I will try to put that across in my speech.

[Mr Francois]

I do not want to pre-empt what will no doubt be an erudite speech, but the key point is that there is a mechanism for doing this—we are halfway there.

If service parents get a transfer order a few months in advance, then unless they can be certain that the receiving LEA will accept their EHCP, which they may have gone through a bureaucratic minefield to achieve—I am sure we all have individual examples from our constituencies—are they going to risk it? Will they stick or twist? Or will they leave the service and try to find somewhere local to live, but at least keep the precious EHCP? The nub of the matter is whether we can make it mandatory that the transfer takes place. Having made the point, I will rest, and wait for the contribution from the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey).

Amendment 4 is similar in spirit to amendments 2 and 3, but relates to the national health service rather than to education. The essence of the amendment is that military personnel who are already on a waiting list for treatment in one NHS integrated care board area should not suffer any disadvantage relative to the civilian community if, again, they have to be transferred for operational or other service-related reasons. In plain English, they should not lose their place in the queue.

[Dr Murrison]

One area that will blight the lives of many of my right hon. Friend’s constituents as it does mine is, of course, primary care dentistry. People can move from one end of the country to another into a dental desert—Wiltshire is one of those. Does he think that there is a case for putting a duty on integrated care boards to translate people’s position with an NHS dentist—where they are lucky enough to find one—to their new area? I am thinking particularly of Wiltshire and the shortage of places, especially for service children and the partners of service personnel.

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend is of course a former MOD Minister himself and represents a large number of service personnel. It is obvious from his intervention that he understands the issue very well. What he has just asked me is wholly in line with the spirit of our amendment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley unfortunately has a competing commitment this afternoon with the Justice Committee and the report on jury trial, which I hope the House accepts is a very important matter. He hopes to join us later in the debate when he has attended to that. Given his medical expertise, he pressed this point with the Minister for Veterans and People at the same meeting that I have referred to. Sadly, again, we received an equally uninspiring reply. For the record, given that the King’s Speech also presaged new legislation on NHS organisation, we sought to suggest that one way to proceed might be to include an amendment in that Bill rather than in this one. In other words, that medical issue could be put in a Bill introduced by Ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care. I reiterate our request, perhaps to the Government more broadly, to consider what we still regard to be a sensible proposal.

I turn now to amendment 5 on court martial boards. One issue highlighted during our visit to see the service justice system was the challenge of finding sufficient officers to serve on court martial boards who are in no way connected with the defendant. That can become more of a challenge as defendants become more senior, as the pool of officers from which to draw narrows as one moves up the promotion pyramid. The essence of the amendment is to allow retired officers to be drawn upon to help comprise the membership of boards for court martial, and therefore to widen the potential pool of those who might be available to undertake this important military and, indeed, civic duty.

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very indulgent. I agree with him and—with respect—not with the Minister, because my recollection from being the Minister at the time was that there was a shortage of officers to populate court martial boards. When in office, we ensured that the process was service agnostic, which gave a bigger pool from which to draw. Would it be a compromise to allow retired officers of a certain seniority or length of time out of service, since that would maintain the currency that clearly is troubling the Minister? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Minister is right to require OR-7s, as well as warrant officers, to serve on court martial boards since that would expand the pool of people available?

[Mr Francois]

Again, my right hon. Friend makes a very important point: allowing tri-service boards increases the potential pool, even of senior officers, who can serve.

When we made that visit, the Minister was not able to be with us. That is no criticism; he is an MOD Minister, and he has a lot to think about—he has a great deal to think about at the moment—but he was not able to be there on that visit, so he did not hear it from the horse’s mouth. This issue was raised with us by practitioners in the service justice system.

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

indicated assent.

[Mr Francois]

They told us as a Committee—I am looking round the House for nods of assent from others who were on the visit, and I am getting them—that it was a problem, and it was cramping the ability to hold court martials. All we were trying to do was justify the cost of the train ticket to the taxpayer and prove that we had listened to what we were told on the visit, so I do not quite take the Minister’s sanguine approach that there are plenty of officers to go round. I will not hammer the nail any further, but I respectfully ask him to look at this one more time, particularly after the contributions today.

--- Later in debate ---

I turn briefly to new clause 2, which is about the laying of the defence investment plan.

[Mr Francois]

I fully acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s point about education being a devolved matter, which makes the SEN issue more complicated. He is quite correct about that, but does he acknowledge that amendment 2 allows for that and specifically refers to it? Secondly, there is no cross-border issue in England. If I agree with him that this would best be done via an education Bill, will he agree with me that in England there is no impediment whatsoever to making the transfer of EHCPs for service children mandatory?

[Mr Bailey]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. One thing that came up very strongly in the APPG’s discussions with the Department—we had military families from all three services, and representatives of all the service organisations—was that this problem is faced by all people; it is just that service families and service children manifest the issue most specifically. The problem has to be fixed for all people in the United Kingdom, which is why the changes were taken on board as part of the SEND work. We received a great amount of care and support from the Department, and I hope that the work will prove beneficial. Where I see a bit of a failing is that, in taking that on, the Department could perhaps have noted that work, so that service families could have seen that it had been part of the considerations. That was a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot made to the Minister, and I hope that it will be addressed in the next iteration of the SEND work.

[Mr Francois]

The difference is that, while people in civilian life sometimes have to move jobs at the behest of their employer, service personnel are ordered to go. They really have no choice: once they have been posted, they have to go. Therefore, in ordering them to go, the state should have a moral obligation to deal with the consequences for special needs children. Does the hon. Member accept that that is a difference between service and civilian life, and that under the principle of “no disadvantage” in the covenant, the state should do the right thing?

[Mr Bailey]

The right hon. Member makes a powerful point, and I agree with him entirely. That is why it is so important we make sure that the armed forces covenant works. The covenant will have to do a lot of work and heavy lifting, just as it will in relation to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Huntingdon, but we will have the legal power and we will have recourse to those Departments. We hope to hear from Ministers today that they will press home the legal advantage they now have in that regard.

Finally, this debate reminds us that the Armed Forces Act 2006 was itself forged in the context of its time. It brought together a number of separate pieces of legislation and created a framework suited to an era in which the size and scope of the armed forces were reducing and many of the strategic assumptions underpinning our national security appeared to be settled. The measures in this Bill are all welcome and necessary, but they remind us that much of the heavy lifting now sits elsewhere. Questions about mobilisations, reserve integration, military aid to the civil authorities, the legal protections offered to service personnel acting on behalf of the state, and wider national resilience sit largely beyond the scope of the Bill, yet those issues are becoming increasingly important as the strategic environment changes around us. As legislators, we have a responsibility to ensure that the legal frameworks governing our armed forces continue to evolve alongside those changes. This Bill makes important improvements, but it should also encourage us to think carefully about the work that remains to be done and ensure that future legislation is ambitious enough to meet the realities of the world as it is, rather than the world as it once was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

Having addressed our amendments towards the opening of the debate, I will now speak to the new clauses. New clause 3 would create a veterans’ commissioner for England. My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) made a good case for doing so during the Select Committee on the Bill, and did so again this afternoon. She received cross-party support—certainly in principle—from the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), who made an extremely thoughtful contribution. He also gave my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) some support for new clause 5, which I will come to in a moment.

When I was debating the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill—now the Armed Forces Commissioner Act 2025—with the Minister some months ago, he gave a commitment that the veterans’ commissioners for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be mirrored by the appointment of a veterans’ commissioner for England. However, that has still not come to pass. Could he explain to the Committee where the Government now sit on this issue? When can we expect them to honour their pledge to create a veterans’ commissioner for England? Have they begun any interview process, to at least begin to identify a suitable candidate for the role? The Government gave their word on this. The Committee would be grateful for an update from the Minister on where the Government are with this matter.

I turn to new clause 5, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, which has the support of over 20 hon. Members. The essence of the new clause is that no fees should be charged to serving or previously serving members of the armed forces, or their family members, who are applying for indefinite leave to remain under the immigration rules appendix for His Majesty’s armed forces. In practical terms, the new clause would amend the Immigration Act 2014 so that when members of the armed forces apply for ILR, in return for their willingness to serve the Crown, the attendant fees would be waived. This is a particular issue for Gurkha families, and foreign and Commonwealth personnel who are serving, or have served, in the armed forces.

[Rachel Taylor]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Gurkha community. I want to pay tribute to the Queen’s Gurkha Regiment and the 30th Signal Regiment, based just outside my constituency. The Gurkhas who served are an essential and integral part of our community; they offer great value, and integrate into the community. I thank him for mentioning them, and for giving me the opportunity to pay tribute to those Gurkhas who live in or around my constituency.

[Mr Francois]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I think she may have been here just a few months ago when we had a debate about the history of the Gurkhas in British service. I echo everything she said about the bravest of the brave. I therefore look forward to her supporting the new clause in the Division Lobby this evening.

The Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland have campaigned on this matter for a number of years. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon for taking up the cudgels so effectively on their behalf this afternoon. As he argued powerfully, Governments of both colours have indicated in the past that they were minded to make this change. Indeed, it is worth reiterating that this proposal was in both the Conservatives’ and Labour’s 2024 general election manifestos, but the change has yet to come to pass. Having re-examined the issue within His Majesty’s Opposition and consulted shadow departmental colleagues, I am pleased to tell the Committee that should my hon. Friend seek to press the new clause—and should you grant that request, Madam Chairman—we on the Opposition Front Bench will support it. We encourage all hon. Members to do so, too. There would be a cost to the process, but we believe that, in return for service to this country, the Ministry of Defence should absorb that cost in its wider budget. The annual cost would be a very modest outgoing, given the scale of the defence budget. In other words, the Department would bear the cost, not those who have served or their families. People should not be disadvantaged for having offered to serve this country in uniform.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon put the case very well, and I will not try the House’s patience by repeating it. Suffice it to say that I believe that there is a strong moral case for doing this, and I very much hope that the Government might be prepared to accept the amendment. If they are not, I hope that my hon. Friend will press his amendment to a vote, and in that case, I hope that the whole House will find it in their heart to support it.

New clauses 1 and 6 relate to the European convention on human rights and its effect on armed forces personnel, including, potentially, reservists who might be mobilised under the auspices of the Bill. How did we get to a situation in which the convention has spread to the battlefield, not just in Europe, but globally? The history is significant here; it lies behind why we tabled the two new clauses. This all came about because of something called the al-Jedda case, which was heard before the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords a couple of years or so before the United Kingdom Supreme Court was created back in 2009. The al-Jedda case was about the treatment of a prisoner detained in Iraq during Operation Telic, and was brought by a now disgraced lawyer called Phil Shiner. His name will be known to anyone who has ever served in the British Army. For the record, Shiner was subsequently convicted of fraud and struck off as a practising solicitor.

Phil Shiner instructed legal counsel to put forward his case to the House of Lords. The lead appellant in that case, before he became a Member of Parliament, was one Keir Starmer QC. The Minister for Veterans and People got into some trouble over that, because when we highlighted the matter in the Commons, she was adamant that he had not been working for Shiner. Unfortunately for the Minister, we had the court records from the House of Lords, which showed very clearly that Keir Starmer, as he then was, was the lead appellant appointed and instructed—that word is used in the records—by Phil Shiner’s law firm, Public Interest Lawyers. The Minister had the embarrassment of having to come to the Commons in February to correct the record and admit that our version of events, as explained to the Commons, was true.

Phil Shiner was a persistent man, particularly when money was at stake, so several years after losing in the House of Lords, he took the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. To be clear, Keir Starmer was not acting in that action. Shiner won, so the Strasbourg Court ruled that the European convention on human rights would then apply to any theatre in which British armed forces personnel were serving. Through that judgment, an industry was effectively created, which Shiner then massively exploited. He brought literally hundreds of cases against current and past British armed forces personnel. Many of the cases were funded by British taxpayers through legal aid, and were completely and utterly fabricated for money. It was the use of the ECHR that allowed him to do that.

In other debates in the Chamber, we have heard senior Ministers, including the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, say that there is no such thing as a vexatious prosecution. Self-evidently, there must be, because otherwise why was Shiner struck off and convicted of fraud by a court of law? There can be—in fact, there were—hundreds of vexatious prosecutions against British military personnel. It was, for the record, Johnny Mercer, a former Member of this House, when he served on the Defence Committee some years ago, who led a sub-Committee investigation into this issue. Its very powerful report helped to bring Shiner to book, no doubt saving the taxpayer a lot of money, and leading to Shiner’s career ending in disgrace.

To come to the present day, what if there were a ceasefire in Ukraine? Let us posit a situation in which, under the auspices of the coalition of the willing, British service personnel were deployed to Ukraine. If, by some happenstance, they became involved in a firefight with Russian troops who had made an incursion across the line of ceasefire, who is to say that years—maybe decades—later, those personnel would not end up in a court of law for obeying what they believed to be perfectly legitimate orders, after some second-guessing by a human rights lawyer, perhaps with Russian assistance?

In short, we cannot allow this Government’s obsession with human rights to put our armed forces at risk, either now, in the future or historically, and potentially force them to fight ruthless opponents with one arm tied behind their back. This issue will not go away, and at some point, the Government will be forced to address it, be it through the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill or some other mechanism. The purpose of these new clauses is to force them to address it today.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I should like to quote a few words from the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), speaking just a couple of months ago in this Chamber:

“This month marks 20 years since I returned from serving on Operation Telic 7 in Iraq. While I was there, we patrolled Basra in Snatch Land Rovers, and 34 British soldiers died in Snatch Land Rovers. They were called “mobile coffins” and “suicide wagons” for a reason. In 2006, it was highlighted to the Government that those vehicles were unsuitable, and it was not until years later that they were replaced.”—[Official Report, 15 April 2026; Vol. 783, c. 842.]

It was not the ECHR that put British soldiers’ lives at risk in Iraq, but it was the ECHR that provided the legal basis for the families of those victims to seek justice. I think that the right hon. Gentleman is looking through the wrong end of the telescope on this one. By seeking to remove us from the ECHR, he is potentially putting British service people at greater risk, rather than offering them protection.

[Mr Francois]

It is extremely sad that the hon. Gentleman is seeking to conflate two completely different issues, and I suspect that anyone who actually served on Operation Telic would understand that.

Having made that point, let me turn to the Opposition’s new clause 2, which would require the Secretary of State for Defence to lay a defence investment plan before Parliament within a month of the passage of this Act, if it had still not been published by then, which, for reasons I will come to in a minute, is not as fantastical as it might seem. For context, today is the one-year anniversary of the publication of the Government’s much-vaunted strategic defence review. There is a lot of good in the document, but one of the criticisms made at the time was that much of the programmatic detail on which new equipment the Government intended to purchase for our armed forces was omitted. For instance, the Government talked about buying “up to” 12 new nuclear attack submarines. That could mean two.

All that detail was going to be provided in the defence investment plan, but one year on, it has still not been published. This has drawn serious criticism from right across the defence industry, and also from the authors of the SDR. Indeed, the lead author, Lord Robertson, a lifelong Labour man to his fingertips, has accused the Prime Minister of “corrosive complacency” because of the ongoing delay in saying how the Government will fund the strategic defence review and its attendant equipment requirements. When we were in government, we used to publish a 10-year plan for the purchase of military equipment, universally known as the equipment plan.

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

In a moment. The plan allowed industry to make rational decisions about where to invest, helped to improve the morale of our armed forces by letting them know about the new equipment they could expect to come into service, and had an important deterrent effect on our potential adversaries by laying out exactly what we intended to buy for the defence of the realm. All those things have now been put at risk by a year of the Government’s endless prevarication and inaction.

[Mr Bailey]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that on Labour’s arrival in government, the National Audit Office stated that the previous Government and the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) had left an equipment plan with a £7 billion to £28 billion gap? Is that correct?

[Mr Francois]

As a matter of fact, that is not how I interpret what the NAO said—not at all.

[Mr Bailey]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Francois]

No, the hon. Gentleman has had his go.

The Committee may remember that we were promised that the DIP would be published in the autumn; then, we were faithfully promised it by Christmas; and then we were absolutely, definitely going to get it in the new year. But here we are in June—and, incredibly, still no DIP.

[Dr Murrison]

Has my right hon. Friend had a chance to look at the report published by techUK, which represents a lot of small and medium-sized companies in the defence tech sector, and seen what it has to say, objectively, about the number of jobs that are being lost in the sector, the lack of investment in the sector, the pressure that its members are coming under and the sector’s lack of viability given this continued, unbearable delay? It needs certainty. When are we going to have it?

[Mr Francois]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. We would all like to know when we are going to have it, but the reason we do not have it is simple. It is not that the staff work has not been completed—it has. It is not that the programmes have not been costed—they have. The fundamental problem is that while Ministers say they are working flat out and knocking themselves out on it, and are reduced to euphemisms about how hard they are working, it was actually done months ago. The problem is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer adamantly refuses to sign it, because if she signed it, she would have to say how she is going to pay for it. That is why MOD Ministers are completely hide-bound: the Prime Minister will not force the Chancellor to sign the equipment plan for the armed forces of the United Kingdom. The delay is becoming a farce. Indeed, we are now being widely criticised by our international partners, including, just the other day, the chairman of the NATO Military Committee.

At Defence questions, the Secretary of State was adamant that the Prime Minister wanted the DIP published by the NATO summit. That raises two questions: which NATO summit, and which Prime Minister? Assuming he means the summit in Ankara on 7 to 8 July, this vital document will be delayed for yet another month. What is worse, last year there were £2.6 billion of in-year operational cuts to the defence budget, and this year there are £3.5 billion of in-year cuts.

We will press new clause 2 to force a vote on a backstop plan to produce the DIP, to remind His Majesty’s Treasury that the first duty of government, above all others, is the defence of the realm. We cannot defend the realm with a lot of bluster and an equipment plan that does not exist.

[Al Carns]

I thank all Members who have spoken today for their contributions and for upholding cross-party support for our armed forces. The Bill takes significant steps to improve the conditions of service life, and renews the contract between our nation and those who serve. It delivers on a manifesto promise to extend the armed forces covenant to every area of Government—from three to 12 policy areas. We will go further, backed by a £9 billion defence housing strategy, to build, renew and repair tens of thousands of military homes. We are modernising and improving victim support and ensuring that the service justice system can protect the victims of the most serious offences from further harm. We will expand the reserve pool by changing the maximum age limit at which some personnel can be recalled, so that we would, if needed, be able to call on some of the most experienced volunteer reservists. These are significant but necessary changes to boost preparedness in an era of ever-increasing threat.

I will now address some of the major issues highlighted in the debate, starting with new clause 5. I have served all over the world with Gurkhas, Fijians and broader Commonwealth troops. They serve our country, and they serve it with honour and courage. The very least we can do is help them and their dependants by scrapping visa fees after four years of service. This is not about politics or a difference of opinion; it is about language and bounding the commitment in legislation in the correct way.

There is already a settlement fee waiver in place for serving personnel, introduced in 2022, to recognise the burden of settlement fees at the point of discharge for those who have served for six or more years or been medically discharged due to their service. However, that fee waiver did not extend to dependants or recognise serving personnel who become eligible for settlement after four years of service. That is why this Government have committed to scrap visa fees for non UK veterans who have served for four years or more and their dependants, and Home Office and Ministry of Defence Ministers are working closely together to deliver it; my hon. Friend the Minister for Veterans and People met the relevant Home Office Minister just recently. We remain firmly committed to this manifesto pledge and will deliver it fully.

I understand the intention behind new clause 5 and the desire to make progress quickly. However, as drafted, it would not clearly achieve the intent set out in the explanatory statement, which appears to be narrower. While the explanatory statement refers to “spouses or children”, the new clause itself appears to waive fees for serving personnel, previously serving personnel and “their family members”, using broad and undefined categories that would create significant uncertainty and a lack of clarity about who precisely was within scope. It also contains no clear link to length of service or a time limit after discharge. Taken together, that risks creating a broader and unclear statutory entitlement with unintended consequences, rather than a targeted and coherent measure that families and dependants can easily understand.

In addition, section 68 of the Immigration Act 2014 provides that fee exceptions should be set out in secondary legislation. By introducing a fee exception into the 2014 Act, new clause 5 would cut across that existing statutory framework and reduce clarity in the fee structure by creating an alternative mechanism for controlling fees. The Government are committed to delivering the manifesto commitment in full, and it is important that Ministers retain the ability to determine the appropriate scope, eligibility and delivery approach so that it is implemented fairly.

[Al Carns]

We need to move this legislation forward in the right manner and as fast as possible. I recommend that the hon. Member continues to push this case. My hon. Friend the Minister for Veterans and People and I have heard him loud and clear, we have heard the armed forces community loud and clear, and we are committed to delivering this in line with the intent.

[Mr Francois]

Will the Minister give way?

[Al Carns]

I will make some progress.

New clause 2 would require the Secretary of State to lay a defence investment plan before both Houses of Parliament. The Prime Minister has been very clear that the defence investment plan will be published before the NATO summit, and we are working hard to finalise it. I recommend that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) reads the NAO report which says that when we came into government, we were left a huge deficit and 47 out of 49 major programmes were not on budget or on time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Al Carns]

I remind Conservative Members that clause 12 of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, introduced by the previous Government, would have required any future Secretary of State to consider whether to make a derogation under article 15 in relation to significant overseas operations. The previous Government removed elements of clause 12 during the Bill’s final stages, because concerns were raised that the provision risked damaging the UK’s reputation for upholding the rule of law and being committed to human rights. It was the previous Government who did that. Clause 12 was also seen as unnecessary in that the Government can already derogate under article 15 of the ECHR, meaning that the provision did not add any additional legal powers.

New clause 3 seeks to place a requirement on the Secretary of State to appoint a national veterans commissioner for England, and it sets out the functions for the proposed office holder. I acknowledge the sentiment behind the new clause, which is to ensure that those who have served receive the recognition and support they deserve. The Veterans Commissioners for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are not statutory offices, so such a role would not in itself require legislation. We are putting in place the Valour programme, which will first look at digital. There will be a Valour lead and a digital headquarters, and there will then be Valour officers and centres. Once that is in place, we will need to consider whether we need a veterans commissioner for England, how that docks into the Valour programme, and how it docks into the Veterans Commissioners in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. We will update the House in due course once that is in place.

[Mr Francois]

On new clause 5, we do not yet have the date for the second day on this Bill for Report and Third Reading, but it seems likely that it will be before the summer recess on 16 July. Taking the Minister at his word, and knowing where his heart lies on this issue, will he give the House an assurance that when we get that second day—whenever it is—and we table a similar amendment on Report, he will be able to come back to us with some progress, including with the Home Office?

[Al Carns]

We will provide an update on progress once we have spoken to the Home Office and when the Bill comes back to the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), who makes fantastic efforts with the Defence Committee, highlighted the binding commitment across Whitehall Departments that the covenant will be expanded from three to 12 different policy areas. That is a fantastic move for the armed forces community, and it places a duty of care on Government to consider the armed forces in almost everything we do.

The hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) highlighted recruitment and retention. I remind him that we have seen a 12% increase in recruitment and a 9% decrease in outflow. We have put in retention payments for critical roles and made two inflation-busting pay rises. Morale is up and satisfaction with housing is up, as indeed is satisfaction with pay.

When it comes to using the civilian justice system or the service justice system, the onus must be on giving the victim the choice over their preference—that has come through time and again. The Atherton report was in 2021, and a huge amount of change has been put in place. I have spoken to a variety of different individuals across defence, and they always return to ensuring that there is preference at the point of choice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hon. Members]

Where is he?

[Mr Francois]

I will move it, Ma’am!

New Clause 5

Waived fees for indefinite leave to remain for spouses or dependants of serving or discharged member of the armed forces

“(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 68, after subsection (11) insert—

“11A Fees may not be charged

No fees may be charged in respect of a serving or previously serving member of the armed forces or their family members applying for indefinite leave to remain under the Immigration Rules Appendix HM Armed Forces.”” —(Mr Francois.)

This new clause would amend the Immigration Act 2014 to waive the fee for indefinite leave to remain applications for the spouses or children of any current or previously serving members of the armed forces.

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.