Ajax Programme

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent point. I was not going to cover it in my speech, so it is definitely worth adding to the record for the Minister to address in his response.

The interim National Armaments Director, the new National Armaments Director, the Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Defence Staff represent our most senior leaders within defence. It is hard to believe that they all would have signed off a vehicle platform that was inherently unsafe or where it was a sketchy 50:50 decision. How did we reach a point where four-star senior officers and equivalents had the confidence to sign off the vehicle’s initial operating capability, which then received ministerial approval, only for it to blow up in everybody’s face weeks later like a Wile E. Coyote Road Runner trap?

The March 2022 National Audit Office report states:

“The Department believes that the contract also incentivised GDLS-UK to prioritise production milestones over the quality and performance of the capability.”

It goes on:

“The contract incentivised GDLS-UK to achieve production milestones resulting in it continuing to manufacture vehicles while technical issues remained unresolved.”

Can the Minister give any clarity on whether that is still the case today, given that General Dynamics signed off achieving all the criteria required to meet initial operating capability, only for the entire programme to collapse less than four months later? Initial operating capability was also signed off by the Army on 15 September, before ministerial sign-off was granted on 5 November.

Last year, the then Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry stated that

“The Armoured Cavalry Programme (Ajax) is projecting the delivery of over 180 operationally deployable platforms by the end of 2025.”

Despite the various travails of the Ajax programme, production has continued throughout the training pause. As a result, we know that the Army has received just under a third of all Ajax platforms across all variants. It should be noted that the 2022 National Audit Office report highlighted that the compressed programme schedule flagged that there would no longer be time to validate the design of capability drops 3 and 4 before manufacture. Given that we are now in capability drop 3, can the Minister confirm whether the designs were validated before these vehicles were assembled and delivered last year?

The Minister also confirmed that

“It is anticipated that a further 110 platforms will be delivered in 2026, with the remaining 297 platforms delivered by 2028.”

With 180 Ajax platforms delivered, a similar number still to be accepted by the Army and all 589 hulls having now been completed in Spain, on current timelines the complete production run will have been completed by mid-2027. I believe that includes bringing all vehicles up to capability drop 4 standard.

Assuming that any resolution to the current training pause does not involve the mother of all factory recalls, there could potentially be an idle factory in Wales. What plans are there for the Merthyr Tydfil factory beyond the middle of next year? With only 18 months’ work left to complete, can the Minister assure General Dynamics employees in Wales that they will have a job once Ajax production is complete? Can he assure those employees that there will be no redundancies, given that we have no plans to purchase any more vehicles and that export plans are yet to materialise? While I appreciate that UK Defence and Security Exports sit within the Department for Business and Trade, can the Minister confirm what progress UKDSE has made regarding any potential export sales?

One of the main reasons why we are debating this topic today, and the reason for such media interest, is the social media content that has emerged from the factory and from Army personnel regarding the workmanship on the vehicles. To that end, I would like to recognise the efforts of Alfie Usher, aka Fill Your Boots, who has been instrumental in putting heat and light on this issue on behalf of service personnel. For obvious reasons, I am no trade unionist, but he has been the unofficial secretary-general of the unofficial armed forces union for some time.

I know that the Armed Forces Minister has previously liaised with Alfie on issues, and—I say this only partially in jest—perhaps the Government should reconsider his application to be the Armed Forces Commissioner. The Government are struggling to fill the role. Alfie’s application got binned back in August, but he has been doing the job unpaid since then anyway.

For those who do not follow Alfie’s account—any politician with an interest in defence really should—I should say that between the exposés and topical memes, Alfie has been the bête noire of General Dynamics and the Army, operating as chief whistleblower and ensuring that the voice of those on the ground can be heard. There have been multiple examples of concerns shared by him via social media on behalf of service personnel tasked with prepping newly delivered vehicles. A variety of issues have been highlighted and I ask the Minister, if he has not done so already, to include Alfie within the scope of the ministerial-led review to ensure full transparency and the inclusion of service personnel. They are the end users of this vehicle, and too often we ask our personnel to put up and shut up. An organisation that dines out on moral courage and pretends that it values 360° feedback should make sure that it listens to our soldiers, irrespective of how refreshingly blunt their views might be.

The evidence shown by Fill Your Boots has put heat and light on the production and assembly issues upon which blame has been placed. During the first pause in 2021, the MOD and General Dynamics did not agree on whether the levels of noise and vibration of Ajax vehicles breached contractual requirements. Given that the same noise and vibration issues potentially remain unresolved six years later, can the Minister clarify what does constitute a contractual breach?

Through 2020-21, General Dynamics undertook a supposedly in-depth review of the Ajax programme to confirm the root cause of noise and vibration issues, identify solutions and then validate them through extensive testing. They identified that noise and vibration issues were caused by the track, suspension and running gear; the engine and its mounting in the vehicle; quality issues including bolting, cable routing and welding; and performance and integration of crew headsets. The vehicles were thoroughly assessed using a noise and vibration calculator, whatever that is, to determine

“the safe operating envelopes for the platform across different speeds and terrains.”

The noise and vibration calculator provided by General Dynamics did not measure noise and vibration, which the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory raised concerns about. It estimated the maximum safe exposure time on Ajax vehicles for given conditions based on measurements from early trials. In August 2020, the first noise-induced hearing loss symptoms were reported by soldiers. In September 2020, DSTL discovered an error in General Dynamics’ measurements, which meant that vehicle crews might have been overexposed to noise and vibration. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry has told me:

“Whole Body and Hand Arm Vibration Levels were well understood, and effective mitigations were in place.”

But they cannot have been effective, or why would personnel still be suffering from noise and vibration-related sickness? Will the Minister confirm that any analysis of the root cause of the current noise and vibration sickness does not use the General Dynamics noise and vibration calculator, and instead seeks to use a metric that does not raise concerns with DSTL?

The measures implemented by General Dynamics included the implementation of an effective hearing protection and combined communication system, an improvement to the overall Ajax build quality, a review and amendment of build tolerances for key crew interfaces, changes to seat structures to provide greater vibration attenuation—that sounds very much like new seat cushions—and improvements to track tensioning procedures to ensure correct track tension, which reduces vibration.

On the track tension, I am aware that composite rubber tracks are now mature enough to be viable for a vehicle the weight of Ajax. Although there are still issues regarding track replacement, given that the whole track has to be replaced rather than a single track link, I note that the General Dynamics Ajax Blackjax demonstrator vehicle at DSEI had this fitted. I ask the Minister what assessment his Department has made of the feasibility of switching to composite rubber tracks as a potential solution going forward?

The 2022 National Audit Office report outlined that there were 27 limitations of use on Ajax vehicles in September 2021; 22 were safety-related and 11 were critical to achieving IOC. Can the Minister give the House assurances that those 11 limitations were resolved prior to initial operating capability being declared in 2025? Could the Minister also confirm what contractual payments were made to General Dynamics on the achievement of the criteria for initial operating capability in July 2025 or the formal declaration of initial operating capability on 5 November 2025? What is the total amount paid to General Dynamics as of today, and how much still remains to be paid? What delivery milestone will trigger the remaining payments?

With those resolutions to the previous issues identified in mind, we know that three exercises took place between IOC criteria being achieved on 23 July and ministerial IOC declaration on 5 November. We have not heard of any instances of noise and vibration sickness occurring among vehicle crews during those three exercises. Will the Minister confirm that there were no noise and vibration sickness issues among crews during those three exercises?

I asked the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry what discussions his Department had had with General Dynamics, the senior responsible officer and the British Army regarding the Ajax programme between 23 July and Exercise Titan Storm in late November. Instead of a response, the Minister told me:

“I have directed a Ministerial review that covers elements of his question. I will update the House in due course.”

The Minister was happy to tell me that he met with key stakeholders, including meeting General Dynamics after the programme was paused, but, much as I have tried, the Government have scrupulously avoided disclosing any information about what ministerial discussions have taken place with stakeholders between 23 July and 5 November.

On 1 January, I asked a named day question for answer on 7 January 2026. I asked:

“how many noise and vibration injuries were sustained…between 23 July 2025 and Exercise Titan Storm”.

Strangely, I have not received a response yet, a week after one was due—it is almost as if this is an issue that the Government do not want to disclose. Will the Minister clarify the answer to written question 101920 and put on the record how many noise and vibration injuries were sustained between the achievement of initial operating capability criteria by General Dynamics and the start of Exercise Titan Storm?

The March 2022 National Audit Office Report states that the Department

“knew of noise and vibration issues before soldiers reported injuries but was not aware of the severity of potential problems. Reporting of issues identified in trials was limited and slow, meaning that safety concerns were not shared or escalated by the Army or…DE&S”.

Has that culture been addressed? Concerns were first raised about noise and vibration by the Army trials team in late 2019, but did not appear in quarterly programme reports until March 2021. To what extent have we seen the same issue repeat itself last summer?

In December 2025, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry confirmed to me that

“Of the 61 vehicles of all AJAX types involved in the exercise, 23 AJAX Vehicles were linked to soldiers suffering from noise or vibration injury.”

I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed where those 61 affected vehicles were manufactured. Were they part of the first 100 Ajax vehicles manufactured and assembled in Spain, or were they later vehicles whose hulls were manufactured in Spain but were assembled at the Merthyr Tydfil facility? Can he also confirm whether the early production vehicles from capability drop 0 to 2, which were identified as not being fully compliant with requirements, have now been retrofitted and what capability drop are they currently equipped to?

The Minister also confirmed that

“On 22 November…during a routine training exercise, around 30 soldiers operating in Ajax reported being affected by noise and vibration exposure.”

For 30 soldiers to be affected by the same noise and vibration sickness, with identical symptoms, as a result of a known issue supposedly resolved by 2023 is simply unacceptable. It is incredibly important that we are able to understand whether there were any instances during the three exercises prior to Titan Storm and indeed to identify whether there have been any instances of General Dynamics employees affected by noise and vibration exposure during the same period, prior to or after the 23 July IOC criteria achievement milestone.

In November, I asked the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry how many compensation claims related to noise and vibration symptoms incurred during the use of Ajax variants had been made since the start of the armoured cavalry programme. The Minister informed me that it would take time to collate and review the information needed to answer the question, and that he would write to me. It is now mid-January and I would appreciate it if the Minister could provide that information in his response. It should not take two months to work out how many compensation claims have been made relating to Ajax. If I were Minister, I would have a close eye on the running tally, particularly in preparation for this debate.

On 8 December the Minister confirmed:

“We are currently undertaking reviews into the medical injuries sustained by Ajax crews, and more details on the findings will be published in due course.”

Will the ministerial-led review he has commissioned or the report from the Defence Accident Investigation Branch contain the details of those findings? In that review, will he confirm how many service personnel are undergoing treatment or have been diagnosed with hearing loss following audiometry protocols after operating within an Ajax variant?

Regarding when the vehicles will be able to recommence training, any decisions on the pause are to be made by Ministers after the investigations by the Defence Accident Investigation Branch have concluded. That suggests that the pause will be lifted after the investigation but before the conclusion of the ministerial-led review. Will the Minister clarify the timeline for the investigation, which he previously stated would take at least two weeks and so should be approaching conclusion, and the ministerial-led review, for which we are yet to see the terms of reference, which were due before Christmas? I appreciate it will still be autumn until the defence investment plan is published in March. Will the pause on the use of Ajax be lifted before the conclusion of the Minister’s review, given that the noise and vibration issues may not have been identified, let alone resolved?

This debate is about the future of the Ajax programme. Although the near future revolves around the resolution of the immediate issues that followed Exercise Titan Storm, beyond that the programme will need to achieve full operating capability, but crucially, it will be the tip of the spear in our armoured doctrine. So, a good start would be to have an armoured doctrine that is coherent.

In 2014, we ordered 589 vehicles out of an optional 1,328—below the Army’s required fleet size at the time of 686. Although that was not necessarily a defining error at the time, subsequent decisions, even as recently as last summer, have compounded the issue, bringing us to a situation where our armoured fleet is now completely unbalanced—increasingly so given the evolution of modern conflict since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ubiquity of drones at all levels, and the current global arms race.

When Ajax was commissioned, we were still undertaking combat operations in Afghanistan. Since then, we have had multiple defence reviews, and changed our focus to the Indo-Pacific and now to the High North, and now we are talking about putting troops in eastern Europe as a deterrent to a belligerent Russia. The irony is that we still have much of the same armour designed to do that job the first time round.

The original plan was for Ajax, alongside Boxer and Challenger 3, to provide the backbone of the Army’s armoured capability within Integrated Force 2030. March 2021’s “Defence in a Competitive Age” outlines how the Army would use Ajax in its two close-combat armoured brigade combat teams, and as part of its deep reconnaissance strike brigade combat team—formations that are now putatively in place.

We cannot discuss the future of the Ajax programme without discussing how the Army plans to use Ajax within those brigade combat teams. As somebody with a background in armoured infantry, who formerly held an admittedly niche specialisation in anti-tanks, I have more than a keen interest in the future of our armoured capability. Being something of a tank-spotter, I note some glaring capability gaps based on the information provided by Ministers over the past year or so.

Let us start with the basics. In December 2024, the right hon. Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle), the then Minister of State for Defence Procurement and Industry, stated in a written answer to my question:

“On current plans, Boxer will be delivered to four Heavy Mechanised Infantry Battalions and Divisional Enablers.”

Seven months later, however, on 15 July, she stated:

“The Army intends to reorganise its Heavy Forces units in 3 Division, such that all four would become Armoured Infantry Units based on the Ajax and Boxer family of vehicles.”

She subsequently went on to state:

“The Army intends to equip the Regular Infantry Units within 3 (UK) Division with Ares in the infantry troop carrying role: 1 Mercian, 1 Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, 1 Royal Welsh and 5 Rifles.”

What happened between December 2024 and July 2025 that saw such a fundamental change to the future of the infantry, and indeed our entire armoured capability? The number of Ares platforms to be provided has not changed since 2014: just 93. For reference, the current land equipment table shows that we currently have 604 Warrior. Ares’s role was originally “protected mobility reconnaissance support” and latterly to “deliver and support specialist troops”. It has never once been earmarked as an infantry-fighting vehicle.

The present Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), then gave this written response to my question:

“The Ares variant of Ajax is designed for mounted close combat and is being delivered to the Field Army. The decision to field Ares with Infantry Battalions was taken after a considerable assessment programme.”

I would be interested to know whether the aim of the Ares assessment programme was simply to justify the existing total of 589 vehicles, or actually to highlight the capability required, because whichever question the Army asks, the answer always appears to be 589 Ajax vehicles. I asked to see the outcome of that assessment programme but was told that its disclosure would

“be likely to prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of the Armed Forces”.

I suggest that, given the enemy knows that Ares does not have any armour-defeating weapons capability, the issue around prejudicing capability lies elsewhere.

Let’s walk that back a step. In my opinion, the Ares variant is not designed for mounted close combat. It is equipped with a remote weapon station that can mount a 50-calibre machine gun at the heaviest. As someone whose specialisation in the Army was armoured infantry, I know my way around a 30 mm canon. A 50-cal cannot defeat armour; it is no substitute for 40 mm APFSDS, which is the round that its Ajax brother uses.

In September, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport stated in a written answer that Ares would be,

 “used to deliver and support specialist troops across the battlefield. The term ‘specialist troops’ is used informally, and in this context refers to Anti-Tank Javelin Teams, Snipers and Support Troops.”

But by November that had changed again, with the same Minister contradictorily stating:

“Anti-tank platoons within Armoured Infantry units will be equipped with Boxer variants”.

So which is it: Ares or Boxer for Javelin platoons? Will armoured infantry battalions be tracked or a mix of wheeled and tracked, with the logistical implications of that? Will Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers light aid detachments have both Ajax and Boxer repair and recovery variants? Where are we going to keep the additional vehicles? What is the training burden of mixed armoured fleets, thereby doubling driving cadres, maintenance training, and vehicle commanders’ courses? Have we even bought a recovery variant of Boxer yet? The Army’s own website suggests it is not one of the variants within the 623. This approach is incoherent and suggests that the Army does not really know what to do with the capability it will shortly have.

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

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. On Boxer specifically, just before Christmas I received an answer to a parliamentary question from the Department, saying that it now will not give the initial operational capability date for Boxer, and that it is subject to the long-awaited defence investment plan. Does my hon. Friend agree that Boxer has already slipped by years, and that we cannot let it slip any further?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I absolutely concur with my right hon. Friend that Boxer is a vital capability—even more so, given the training pause that we are now encountering with Ajax—and we need to get Boxer into service as quickly as possible. I welcome the speeding up of that process overall.

Meanwhile in October, the then Minister for the Armed Forces had stated:

“Currently ARES will be fielded to Training Regiments, Armoured Cavalry units and Armoured Infantry units.”

As I said, we have ordered only 93. For reference, in order to reflect the establishment of an armoured infantry battalion, we would need 45 Ares to replace the capacity of the Warrior FV510, notwithstanding how many Athena variants we would need to cover the 511 command variant. Where is the capacity to have vehicles at training regiments and armoured cavalry units? There is no redundancy built into the current vehicle fleet.

The 93 Ares platforms equate to just 23 per battalion with no spare capacity, which is not even enough to replace three rifle companies’ worth of the Warrior FV510 variant. Can the Minister explain what the future establishment of these armoured infantry battalions will be? I appreciate that he will not have that information to hand—I do not think the Army knows yet—but will he write to me and explain how an armoured infantry battalion will be structured using Ares and Boxer?

The demise of Warrior leaves a yawning capability gap that will be difficult to adequately replace without a new IFV. The then Minister for the Armed Forces stated that,

“there is no direct replacement for Warrior”,

and:

“There are no plans to extend the out-of-service date for Warrior beyond 2027, and as such an extension is not under consideration.”

The then Minister also stated:

“As the ARES platform is delivered into service, tactical doctrines will be reviewed accordingly.”

I do not expect the Minister to answer the question or to know the ins and outs of armoured infantry doctrine, but he should raise the question with the Land Warfare Centre, and with the infantry battalions that will receive Ares, to ask them how the platform will be used and what capability will then be lost.

By removing a main armament from the armoured infantry’s firepower we fundamentally change the way that the vehicle is fought. It changes the way the vehicle can move cross-country, effectively removes the option to move in bounding overwatch, and means it can never engage enemy armour. Doctrinally, it turns the armoured infantry into mechanised infantry.

Doctrinally, Ares is more akin to the Mk3 Bulldog. Despite that, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry this week informed me that Ares

“is more suitable to be employed in the direct battle, rather than in the close support role”.

Given the glaring absence of a main armament on Ares, I would dispute that assessment, which seems convenient rather than well thought through. Bulldog itself is due to be replaced in 2030, so what progress has been made in procurement of the Patria 6x6?

Crucially, in December, the same Minister stated:

“There are no other platforms within the Army’s armoured fleet which can fulfil the armoured reconnaissance role; Ajax has been specifically designed for this purpose.”

With that in mind, and given that the entire Ajax fleet is grounded for an unspecified length of time pending an investigation by the Defence Accident Investigation Branch, with support from the Army Safety Investigation Team and General Dynamics, can the Minister state how the armoured reconnaissance capability of the British Army is currently being provided given that statement, and therefore what is the deployability of 3rd (UK) Division without any formation or armoured reconnaissance capability, or even the deployability of an armoured battle group from within 3 Div?

The parlous state of the British Army’s armoured capability is on the cusp of being thrust into stark relief by the Prime Minister’s announcement last week that we had committed troops to the multinational force for Ukraine. While any detail on that force structure is currently pure speculation, it was reported by The Times that those troop numbers would not exceed 7,500. On a three-form cycle, that is circa 22,000 troops—the majority of the field army. If they are to be more than a speed bump for the vanguard of the Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, they will need capability that they simply do not have today.

Challenger 3 has no timeline, with manufacturing due to commence only once the tank’s performance has been proven in the demonstration phase. It is not going to appear anytime soon. The Government have no plan for the remaining 140 Challenger 2s that are not due to be upgraded, and not even a promise that the plan will be outlined in the mythical defence investment plan. That is against the backdrop that the defence investment plan is unfunded, with a black hole of somewhere around £20 billion, give or take an Ajax programme budget. There will be cuts, and there will be delays. Out-of-service dates are going to be stretched to their limits. Bulldog is already 63 years old, and I am sure that it is no coincidence that it will be 67 when it reaches its out-of-service retirement date.

The Chief of the General Staff wants to implement the 20-40-40 land warfare concept, of which Ajax is a key part, working in tandem with Project Asgard. That is the capability that could and should provide a continuous on-land deterrent along the eastern flank defensive line, reduce our sensor-to-effector time, and achieve the nebulous tenfold increase in lethality by reducing the kill chain to well inside the sub-seven-minute timeframe that defines the current frontline in Ukraine.

Ajax cannot be scrapped. The Army needs it. There is no plan B, and given that it is a fixed-price contract, scrapping it will save no money anyway, despite Ministers confirming that the Government have sought legal advice from the Government Legal Department. The Government have not even considered a viable alternative option in CV90, and starting that process from scratch will take the best part of a decade before we even see a vehicle, based on current queues.

Put simply, Ajax needs to be delivered, primarily because the Army needs to restore its armoured reconnaissance capability. Additionally, there is a second order effect: confidence. The British Army badly needs to restore faith in Ajax as a platform. For all the negative stories and press, the Army and the Government must work out how to rebuild confidence in their ailing platform. I know what it is to be given kit that I do not have confidence in, and to have to use it on operations and wonder whether it will let me down, or worse. I know that the Minister can sympathise with that view. We must restore faith in the platform, not only for the soldiers expected to operate with it, but for its appeal from an investor and export position.

The long-term future of Ajax depends on the ability of General Dynamics to sell it overseas. The most advanced armoured fighting vehicle in its class should be an easy sell to the nations currently in the process of rearming and upgrading. We have a history of exquisite sovereign capability that nobody else really wants: Challenger 2, Warrior, even the SA80. Each of those has suffered from a lack of development over its life cycle, too often a day late and a dollar short.

[Mr Francois]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generosity in giving way. As well as the delays to Boxer, there are now strong rumours about further delays to the upgrade of Challenger 2 to Challenger 3. As Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land is responsible for both programmes, does my hon. Friend agree that it really needs to sort itself out and get on with it?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I thank my hon. Friend again, and I absolutely concur. With the delays to Ajax, we can no longer afford to fail to upgrade Challenger 2 to Challenger 3. The fact that the timeline of that has slipped to indefinite is a serious concern for our armoured capability.

A successful export programme would fuel development of the platform and allow it to improve over multiple iterations. It would enhance our own capability, and allow us to benefit from the first-mover advantage of adopting a common vehicle platform that can be expanded with the addition of an IFV and a mortar variant, putting us in the vanguard of armoured development in the drone age. But that cannot happen without the vehicle proving its capability—first with the soldiers, then with our allies. In a crowded field, that should be a top priority.

In “The Iliad”, Ajax loses a competition to Odysseus and, distraught by the result and conquered by his own grief, plunges his sword into his own chest, killing himself out of shame at his own failure. The irony should not be lost on any of us. Fix Ajax, and fix it quickly. There is a war coming.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I want to say a big thank you to the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) for setting the scene incredibly well and providing lots of detailed information that is beyond my knowledge; hopefully he helped to set the scene for the Minister’s answers.

Ajax was, and is, intended to be a cornerstone of the British Army’s future capacity, providing modern awareness while protecting the soldiers who operate it. Getting it right is therefore essential, not only for military effectiveness, but to ensure the safety of those who operate it. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I know we will not be disappointed.

There have been issues surrounding Ajax, and it is of major importance that they are resolved. For example, some service personnel experienced injuries from excessive noise and vibration, which resulted in manufacturing being paused and major safety investigations being launched; those issues were put down to design integration issues rather than error. There have also been major delays, with full operational capability delayed by many years. The programme is valued at some £5.5 billion—with billions spent before vehicles are even usable—and there are major concerns regarding value for money.

The Ministry of Defence is responsible for keeping personnel safe and ensuring that the programme delivers value and capability. Ajax must meet the Army’s operational needs and fit into wider defence plans, and we should not persist with a system that cannot be safely or effectively used. Hon Members have concerns regarding the use of Ajax—the hon. Member for Huntingdon told us what they are—so I was pleased that the Minister committed after the last debate on this topic in Parliament in December to resolve the issues. That is why his reply today is important.

[Mr Francois]

The hon. Member may know that the previous National Armaments Director, Andy Start, was paid a performance bonus in 2023-24 of £165,000, and another one in 2024-25 of £160,000, while this was going wrong on his watch. Does the hon. Member agree that if Ajax is, unfortunately, finally scrapped, Mr Start should pay that money back?

[Jim Shannon]

If he has not done the job, there should be no bonus. That would be the same for anybody, no matter who they are—you get a bonus because you do it right. But the Minister can perhaps answer that question better.

It is important that these issues have no knock-on effects on essential supplies getting to the battle zone. These delays have left the Army without a modern tracked reconnaissance vehicle, forcing reliance on ageing platforms that are not up to speed for the modern world of today. Full operating capability is now expected for 2028-29—years later than originally planned. It is down to the MOD to ensure that our Army does not suffer as a result.

To conclude, resolving the issues with the Ajax programme is vital for the safety of personnel, the effectiveness of the British Army and the credibility of the MOD’s procurement process. I look forward to hearing from the Minister and the Government how they can address these issues and restore confidence in what should have been a successful programme for the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[James MacCleary]

Indeed.

Let me be clear from the outset: the possible collapse of this multi-decade, £6.2 billion programme is deeply alarming. It demands answers, it demands accountability and, most importantly, it demands urgent action. The facts are stark and troubling. Just weeks ago on Salisbury plain, during what should have been a routine training exercise, more than 30 of our soldiers fell ill. They were not injured in combat or facing down an enemy on some distant battlefield; they were training on British soil in British vehicles built with British taxpayers’ money. They were vomiting, and they were shaking uncontrollably. Some spent 10 to 15 hours in these vehicles and emerged requiring urgent medical care.

That is not the first time we have heard such reports. Indeed, the Ajax programme has been plagued by issues of noise and vibration since mid-2020. A stop notice was issued in June 2021 and all dynamic movement was halted. The programme underwent what was termed “a significant reset”. Training resumed in 2023, only to be paused again in 2025. Astonishingly, this programme has been on pause for 20% of its entire life—20%.

What was the response from those in charge? In November, just before the latest incident, we were told that Ajax had achieved “Initial Operating Capability”. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry visited the General Dynamics factory in south Wales and declared that the issues were “firmly in the past.” He told us that he had been

“reassured from the top of the Army”

that the vehicle was safe. Indeed, the programme was apparently so successful that the MOD announced in November that it had just won an international award for mega-project of the year.

Three weeks later, the Minister had to return to the House to confess that he had been misled—misled by the Chief of the General Staff and the then acting National Armaments Director. These are not junior officials; they are the most senior figures in our defence establishment providing assurances about safety that have proven to be utterly unfounded.

I must ask, what kind of system allows this to happen? What kind of institutional culture permits such a fundamental failure of honesty and accountability? What does it say about the state of our armed forces that senior officials and officers declared initial operating capability when long-standing problems had merely been mitigated with new seats and earplugs in some cases, rather than actually fixed?

The Minister must now be absolutely clear about what the Government’s contingency plans are if Ajax is deemed unsafe. Moreover, he must explain what the impact will be on our NATO commitments if Ajax is further delayed due to required upgrades or scrapped altogether. Our allies are watching, and our adversaries are watching, and what they see is chaos.

This is not simply about one troubled programme, catastrophic though Ajax’s failures have been; this programme illustrates the deep-seated problems with defence procurement that have plagued our armed forces for years. They deserve better than the endless delays, cost overruns and capability gaps that have become the hallmark of how we equip those who defend us.

Let us consider the litany of failures. Ajax was ordered in 2014. It was supposed to be fully in service by 2019. Here we are in 2026, and not only is it not in service, but we are now investigating whether it is fundamentally unsafe. The vehicle was originally designed for weights of up to 26 tonnes. Through what defence analysts politely call “scope creep”—the Army loading the programme with 1,200 separate capability requirements—the weight ballooned to over 43 tonnes.

A single vehicle can now cost well over £10 million in its most expensive form, and what have we got for this money? We have vehicles that make our soldiers sick. We have a programme that has consumed vast resources and delivered nothing but embarrassment. We have General Dynamics winning awards for project controls while producing vehicles that cannot be safely operated. I note with interest that when asked whether performance bonuses relating to Ajax had been paid to officials over the last three years, the Ministry responded:

“This information is not held centrally and therefore can not be provided without incurring disproportionate costs.”

[Mr Francois]

Does the hon. Member agree that the Ministry could tell us the bonuses of the head of Defence Equipment and Support, so the idea that it does not know who else got a bonus is totally and utterly laughable?

[James MacCleary]

I do; it is an extraordinary response. All we can conclude is that the Ministry means, “Yes, bonuses have been awarded—some of them quite substantial—but we would rather not tell you exactly how much people have been rewarded for presiding over this disaster.” The senior responsible officer for Ajax earns a salary in excess of £160,000—nearly as much as the Prime Minister—with the potential for bonuses of 25% to 30% on top, so we have people earning £200,000 or more while delivering a programme that has been stopped for a fifth of its existence and is now under multiple safety investigations.

This is not merely incompetence; it is systemic failure. The 2023 review of the programme exposed precisely that—systemic and institutional problems. We need to know what progress has been made in fixing these issues, and we need to know what safeguards are in place to prevent further delays, cost overruns and, most importantly, threats to our soldiers’ safety. I ask the Minister directly: is the Ministry of Defence considering an internal investigation into how the programme could have progressed so far without those major issues being identified? Someone, somewhere, has been signing off on milestones and accepting deliverables when the fundamental problems are still unresolved.

The Liberal Democrats have long argued for a fundamental reform of defence procurement, and Ajax demonstrates precisely why such reform is so desperately needed. We would tackle these long-standing problems by replacing the current system of defence reviews with a more flexible system of continuous review of security threats and evolution of defence plans. As has been dramatically demonstrated in recent weeks, the world does not wait for our periodic review cycles, and neither should our procurement system.

We would ensure that defence procurement is part of a comprehensive industrial strategy, securing a reliable long-term pipeline of equipment procurement. Industry needs certainty, as do our armed forces, but the current approach provides certainty for neither, especially with the continued delay in releasing the defence investment plan. We would collaborate properly with our European and NATO partners on the development of new defence technologies, equipment, systems and training. We would make capital spending allocations more flexible to reduce what is called annuality, and focus instead on meeting the required in-service dates. We would invest properly in recruiting, retaining and training staff with specialist skills at the Ministry of Defence, reducing its dependency and expenditure on external consultants.

The concerns about Ajax should raise alarm bells about the continuing poor state of procurement at a time when Britian must be rearming rapidly. The geopolitical situation demands that we get this right, and Ukraine has shown us what modern warfare requires. Our adversaries are not standing still, and we simply cannot afford these failures.

The fact that the Army has paused the use of Ajax vehicles raises serious questions about the operational readiness of the units that rely on them. How does this disruption affect deployment plans at a time when our armed forces need to be fully prepared? What is the impact on training schedules? What message does it send to our personnel about how we value their safety?

The Ministry of Defence has launched a safety investigation, citing an “abundance of caution”, but the public and this House deserve clarity. What exactly is being investigated, who is involved, and when will the inquiry conclude? The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry said:

“It will be conducted at pace, but it will not be rushed.”

Which is it? The armed forces deserve transparency and reassurance, and they deserve it now. This all sends a worrying signal to our adversaries, which is why it is vital that the Government outline how they will move quickly to resolve the issues and adopt our proposals for a wider overhaul of the procurement system. We cannot afford to lumber on with a broken system while the world around us becomes more dangerous.

Difficult decisions lie ahead. The Defence Secretary has indicated that scrapping the programme in its entirety is possible. Given what we know—given the years of delays and billions spent, and given that soldiers are still falling ill in these vehicles—it is right to seriously consider that option. The mythological Ajax died of shame; one hopes that those responsible for this modern Ajax programme might feel at least some measure of that emotion. More than shame, we need action. The Ajax programme must not be allowed to fail in silence—too much is at stake. The most important thing of all is the safety and wellbeing of those who serve and being able to depend on them absolutely.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) on very ably introducing this debate. I should begin by declaring an interest—as consistently being one of the greatest critics of the Ajax programme in the House of Commons for around a decade. Indeed, being very much an Ajax sceptic, I once described it to the Defence Committee as a reconnaissance vehicle that is

“about as stealthy as a Ford Transit van full of spanners!”.

My real epiphany, however, came when I visited the Ajax factory with that Committee in March 2022, when even the shop floor staff, for whom I had much sympathy in this situation—it was not their fault—were telling us that the vehicle was deeply flawed.

[Stuart Anderson]

I do not want to steal my right hon. Friend’s thunder, but when we were on that visit, I was absolutely shocked that the team building Ajax said that no two hulls had ever left the factory that were the same. They were all slightly different, and that was a flaw in the whole building project.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Francois]

I have with me the actual minute of the Committee’s 2022 visit, which confirms exactly what my hon. Friend said.

Ajax’s genesis goes back several decades, under Governments of multiple colours. It effectively began life in the 1980s under the Conservatives as an Anglo-American reconnaissance vehicle programme called TRACER—the tactical reconnaissance armoured combat equipment requirement. Eventually that programme broke down, and the United States continued to develop the Bradley family unilaterally. Back in Britain, under Tony Blair’s Labour Government, the programme evolved into the future rapid effect system—FRES—which itself ran into considerable trouble. As the Defence Committee report of February 2007—I have it here—brutally concluded:

“This is a sorry story of indecision, constantly changing requirements and delay...It is high time the MoD decided where its priorities lay.”

That was 19 years ago.

Following much criticism, FRES was abandoned and eventually re-emerged as the Ajax family of armoured vehicles, with six variants. In March 2010, during the dying months of the Brown Government, the decision was taken to meet the requirement by purchasing the vehicle known as ASCOD, which was also being procured by the Spanish army, in Spain, from US contractor General Dynamics. Crucially, this was originally intended to be an off-the-shelf procurement, with minimal design modification, to enter service in 2017.

The coalition Government, at the Cardiff NATO summit in 2014, announced that Ajax would be manufactured in Merthyr Tydfil, using hulls imported from Spain. In short, Labour originally ordered Ajax, but the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats decided where it would be built. Unusually, this was to encompass both a development and production contract running simultaneously. Moreover, an early decision was taken to up-gun Ajax from a 30 mm to a 40 mm weapon, involving a major redesign of the turret. In all, the Army eventually insisted on an incredible 1,200 additional requirements, totally contrary to the off-the-shelf principle.

Concerns regarding vibration and noise-related injuries to crews were first flagged by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory as far back as 2014, but it was not until November 2020—six years later—that Ministers were first informed that trials had been suspended over safety concerns. Defence Equipment and Support, after much internal angst, then issued a formal stop notice in June 2021. Ajax trials were eventually restarted in 2022, but not before the programme had been subject to trenchant criticism from the Defence Committee, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, the National Audit Office—which famously concluded that Ajax was “flawed from the start”—and the Public Accounts Committee to boot.

In 2022, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, rightfully exasperated by the endless delays and the quality of advice being given to Ministers, commissioned the wholly independent Clive Sheldon KC to undertake a detailed review of Ajax. Sheldon’s 172-page review—I have it here—was excoriating. To summarise it in one sentence, it painted a picture of a completely dysfunctional UK procurement system, in which serious concerns articulated at junior level were routinely ignored or explained away by senior managers. Nevertheless, the Army began preparing to bring Ajax into operational service.

On 5 November last year, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry headed up a major media event at General Dynamics’ Ajax production facility in Merthyr Tydfil to declare that Ajax had successfully achieved “Initial Operating Capability”. Given the controversial history of the programme, the Minister—who cannot be here today, but who is no fool—did exactly what I would have done, which was to ask for written assurances that the programme was safe, including from the Chief of the General Staff and the National Armaments Director. One key question, incidentally, is: who told both of them that it was safe?

Armed with letters from both of those very senior gentlemen confirming that Ajax was indeed ready to enter service safely, the Minister went ahead—we believe in good faith—and declared to the media that Ajax is

“a vehicle that is safe, effective and truly cutting-edge.”

I can therefore only imagine his horror when, on 22 November, a major regimental exercise on Salisbury plain to test Ajax’s battle-worthiness—involving two squadrons of Ajax vehicles, along with command and support variants, some 60 vehicles in all—had to be rapidly abandoned after 23 crew members reported serious vibration and noise-related injuries. Subsequently, the Minister even halted trials on individual Ajax test vehicles, after further injuries to test crews were discovered.

The response of GD UK, in the form of Mr Robert Skivington, one of its then managers, was—disgustingly—to blame the Army’s crews and their commanders in an expletive-ridden social media post. In my sorry, decade-long experience of General Dynamics, that just about sums up their management—not their workers. Moreover, I had a chance encounter with the Ajax senior responsible owner, Mr Chris Bowbrick, at the Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition last September, during which he categorically assured me that Ajax was now safe—and he even shook my hand on it. If the Minister feels angry that he was misinformed, I feel exactly the same way.

Everyone agrees we simply cannot go on with this endless stop-start cycle regarding Ajax, not least as it represents the Army’s largest procurement programme at £5.5 billion for acquisition, or £6.3 billion including life-cycle costs. It is also the Army’s biggest chunk of the long-delayed defence investment plan. In short, as safety is paramount, Ministers now have one of two stark options over Ajax: either they must fix it or fail it once and for all. Let us look at both.

Ajax has always been too big to fail. Many senior generals, senior civil servants and GD directors have their careers effectively invested in the programme. Indeed, Sheldon relates in some detail the reluctance over a long period of DE&S senior management to even admit that there were serious failings with the vehicle. I am not a qualified engineer, so I cannot pronounce on whether the problem is fixable. Some analysts argue that the vehicle is now so heavy—at up to 43 tonnes it is just two tonnes lighter than a world war two Panther main battle tank—and flawed that it cannot be saved, short of a fundamental redesign which would cost billions of pounds.

However, if this really can be sorted by technical means, then conceptually we surely need a deep fix which effectively puts the problems to bed definitively. If that can somehow be achieved at GD’s expense, then all well and good. Nevertheless, the risk is that the MOD and GD merely tweak the vehicle yet again and then rerun that exercise—perhaps six months from now—with almost exactly the same outcome. In that context, I would humbly remind the Minister of Einstein’s definition of madness, which is doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expecting a different result.

Conversely, if it emerges that Ajax is somehow fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed, then the other option is to end the cycle of denial, rip off the plaster and fail it. That would then involve the Ministry of Defence in potentially tortuous negotiations with General Dynamics, in essence, to get its money back so that it could spend it on something else, such as the BAE CV90, which now successfully serves in many NATO countries—and which lost out to Ajax in the first place. If GD was not willing to accept liability, although many think it should, the MOD would probably have no recourse other than to sue it for liquidated damages for delivering a vehicle that was demonstrably not fit for purpose. To conclude, that could involve the Department in a highly aggressive court case potentially lasting years, but which would no doubt also be highly injurious to the reputation of General Dynamics as a global defence manufacturer. This cannot go on; Ministers must fix it or fail it once and for all.

Ukraine

Mark Francois Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. On behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, I echo the Minister’s rightful tribute to Lance Corporal George Hooley of the Parachute Regiment, who gave his life for the cause of freedom while serving in Ukraine. His sacrifice will never be forgotten.

There are things that we welcome in this statement, including the imposition of further sanctions and the provision of new equipment, including drones, missiles and in particular air defence equipment for Ukraine. We must not forget that Vladimir Putin is a former KGB colonel who has sanctioned the barbaric use of highly accurate cruise missiles against children’s hospitals in Ukraine. In particular, I agree with the Minister that no enduring settlement of the war can be reached over the heads of the Ukrainians. A world war one Admiral, Sir Jackie Fisher, once remarked, “Ultimately, all nations desire peace…but peace on their terms.” We cannot allow peace on Putin’s terms, as that peace would surely not last for long.

It is also worth reminding our American allies that article 5 of the Washington treaty has only ever been invoked once—by them, in 2001, following the appalling attack on the twin towers. Thousands of Americans were murdered that day, as were several hundred Britons. When the Americans rightfully called for help, within weeks British special forces were working alongside their American counterparts, killing terrorists in the caves of Tora Bora. Alliances work both ways. For the record, when the call came, we turned up.

The Minister also made reference to the coalition of the willing. However, if British troops were to participate, they would need to have modern, effective equipment. That brings me to the elephant in the House: where is the long-awaited defence investment plan? Prior to the summer recess, the Defence Secretary assured us that the DIP would be published in the autumn. As the autumn came and went, it slipped right, but Ministers remained adamant that the DIP would still be published before the House rose for Christmas. So where on earth is it?

As there were multiple references to industry in his statement, let me say to the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry that our defence industry will rightly be furious at this continued delay. To give just one example, we still have no decision on the new medium helicopter—a programme vital for the future of Leonardo’s workforce of thousands at Yeovil. Roberto Cingolani, the corporate CEO of Leonardo, said recently:

“We cannot subsidise Yeovil forever”.

That frustration will be repeated up and down our defence manufacturing base, from primes to fourth-tier subcontractors, the latter of whom struggle to subsidise anything at all. Is it any wonder that Mr Kevin Craven, the chief executive of ADS, said only yesterday in the Financial Times that the

“delay in releasing the Defence Investment Plan…is frustrating, to say the least”?

If we are to defend the Ukrainians successfully, we have to be able to defend ourselves. At the Liaison Committee on Monday, the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, who as ever is in his place, told the Prime Minister:

“the Government does not seem able to agree on the money involved. It cannot deliver the defence investment plan on time. It means that things are moving very slowly, rather than moving at pace, given the threats from adversaries.”

Is it any wonder that his all-party Committee recently described the Government’s progress on increasing war readiness in Britain as “glacial”?

We also welcome the ongoing financial commitment to Ukraine, which follows a similar path to our approach when in government. Would that we had such financial clarity at home. The three distinguished authors of the strategic defence review were adamant that it required defence expenditure of 3% of GDP to deliver it. But the Government cannot even give the year in which that will be reached because they are incapable inter-departmentally of agreeing it. Moreover, in-year—now—Defence Ministers are pursuing an efficiency savings exercise—“savings cuts” in pub English—of £2.6 billion in the Department’s operating budget, which is materially affecting our readiness for war and thus our ability to deter it.

In summary, our commitment across this House to the brave Ukrainians remains unwavering, but as someone once famously said, “To govern is to choose.” Yet again, the Government have avoided making choices, moving key capability decisions even further to the right yet again. When it comes to the future procurement of vital military equipment for the defence of the United Kingdom and our allies, they have kicked the can so far down the road that we can no longer see the can at all—even with an Ajax. In contrast, while our Ministers prevaricate, our Polish allies are digging anti-tank ditches along the border with Belarus.

The Romans had a saying: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” —he who desires peace should prepare for war in order to deter it. The Conservatives announced a £50 billion sovereign defence fund this morning to do precisely that.

[Luke Pollard]

I wish a merry Christmas to the right hon. Gentleman. First, I thank him for his support for the investment that the UK is making in Ukrainian air defences; we are spending £4.5 billion on Ukraine this year—the most that we have ever spent as a country. It is a really important statement, and the more powerful because it is backed on a cross-party basis. I appreciate his comments about Ukraine in that respect. It is absolutely right that we support Ukraine in shooting down Russian drones and missiles that are targeting civilians in particular, as well as protecting its frontline.

It is important that we value our alliances, and we continue to do so. We have a NATO-first defence policy, as set out in the strategic defence review. We are very clear about our priority focus on the Euro-Atlantic, securing our backyard. That includes working more closely and deeply with our European friends, our NATO allies, our Joint Expeditionary Force partners and Ukraine, as well as supporting and continuing to work with our friends in the United States.

When it comes to the DIP, I believe the right hon. Gentleman was at Defence questions on Monday and will have heard the Defence Secretary say very clearly that he is working flat out between now and the end of the year to finalise it. He continues to do so. On industry, we will continue to sign contracts. We have signed over 1,000 contracts since the general election, 83% of which have gone to British companies. We will continue to back British defence companies. We continue to sign those contracts. I recognise the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman asked for clarity on behalf of industry. We are working with our industrial partners to do that. Indeed, there are many contracts that his Government chose not to sign, which we are still working our way through to make sure that we can deliver the updated defence posture that the strategic defence review set out so clearly.

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, we are a Government who have delivered a plan to increase defence spending: there was £5 billion extra in our Budget this year, and it will reach 2.5% of our GDP by April 2027—three years earlier than anyone projected. We will achieve 3% in the next Parliament. We have made a commitment alongside our NATO allies for 3.5% on defence, as part of 5% on national security by 2035.

The right hon. Gentleman will also remember from when he was a Defence Minister—it was a wee while ago—that it is very normal to do business-as-usual budget management in-year. We are fixing the mess that his party left us in defence, but for the purpose of this statement I do not wish to make party political jibes. I wish to reinforce the cross-party support that this House can show for our friends in Ukraine. We will continue to do that, and I look forward to that further support being on show next year and every year afterwards.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

May I return to the issue of the Russian assets? I talked to members of the Ukrainian community last night, and their anxiety is that if a deal is not done quickly—[Interruption.] Sorry, did the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) want to intervene?

[Mr Francois]

indicated dissent.

[John McDonnell]

I talked to members of the Ukrainian community last night, and they were extremely worried about the situation. They are concerned that unless a deal is done quickly, there will be further threats not just to Ukraine but to Poland, because the Russians are amassing on the Belarusian borders. The fear is that if Trump somehow tries to impose a peace deal that eventually becomes temporary, the frozen Russian assets will be used for the next invasion of Ukraine. That is why it is so important to seal the deal now.

With regard to Abramovich, I welcome the measures taken by the Government, but there was a long period in which the City of London was used as the Russian laundromat for tax avoidance. It would be worth while the Government looking again at the Russian tax avoidance that located itself within the UK, to see whether some of those assets could be used to rebuild Ukraine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the lightweight multirole missile contract that we secured earlier this year in support of the production facility in Belfast. Defence is an engine for growth, and we can use not only the increased spending on our defence, but that in support of our friends in Ukraine to create more good, well-paid and decent jobs in every part of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; my sense of many Ukrainian soldiers on the front is that they are tired but undefeated. The courage that we see from them, and their innovative spirit in using new technologies to defend their country and their people against this illegal attack, should give us all courage and pride; it will continue to do so. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to look at Project Renovator, which is how we are supporting Ukrainian service personnel to recuperate and then get back on the frontline. As well as supporting that effort, we are providing those fighting forces with the equipment and innovative new technology that they need, especially in drones and air defence missiles, to ensure that we can keep Ukraine in the fight, as well as putting it in the best possible position at the negotiating table.

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

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I will take it provided that it pertains to the statement we have just had.

[Mr Francois]

Absolutely; it does pertain to the statement. We had been hoping for a Christmas present in the form of a defence investment plan. The Minister has told the House that the Government are working, in his words, flat out—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is not a point of order.

[Mr Francois]

It is—it is about when it will be delivered.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman is seeking to extend the debate we have just had on a separate matter. He will know that that is not a point of order, and it is not a matter for the Chair whether the MOD is going to bring forward—

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

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

Regarding Northern Ireland veterans who served on Operation Banner, the Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill has now been powerfully described by eight retired four-star generals and an air chief marshal as:

“A direct threat to national security.”

Can the Minister confirm that not all the Government’s six protections for veterans are even in the Bill, and that, moreover, at least half of them also apply to alleged paramilitaries?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

As the right hon. Member well knows, we have been clear about which protections will be in the Bill. I remind him that it was legislation introduced when he was in government that gave blanket immunity to terrorists, and he very proudly supported it.

[Mr Francois]

That is not true. We had hoped to hear from the wannabe future Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), but as we have not—[Interruption.] He is not denying it. If what the Minister claims is true, how does she explain the recent comment by General Sir Peter Wall, the former head of the British Army, who said that the protections are

“a meaningless insult and only become relevant once re-investigation is under way”?

Respectfully, who knows more about defending our veterans: a brand new Minister or a former chief of the general staff who actually commanded them?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

We will implement those new protections, and we have been in close dialogue with many different representatives. To turn the question back on to the shadow Minister, his legislation utterly failed and gave blanket immunity to terrorists. I will not hear lectures from the Conservatives, who could not provide a solution in 14 years.

Typhoon Fighter Sovereign Capability

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Westminster Hall

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

My hon. Friend is making a good speech. I recently paid a shadow ministerial visit to Warton and Samlesbury, and we saw the penultimate Qatari Typhoon painted and ready to fly out, I think within a couple of days. The last one may even have gone now as well. To emphasise his point, this is extremely pressing, is it not?

[Mr Snowden]

That is the nub of the argument about why this debate is about sovereign capability. While there will be balance—I will come on to the difference in capabilities between the aircraft, as raised by the hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone)—this is about maintaining a sovereign capability that, once gone, would take a generation to bring back.

This goes beyond jobs. To maintain and develop our sovereign capability, the RAF needs to be investing in, using and supporting the development of Typhoon. The RAF needs to be fully bought into its development: working with BAE systems on future orders, defining new requirements and capabilities, and enabling the development of future generations of the aircraft—a role only the RAF can truly play. The 6,000 jobs at the Warton site make up a workforce who, if lost, take our sovereign capability with them.

The only way to secure the site to allow the time to secure multiple export orders was to place the order for the RAF as part of the strategic defence review. This also made sense because it would have boosted the export campaign itself—it is a pretty hard sell to make when we are not even buying it ourselves. Someone I spoke to about the export campaign said that one of the first questions they always get asked is, “Are you buying it yourselves?” What kind of message does it send to say, “Please buy our fighters while we go to buy somebody else’s”?

To go back to the need to bridge the period between now and Tempest coming live, it is important to note that Tempest will not replace Typhoon. The point is simply that the site is secured by the order book for the new aircraft going live. We will still need the more agile fighter jet category that Typhoon occupies, as the different aircraft will perform differing air combat roles. As one person from the military described it to me:

“Tempest is the big, bad aircraft that has the tech and payload to blast into the battlefield and establish air superiority. The role of future generations of Typhoon is to then clear up, run smaller missions and maintain that air superiority.”

That makes it even more critical that the RAF and the Government remain bought into the continued development of Typhoon. They must place regular new orders, in addition to carrying out refurbishment, as we will need that sovereign capability for generations to come alongside Tempest.

If we continue to erode the skills base, with investment and innovation in favour of paying for America to develop and maintain its own sovereign capability instead, ours will wither as a result of the UK’s short sightedness. That is why I have been like a dog with a bone about this issue since getting elected.

It has been obvious over the past few years that the decision about the order of the 25 Typhoon jets would fall on whoever was in power when the next big defence review was conducted. To address the hon. Member for Swindon North’s intervention, I had hoped that the review would take a holistic look at what placing an order would mean, not just for the RAF’s specifications and requirements but for maintaining our sovereign capability—a phrase I am deliberately using over and over again. We should count ourselves incredibly lucky as a country that we are more secure for being able to produce our own fighter jets. We should do everything at every opportunity to invest in and continue to develop and improve that capability.

Instead, the order has been sent across the Atlantic, with a vote of confidence in and a significant investment cheque for another country’s sovereign capability over our own. Even if there were certain requirements, and the RAF had been led to believe that the F-35 had advantages, the investment could and should have been made in the Typhoon programme, through BAE Systems, as part of the continued development of that aircraft. That is how it is supposed to work when we make our own aircraft. But I suspect that there may have been more to it than just that.

Members may be surprised to know that this is by far and away not the first time I have discussed Typhoon and Tempest in Parliament. The ebb and flow of questions and answers on this subject between me and Ministers runs through Hansard over the last 18 months. Let us take a little trip down memory lane and look at some of the timeline. We start on 7 November 2024, with a written parliamentary question to the Ministry of Defence. I simply asked whether the Department had a budget for new Typhoons in 2025-26. The then Minister for Defence Procurement, the right hon. Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle), replied:

“Budget allocations for 2025-26 will be set in the usual way and informed by the findings of the Strategic Defence Review.”

In a follow-up written question on 15 November 2024, I asked what steps the Department was therefore taking, given that the production line was already falling empty, to ensure that skilled workers in the defence sector were maintained. I received what can be described only as a public sector word salad of an answer, talking about partnership working and future procurement strategies, while the assembly line emptied.

On 28 November, starting to get frustrated, I asked a question in business questions. I gave the long timeline of written and oral questions I had asked, trying to get answers and certainty, only to be brushed off by Minister after Minister. I was promised a meeting with the Secretary of State for Defence to discuss the Typhoon order—it never happened.

On 6 January 2025, in defence questions, I asked:

“Christmas came early for the UK defence industry when Spain placed an order for 25 Eurofighters on 20 December, and Italy followed suit on the 24th. But there is still nothing from the UK Government on the 25 Typhoon jets that are needed for the RAF. Will the Minister spread some festive cheer into the new year, and give us an update on where the Government are with placing that order for 25 Typhoon fighter jets—a delayed Christmas present for the UK defence industry and the RAF?”

The Minister for Defence Procurement replied:

“I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point. It is certainly true that exports are important”—

critically—

“in addition to production for our own use.”

There was then a general comment about the strategic defence review, and the Minister finished by saying:

“The rest of our spend on such matters is part of the SDR. Once that is completed, there will be conclusions”—

slightly obvious. She went on:

“It might not be a Christmas present—I do not know when his birthday is—but a present some time later.”—[Official Report, 6 January 2025; Vol. 759, c. 586.]

“Yes,” I thought, “there it is: a hint on the Floor of the House that the order for Typhoon is coming.” It was said in the strongest possible terms without saying, “Yes, we are about to buy them. Please, just wait.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy MacNae]

The hon. Gentleman is reaching levels of technicality that I do not fully understand, but I think the fundamental point is that we should strike a balance and try to get the best of both. The Typhoon is a platform that can deliver capabilities that we very much need. As has been pointed out, other Eurofighter partner countries have taken exactly that decision. In December 2024, Spain ordered an additional 25 Typhoons. At the same time, Italy ordered 25 to replace its tranche 1s. Last month, Germany placed an order for another 20 Typhoons, taking its total order pipeline to 58. Those countries have protected their domestic fast jet manufacturing capability while ensuring that they have a mix of capabilities to address the full range of conflict scenarios that, sadly, we can look forward to.

[Mr Francois]

I completely accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument about a blended force of Typhoon and F-35, but does he accept that one of the drawbacks of the F-35 is that we are effectively at the mercy of the joint programme office in the United States? That has led to serious delays in the integration of the Meteor, a highly capable air-to-air missile, into the F-35 because American systems have been prioritised. That is a bit of a problem, is it not?

[Andy MacNae]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. I would not use the same sort of pejorative language, but a recent National Audit Office report highlighted exactly those integration issues and, as I have pointed out, the Meteor and Spear 3 are not currently compatible with the F-35. There is no doubt that sovereign capability means maintaining all the controls to deliver the independence and resilience that a tier 1 nation surely requires in its defence strategies.

I will briefly take a wider perspective. Lancashire is home to world-class defence industries, as we all know. Every single growth plan that talks about Lancashire’s future has those at its heart. The fact that we can go into schools in places like Bacup, Whitworth and Darwen and talk about some of the best engineering and technical jobs in the world being just down the road is invaluable to building aspiration in places that need it most. The apprenticeships and career opportunities at not just at BAE, but the many innovative companies in the supply chain, mean that Lancashire and the north-west is the best place for anyone who wants to work in the cutting-edge manufacturing industries of the future.

Surely we should not be happy with merely sustaining that jewel in the crown. Rather, we should seek to strengthen and continually build skills, scale and competitive advantage. Turkey chose to order the Typhoon because the experience, quality and skills of workers at Samlesbury and Warton cannot be matched. We have the opportunity to build on that and give the ultimate vote of confidence by ordering UK fighters that will maintain our balanced and multifunctional fast jet capability through the next decade and more. I hope that the defence procurement strategy delivers just that.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, as we debate the important role that the Typhoon programme plays in our nation’s defence and industrial strength.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden) on securing this important debate. Since he entered the House almost a year and a half ago, he has proved a doughty champion for his constituents, for the defence industry in the north-west more generally and for his constituents at Warton for whom the Typhoon programme is crucial in particular. He made a very good speech to open the debate, and I know that he will continue to fight tenaciously for his constituents’ interests as this Parliament plays out.

I also take the opportunity to pay a personal thank you related to air defence. Recently, I turned 60 and, as a memorable birthday present, my local Conservative Association generously clubbed together to pay for a 30-minute, two-seater Spitfire flight in aircraft No. MT818 out of Biggin Hill, including overflying my constituency. I warmly thank the pilot, Barry, and all his colleagues at FlyASpitfire.com—who do what it says on the tin—for a wonderful day. At this time of remembrance, it brought home to me just how brave the few—some of whom had barely 10 hours on type—were in flying that iconic aircraft in mortal combat during the battle of Britain. I am deeply grateful for that truly unforgettable experience. It will literally live with me for the rest of my life.

Returning to the present, I also congratulate the Minister on the fact that the Government have now sealed the deal to export some 20 Typhoons to Turkey. For the record, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), when he was the Minister with responsibility for procurement, spent a considerable amount of time promoting that deal, as did Ben Wallace, the then Secretary of State. Nevertheless, it would be churlish not to say well done to the Government for capitalising on those previous efforts and bringing the arrangement to fruition.

That being so, I have some specific questions about the deal for the Minister which I hope that the House will welcome. First, can he confirm what tranche of Typhoon the new aircraft will be, including what variant of radar it will carry? That has implications not just for BAE Systems at Warton, but for our national radar manufacturer Leonardo, based in Edinburgh. As for MBDA, our missiles champion, is the Meteor missile also part of the sale to Turkey?

Secondly, a suggestion has been that Qatar will sell its older Typhoons to Turkey as part of the arrangement and that that might yet lead, in turn, to further Typhoon orders at Warton. Is that the case and, if so, what can the Minister tell us?

Thirdly, is the Minister able to say anything more about other potential Typhoon sales internationally, in particular to Poland or Saudi Arabia? A Typhoon order from Saudi would be a significant achievement and, indeed, negotiations to that effect have been under way for several years already. That, too, would be of great interest to the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde, so I wonder whether the Minister is in a position to say anything further about that this morning.

As the debate is entitled “Typhoon Fighter Sovereign Capability”, I also take this opportunity to press the Minister on the future of the Typhoon in Royal Air Force service. The RAF has recently retired some 30 of the older tranche 1 Typhoons, and has been in the process of effectively cannibalising them in order to keep the more modern tranche 2 and tranche 3 aircraft flying. In terms of combat mass, that represents a worrying reduction of about a fifth of the entire RAF Typhoon fleet. The few remaining tranche 1s in service are now the fleet of Typhoons based at RAF Mount Pleasant. Will the Minister confirm that when they retire some time in 2026-27, the RAF will provide replacements of either tranche 2 or tranche 3 aircraft to maintain the air defence of the Falkland Islands, not least for the peace of mind of the Falkland Islands Government?

That would leave about 107 tranche 2 and 3 aircraft in RAF service. The tranche 3 aircraft are optimised to accept the new future generation of electronically scanned radar, now generally referred to as Radar 2, which has been under development at Leonardo in Edinburgh, in association with other European allies, for more than a decade. Tranche 2 aircraft can also be modified to accept Radar 2, but both tranches of aircraft require an important electronics update, known as P4E, in order to fully utilise the important new capability of Radar 2, including its crucial electronic warfare suite. However, as I understand it, the MOD has still not placed an order for the final development and installation of P4E, crucial though it is to Typhoon’s future.

Although Radar 2 has now been fully developed—indeed, I was privileged to see a prototype of it on a shadow ministerial visit to Leonardo some months ago—the MOD has still not placed a production order even for an initial batch of Radar 2s. That too represents a very important part of the UK’s Typhoon sovereign capability. Without an effective radar, much of the other investment in Typhoon is nugatory. Can the Minister say anything positive today about the future orders for Radar 2 and the associated P4E upgrade to the UK Typhoon programme, given that both—and we need both—are due to be in operational service by 2030?

BAE trade union colleagues, whom I met recently at Samlesbury, have been pushing hard for a further domestic order of Typhoon aircraft, not least to maintain key skills at the Warton site. They have no greater champion than my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde—“Tory MP backs trade unions to the hilt”. I appreciate that that is not an easy decision for Ministers to take, and that it must be considered in the context of the wider mix of potential combat air system, as several hon. Members have said. In that regard, to date the UK has ordered some 48 F-35B short take-off and vertical landing variants for both the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force, almost 40 of which have now been delivered—minus one, which had an unfortunate accident leaving an aircraft carrier. However, both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have been highly critical of the slow build-up of the Lightning force. Can the Minister say anything more encouraging about that?

The Government have intimated that they intend to buy another 26 F-35Bs, making 74 in total out of an originally planned order of 138. However, this summer they announced their intention to substitute 12 of those aircraft for the F-35A variant, which is capable of carrying the B61 tactical nuclear weapon, both in our defence of the United Kingdom and as part of our commitment to NATO. What more can the Minister tell us about how many F-35s the MOD still intends to buy, and what mix of variants that will comprise, in addition to Typhoon?

A crucial future part of our sovereign air capability is represented by the global combat air programme, which aims to develop a world-class, sixth-generation combat aircraft—a system of systems, potentially including autonomous adjuncts. It is being built with Italy and Japan, and is to be known in RAF service as the Tempest. As the Minister knows, the putative initial operational capability for GCAP is 2035, partly driven by a very hard in-service date for the Japanese air force. An industrial consortium called Edgewing, headquartered in Reading, has recently been formed to manufacture the aircraft, but there are already worrying rumours of delays. Will the Minister take the opportunity today to confirm that GCAP/Tempest remains on schedule, and that Tempest will still succeed our oldest remaining tranche 2 Typhoons from 2035?

The Typhoon is a fundamentally important part of the air defence of the United Kingdom and of our allies, and is likely to remain so for decades, even allowing for the gradual introduction of Tempest. As the Minister will appreciate, for those aircraft to be used most effectively, especially in the air defence role, they need to be closely integrated into the UK’s wider air defence network.

We now have a major gap in that capability, however, following the withdrawal of the Boeing E-3D AWACS aircraft in 2021, because of the frustratingly delayed introduction into service of its vital replacement the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail. The delays to Wedgetail are a disgrace; the aircraft is years late and has flown only a relatively small number of test flights. Rumours are circulating within the industry that this is due to a mixture of factors, including the integration of the MESA—multi-role electronically scanned array—radar and serious problems with the UK E-7’s bespoke command and battle management system.

A respected former procurement Minister, Sir Jeremy Quin, was recently appointed chairman of Boeing UK. I hope he can bring his experience to bear to sort out this debacle. What can the Minister say today about Wedgetail and when it is finally likely to enter operational service with the Royal Air Force? In short, when will the aircraft be ready to fight, rather than just conduct air displays as it did at the Royal International Air Tattoo this summer?

We await the Government’s long-promised defence investment plan, including details on the future of Typhoon. We were originally promised the DIP by the autumn. With the leaves already turning, I ask the Minister a straight question: is Christmas in the autumn? Can he guarantee that the DIP will be published in full by the time the House rises for the Christmas recess on 18 December, just over a month from now?

In addition, can the Minister assure us that the DIP will contain a similar level of granularity to the previous, well-established equipment plans that were published annually under Conservative Governments? They gave a considerable amount of detail so that the defence industry had a fighting chance of planning. The Minister will know that a bunch of major programmes are awaiting their fate with the publication of the DIP, including the phase 4 enhancement and mark 2 radar, the new medium helicopter and the wider combat air mix referred to earlier. After all this time, yet another Ministry of Defence policy document, with a bunch of glossy photos but not much detail, will not suffice. Perhaps the Minister can provide some reassurance this morning.

Finally, can the Minister guarantee to deliver the DIP, including for Typhoon, given that the MOD is now embroiled in a massive in-year cost-saving exercise, including efficiencies—spending cuts, in pub English—of £2.5 billion in 2025-26 alone? That is happening this financial year, right now; if that is not true, I will give way briefly to the Minister to deny it. Silence speaks volumes.

I will finish by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde on securing this important debate. I hope that we will get clear answers to the straightforward questions that he and I and others have put to the Minister this morning. Typhoon is vital to our future, and we all want to know what will happen to it.

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

I thank you, Sir Christopher, for chairing this debate and the hon. Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden) for securing it. It is an important subject, and it will continue to be important for a long time to come.

In this week of national remembrance, when the service and sacrifice of our armed forces are at the forefront of our minds, I begin by paying tribute to all those who have served in the Typhoon force. Since its introduction in 2003, they have taken the risks that come with service and been a backbone of the RAF’s combat air capability. Over those 22 years, across many operations and theatres, Typhoon has proven itself to be the UK’s premier multi-role combat aircraft, successfully supporting a wide range of missions with its state-of-the-art technology incorporated over a number of upgrades.

Today, Typhoon plays an important role at home and abroad. We rely on the Typhoon force to fulfil the RAF’s primary role of protecting the UK’s skies through its quick reaction alert capability, enabling a swift response to any emerging security threats. Since September, on NATO’s eastern flank, we have had two Typhoons from 3 (Fighter) Squadron—supported by a Voyager from 101 Squadron—flying as part of NATO’s Operation Eastern Sentry. That mission reinforces the UK’s unwavering commitment to NATO and our allies.

Earlier this year, Typhoons from 2 Squadron deployed to Poland as part of Operation Chessman—NATO’s enhanced air policing campaign. That deployment involved more than 20 scrambles to defend NATO airspace, alongside numerous joint training sorties with 13 NATO partners. In recent years, Typhoons have also conducted successful operations in Romania and Estonia as part of our enduring NATO air policing commitment, in Libya for Operation Ellamy and in Syria and Iraq as part of Operation Shader. Alongside those deployments, our Typhoon force has strengthened interoperability with our allies through training exercises around the world, including as part of the ongoing deployment of our carrier strike group to the Indo-Pacific, alongside the mix of F-35Bs.

Our Typhoon force is made up of six frontline squadrons, the operational conversion unit, the joint UK-Qatari 12 Squadron and 41 (Test and Evaluation) Squadron, which operates under the Air and Space Warfare Centre. Together, they form a formidable capability.

As demonstrated by the breadth of Members here today, underpinning the Typhoon force is a UK-wide, highly skilled sovereign defence industrial base. That has been a source of jobs, livelihoods and economic prosperity across many Members’ constituencies, as referenced in this debate. It is the case that 37% of each new Typhoon aircraft is manufactured in the UK—in the constituencies of many Members who made comments earlier—meaning that we continue to benefit from the investment made by our NATO and export partners.

The Typhoon programme supports more than 20,000 jobs across the UK, including engineering, manufacturing and supply chain roles. Nearly 6,000 of those jobs are at BAE Systems—in particular, at Warton and Samlesbury. More than 1,100 jobs are in the south-west, including at Rolls-Royce in Bristol, producing modules for the EJ200 jet engines that will power the new Typhoon jets. There are also more than 800 jobs in Scotland, including at Leonardo in Edinburgh, manufacturing cutting-edge radar systems. These are high-value, well-paid, good jobs—the kind that put money in working people’s pockets, that help to revitalise communities and that deliver on defence as an engine for growth up and down the country.

Of course, last month, my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister announced the fantastic news that Türkiye has placed an order to buy 20 Typhoon fighter jets—a deal worth up to £8 billion and a fantastic boost for the programme. It will support thousands of well-paid jobs and at least 330 British companies across the United Kingdom. As the Prime Minister made clear in his statement, that deal with a key NATO ally not only demonstrates that our defence industry and our defence industrial strategy are delivering, but strengthens our collective deterrence and, importantly, boosts our interoperability. It makes our country and every individual in it safer and far more prosperous.

That follows our record £10 billion shipbuilding deal with Norway, demonstrating that this Labour Government are backing our industry internationally. Bringing defence exports back into the MOD—a move that did not take place until this Government came in—and the creation of the new office of defence exports will ensure that we take a joined-up approach to exports to continue to go out and win big for the UK, making defence an engine for growth.

We set out in the SDR that the RAF’s future lies in accelerating its adoption of the latest technology and innovation, and setting the pace for warfighting as the leading European air force. The Typhoon is central to delivering control of the air for the RAF and is undergoing a comprehensive set of upgrades to deliver operational advantage to meet evolving threats.

The Typhoon will continue to underpin our combat air capability into the 2040s; it and the F-35 Lightning form an interoperable, complementary and extremely potent mix of UK combat aircraft. That means that the Government will continue to make significant investments in the Typhoon through-life programme, with the new electronically scanned radar programme alone underpinned by a £3 billion investment. This programme with our Eurofighter partner nations is on track for delivery in the next decade and will continue to sustain 600 jobs across the UK, including in Edinburgh.

This Government back our defence industry—some representatives of which are here today—all across the UK. It is a shame that the SNP Government in Scotland still do not do so with a full voice.

[Mr Francois]

Where are the SNP?

[Al Carns]

Great question.

As with any capability, it is important to plan for the long term. As right hon. and hon. Members will be aware, the Government are committed to continuing to work with our Japanese and Italian global combat air programme partners to co-develop a world-leading sixth generation combat aircraft for the RAF. What that looks like and what shape it takes will be down to technological and scientific input first of all; trying to pre-position and suggest something before any of that has taken place would be folly.

GCAP is a strategically important programme for UK military capability, our international relationships and, importantly, our defence industrial base. It is the centrepiece of the future combat air system programme—or FCAS, to add to the alphabet soup of acronyms—which also includes our next generation of crewed aircraft, uncrewed platforms, weapons, networks and data sharing, as well as support and training.

The combat air industry plays a central role in our industrial strategy and makes a vital contribution to the UK economy. Over the next 10 years, we plan to invest up to £30 billion in combat air through the Typhoon programme, F-35 programme and GCAP, a significant proportion of which we devote to UK companies, particularly in north-west England. Warton is also the home of Edgewing UK, which the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) mentioned, and the UK-based entity of the new industrial joint venture that will deliver GCAP. In total, there are already 3,500 skilled people working on GCAP across the UK, including in the new intergovernmental headquarters in Reading. Numbers will continue to increase as developments ramp up.

Let me answer some of the questions that were asked. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster) rightly reiterated the benefit of the Typhoon deal— 20 new aircraft and £8 billion investment—but he also mentioned that there were no new UK orders for Typhoon between 2010 and 2024. That is why we have a gap now.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made, as always, a fantastic contribution. I personally believe that he would make a great fighter pilot, but I was trying to work out what call sign he would have—I thought “Merlin”, or something equivalent with a bit of gravitas, given the expansive knowledge that he has from his years in this place.

The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) made an interesting point about the co-dependence of our defence capabilities with the Republic of Ireland. I completely agree that there is a huge co-dependence, and we need consistently to remind our partners and allies of the centrality of UK defence not just for Ireland, but for Europe and NATO.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) supported the Türkiye deal, but he also mentioned the mixed fleet requirement. That is important, and I will come to it later. The Typhoon and F-35 do not do the same job; they are not the same capability. They are chalk and cheese—very different—and the mix gives the RAF a fantastic capability out to 2040. A lot of the detail, which Members will know is coming, will come in the defence investment plan.

The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) maintained his fantastic habit of asking almost 20 questions, alongside the 300 that he sent me over the past couple of weeks. I can confirm that the Typhoon is absolutely secured out to 2040. I say this relatively gently, but from a position of experience of having been a joint tactical air controller, and the chief of staff of the carrier strike group and the integrated network of our allies and partners on supporting expeditionary warfare, I would say that we have an immense fight tonight capability.

As the hon. Member will know, it is, as always with these things, about the balance of maintaining the skills, industrial base and jobs; predicting future capability requirements; involving new science, tech, data and quantum—the new way of war being fought in Ukraine—and mixing all that together to ensure that we can predict what capability our armed forces need. As Conservative Members will know from 14 years in government, that is an exceptionally difficult challenge, but we are absolutely taking it on.

I thank the hon. Member for Fylde for securing the debate. Spending announcements, including potential orders, will be made as part of the defence investment plan. He mentioned Christmas presents coming before Christmas, but Christmas presents come at Christmas. I will say that since taking office just over a year ago, the Government have signed more than 1,000 major deals in the MOD. We continue to procure not just traditional aspects, but cyber, drones and other capabilities for our armed forces to make sure that Typhoon—out to ’24—and the F-35 are part of an integrated and centralised force.

The F-35 Lightning and the Typhoon are advanced fighter jets that are regularly deployed in operations around the world. Both fighter programmes are central to UK defence and make a substantial contribution to not only our military capability, but our economy and defence industry. Talking about outlining and jumping ahead to future capabilities—I mentioned earlier the centrality of GCAP as we move forward to try to get the sixth generation fighter correct—our perception is that that looks like a plane and has a pilot in it; we just do not know what the capability will look like.

Remembrance Day: Armed Forces

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

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

It is a privilege to open this debate for His Majesty’s Opposition on 11 November, Armistice Day—a date on which the nation pauses and gives thanks for the sacrifice of our armed forces so that we can live in a free country.

It is a pleasure to follow the Minister for the Armed Forces, and I endorse his comments about the value of our armed forces and the vital role they play in the nation’s contribution to remembrance. We all thank them for their service. The Minister rightly paid tribute to the operational role of our armed forces, which remain as vigilant as ever around the clock to keep us safe in the 21st century. Nevertheless, perhaps he will forgive me if in my contribution I too take something of a historical perspective on the vital role that our armed forces have played in the defence of our nation down the years.

I was privileged to attend the Royal British Legion festival of remembrance last Saturday evening, which remains as moving an occasion as when I first attended as an MOD Minister over a decade ago. I pay tribute to the extremely valuable role that the Royal British Legion plays in both shaping our whole concept of remembrance and in supporting our veterans, some 2 million or so of whom are still living today. As well as the national commemorations, including those at the Cenotaph, the Royal British Legion, often supported by local armed forces personnel, plays a vital role in organising services at a community level in all our constituencies, up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

In my experience, every community tends to do remembrance slightly differently to account for local circumstances, but each ceremony has common elements with which we are all familiar: the emotive playing of the “Last Post”, the two-minute silence and, usually, the famous epitaph from the 2nd Infantry Division memorial—universally known as the Kohima epitaph—with those famous and stirring words:

“When you go home, tell them of us and say,

For your tomorrow, we gave our today.”

The battle of Kohima, brilliantly described in Field Marshal the Viscount Slim’s 1956 book, “Defeat into Victory”—arguably one of the best books ever written on the whole concept of generalship—was a classic example of a dogged defence by British and, crucially, Commonwealth forces in stopping the attempted Japanese advance into India in mid-1944. Indeed, the dogged, stubborn defence—often against superior odds—is a recurrent feature of British military tradition: including the English archers at Agincourt; the great siege of Gibraltar; Wellington’s army at Waterloo; the 24th Foot at Rorke’s Drift, which saw 11 Victoria Crosses awarded, the most ever awarded in a single action; “the few” of Fighter Command in the battle of Britain, to whom the Minister also referred; the Royal Navy escorting the Atlantic convoys; the Glorious Glosters at the Imjin river in Korea; and many more besides, including more recently in the middle east.

There are, of course, many comparable examples from the first world war, not least the stand of the British Expeditionary Force at Mons and the subsequent first battle of Ypres. Anyone who has stood at the Menin Gate when the buglers of the Ypres fire brigade play the “Last Post”, as it swirls around that famous arch, knows that it is a truly moving and emotive ceremony to behold.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend has mentioned Bill Slim, who many who know history will say was probably the greatest allied general of the war—it was brilliant what he achieved with next to nothing. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there was something very special about the 14th Army, which comes out in other accounts? Apart from just fighting, there were both Indian and British members of the 14th. They served in the same slit trenches and ran to aid each other; regardless of race or anything else, they delivered for each other. The most remarkable bit of the story of the 14th was that it did not matter who they were or where they came from, they were as one against the tyranny of the Japanese.

[Mr Francois]

I completely agree with my right hon. and gallant Friend—the history of the 14th Army is a proud one. It was a marvellous amalgam, under a brilliant leader, of people from countries and races from around the entire Commonwealth who fought with one common aim: freedom. They were sometimes called the forgotten army, but they are not forgotten tonight.

After the horrors of the trenches and an understandable aversion to war in the 1920s, with Britain exhausted—both financially and emotionally—by the horrors of the great war, the Government of the day introduced what came to be known as the 10-year rule. This was not just the policy of the War Office or the Admiralty, as they then were; it was a pan-Whitehall edict, the essence of which was that Britain would not have to fight another major war for at least 10 years. This key planning assumption became the centrepiece of British strategic theory and, with strong endorsement from the Treasury, the 10-year rule soon became a rolling one, extended on an annual basis. Given that no war was expected for at least a decade, this allowed for major economies in the financing of the armed forces and an associated running-down of all three services. As one example of how seriously the 10-year rule was taken and implemented, even Winston Churchill during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s exerted pressure to cut back on his beloved Royal Navy—the same service he had fought tenaciously to expand as First Lord of the Admiralty barely a decade before.

Indeed, as a mood of pacifism gripped the nation, in 1933—the same year in which Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany—the earnest students of the Oxford Union, who are having their own problems at the moment, passed a motion by a majority of over two to one that

“this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country”.

The subsequent policy of appeasement from the 1930s British establishment—the blob of their day—was as erroneous then as it would be today. Authoritarian dictators tend to admire strength, particularly their own, and despise weakness—a lesson that any British Government, including this one, would do well to remember. History tells us again and again that the appeasement of dictators does not work, just as it failed to work in the 1930s

The 10-year rule, which by that stage had lasted well over a decade, was eventually rescinded in 1935-36 as Britain began to rearm in response to Hitler’s increasingly bellicose behaviour. Nevertheless, that rearmament, and comparable action by our allies, was ultimately insufficient to deter what then became the second world war—a brutal conflict in which over 50 million people died, far more even than had perished in the supposed war to end all wars some two decades before.

I mention all this not just because I studied history and then military history at university, but because if—as Members of this House believe, and as I have always believed—the ultimate goal of our armed forces is to save lives by deterring war and persuading any potential aggressor that they could not prevail, then even today we all need to ask ourselves, regardless of party, whether we are doing enough to secure the peace by maintaining sufficiently strong armed forces to provide such a vital deterrent effect. It is a historical fact that twice in the last century, this country paid an immense cost in both blood and treasure to defeat militarism.

Today, the threats are somewhat different, with a war on our doorstep in Europe following Russia’s barbaric and illegal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians are in effect now fighting for our freedom too, and we must back them to the hilt as a result. We also see a major rearmament by China; North Korea continues to develop even longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, now with support from Russia; and Iran continues to exert malign influence across the middle east, even after the successful American strike on its emerging nuclear capabilities. The circumstances may have changed, but the principle remains exactly the same. We in the western democracies cannot drop our guard against the growing powers of the 21st-century autocracies—something that those who fought in the second world war would instinctively understand only too well.

Bearing in mind the Minister’s caution, I was genuinely concerned to read one passage of the Government’s recent strategic defence review—its seminal defence policy document. On page 43, under the heading “Transforming UK Warfighting”, it states:

“This Review charts a new era for Defence, restoring the UK’s ability to deter, fight, and win—with allies—against states with advanced military forces by 2035.”

I say to the Minister in all sincerity that that seems to contain an echo of the 10-year rule of the 1920s. While there was a great deal of good in the SDR, not least the intention to speed up our highly bureaucratic procurement system—about which I have always held firm views, as the Minister knows—I nevertheless worry, given increasing threats from Russia and now also from China, about whether the Ministry of Defence today displays the genuine sense of urgency that is required to meet the challenges we now all clearly face. Before I am accused of selective quoting, the same paragraph of the SDR goes on to say:

“This vision could be achieved more quickly should circumstances demand it and should more resources be made available.”

Notwithstanding those words, with much of the new money in the SDR unavailable for at least two years and a multibillion-pound programme of in-year efficiency savings now under way, I merely ask whether we have really learned the lessons of the past century as well as we might have.

In conclusion, we in these islands have always ultimately been prepared to make great sacrifices to uphold the freedom of Europe, and indeed of the wider world. That is why, given our history, we should never forget that the first duty of Government remains the defence of the realm. In response to the philosopher Edmund Burke’s famous challenge that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, twice in the past century our own good men and women across the nation stood up to and defeated such evil, with our armed forces in the lead. Rightfully, we solemnly remember that sacrifice each and every November, including in this House tonight.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

While we are celebrating and remembering the greatest generation, we also have the potential to build our young people into being the best generation. Perhaps we should be focusing on that as well—looking back, but also looking forward, as I think the Minister said. We must try to raise a generation of young people who are proud to be British, to stand against repression, and to undertake to be inclusive. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that is what we need to build for?

[Mr Francois]

As a young person myself, having recently turned 60—[Laughter.] In all seriousness, at the remembrances services that I attended this weekend—like, I am sure, many Members on both sides of the House—I was struck by the number of young people from, for instance, the Cubs, the Scouts and the Brownies who attended those services and, in many cases, participated, and laid tributes, wreaths and crosses of their own. I took great heart from that, and I believe that there is hope yet.

There would be no greater betrayal of the sacrifices that we have been debating this evening than would occur if we as a House, with all the other matters that we have to consider, somehow became so distracted or complacent that we failed to act with sufficient clarity of purpose and determination to deter a future major conflict, perhaps even a global one, from breaking out again in our lifetimes. To put it, perhaps, in another way, we must now conduct ourselves, in “our today”, in such a way as never to risk the security of “our tomorrow”. With that sincere warning, I pay tribute to our valiant armed forces, both past and present, and to everything that they do, day in and day out, to keep us and our country safe and free—lest we forget.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)]

Every nation rightly celebrates the heroism of its soldiers, but in the United Kingdom’s case, we also celebrate their skill in avoiding innocent deaths when dealing with the enemies of our nation and our democracy. When nations neutralise terrorists, they typically use a bomb or a missile, but bombs and missiles also kill innocent bystanders in the house, in the wedding party or in the bus, so Britain, as the Minister knows better than anybody else, often uses special forces in those circumstances.

Richard Williams, the former commanding officer of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment during our operations in Iraq, said that

“the SAS soldiers took extreme risks, facing violent and well-prepared opposition to capture these terrorists and hand them on to Iraqi justice and detention. It was a deliberate and careful approach…It required precision, intelligence, self-control, skill…in the face of immense danger—the very opposite of the hot-blooded, murderous drama depicted by poorly informed outsiders.

At the start of 2005, approximately 100 vehicle-borne suicide bombs were being detonated every month in Baghdad by AQ-I”—

al-Qaeda in Iraq—

“and thousands of Shia Muslims were being slaughtered by assassination gangs. But by the end of 2007, after the combined US and SAS effort…The number of suicide bombs had dropped to a single detonation per month”—

saving lives—

“and the Sunni population of central Iraq was supporting the coalition efforts in eradicating AQ-I from their midst. It was a remarkable outcome justifiably celebrated by military and political leaders”,

and it was all down to our soldiers.

However, those special forces and that capacity to protect innocent lives are at risk. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) said earlier, only today we have seen nine retired four-star generals warning in The Times of the damaging effects of lawfare. I will quote some of their words extensively and put them on the parliamentary record. They said:

“Having held the honour of leading the United Kingdom’s armed forces…we feel bound to warn that the government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, and the legal activism surrounding it, risk weakening the moral foundations and operational effectiveness of the forces on which this nation depends. Presented as a route to justice and closure, the bill achieves neither. It will not bring terrorists to account; it will not heal division in Northern Ireland; and it undermines the confidence of those who volunteer to serve this country at its request and under its authority. This lawfare is a direct threat to national security.

Contrary to recent ministerial assurances, highly trained members of special forces are already leaving the service. These are the men and women who quietly neutralise threats and protect lives every week. Their loss is significant; it is a direct consequence of legal uncertainty and the erosion of trust. This is a corrosive form of ‘lawfare’…which now extends far beyond Northern Ireland. Today every deployed member of the British Armed Forces must consider not only the enemy in front but the lawyer behind. The fear that lawful actions may later be judged unlawful will paralyse decision-making, distort rules of engagement and deter initiative.”

[Mr Francois]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm for the parliamentary record that of the nine generals who have written this unprecedented letter, three formerly served as Chief of the General Staff—in other words, the professional head of the British Army?

[David Davis]

Yes, that is right. All of them had soldiers serve under them at risk on the frontline and had soldiers die under their command, so they are all people with strong knowledge of what we are talking about.

To go on with the quotation:

“And make no mistake, our closest allies are watching uneasily, and our enemies will be rubbing their hands.”

If we do not speak up to protect both our current service personnel and our veterans, the innocent will suffer, as I have described, because we will not be able to do what we have done in the past and we will find ourselves unable to defend our nation when called upon.

The Minister did not like it when my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire raised this issue, and I understand that it is an uncomfortable one for a day like today, but it is important that we are not guilty of hypocrisy in this Chamber, and that we recognise that the people we are standing up for face a new threat that we have to deal with. I have to say to the House, again to the Minister’s probable discomfort, that I have been surprised, on two occasions in the last two weeks, to have people on the frontline on this issue quote Martin Luther King:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

We owe it to them not to be silent on these issues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

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

As General Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, said at the weekend,

“if potential recruits to our Armed Forces do not believe that their government will stand by them when performing their duties in a lawful manner, why risk joining at all?”

He was speaking about Labour’s new Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which could see Northern Ireland veterans, without whom there would never have been a Good Friday agreement in the first place, in the dock again by next year. The Minister called opponents of this “naive”. What is her response to the former head of the British Army and the brave soldiers he led—were they all naive, too?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

Seeing as the right hon. Gentleman is attacking me for something I did not say, I can only assume that he cannot attack me—

[Mr Francois]

It’s in Hansard!

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

He is very welcome to check Hansard, where he will see that I was very specifically referring to people spreading misinformation. He will be able to see it there in black and white in Hansard.

[Mr Francois]

It is in Hansard.

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

It is in Hansard, absolutely—I urge the right hon. Gentleman to reread it to see the full quote.

This Government are committed to protecting those who serve. Our first and foremost priority is to protect and ensure the welfare of those who have served, just as we have done for many people who have served in our armed forces across multiple conflicts. I can only say again that the commitment of this Government to our veterans is total.

[Mr Francois]

The former Labour Security Minister Lord West said recently that we “shouldn’t be doing” this. Lord Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour, said:

“We must reverse it as soon as possible.”

The hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) said that

“to continue this against one side makes no sense.”

With a Labour rebellion clearly brewing, and given that many Northern Ireland veterans were initially recruited from red wall seats, why are Labour Ministers insisting on driving their Back Benchers into the Division Lobby just to do Sinn Féin and their old comrades in the IRA a favour?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

I urge the right hon. Gentleman to remember the really serious issues that are at stake here. The priorities of this Government, as we have shown repeatedly, are to do right by the families of more than 200 British service personnel who were murdered in Northern Ireland and to ensure that we have protections and appropriate measures in place to defend our veterans; we have five protections in law and a sixth that we have control over ourselves. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman again that the Government’s commitment to veterans is total.

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Mark Francois Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

If the hon. Gentleman is patient, I promise that I will come to that, but I wish to deal in a logical order with what Ministers have themselves said to justify their actions.

On 5 February, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office answered another urgent question. In answer to my plea to give us more clarity on exactly what legal basis the Government were acting on, he said:

“We currently have unrestricted and sole access to the electromagnetic spectrum, which is used to communicate with satellites and which is guaranteed and governed by the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations body based in Geneva. If we lose it we can still communicate, but so can others.”—[Official Report, 5 February 2025; Vol. 761, c. 760.]

I understand the point that he was making, but he did not explain how that issue might lead to a binding court ruling against the UK, and he did not even take a second opportunity to do so when asked about it again by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp)—those interested can find that answer in column 762.

Luckily, however, my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary called a debate on this subject in Opposition time on 26 February, which was answered by the then Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds).

She repeated:

“Without a negotiated solution with Mauritius, it would pursue its legal campaign…That would lead to an inevitable, legally binding judgment,”.

She was then interrupted, but went on to say that

“in that kind of situation”—

presumably that is the delivery of a binding judgment against the UK—

“we would unfortunately see international organisations following that determination, such as the International Telecommunication Union.” —[Official Report, 26 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 874.]

If we put all those ministerial utterances together, we are going round in circles.

The Government say that they have to act because of the inevitability of a binding court judgment against the UK. They mention the ICJ, but the ICJ cannot make a binding judgment against the UK on this. They hint at ITLOS cases, but those refer to ICJ decisions. The Government then say that they are worried about the actions of the International Telecommunication Union, but when pressed that seems to mean actions that would follow a binding court judgment. We are back to square one.

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

Is it the case—my right hon. and learned Friend is a former Attorney General—that the ITU treaty to which we and others are a party states specifically that the ITU has no authority over the allocation of military spectrum, or military communications? It is clear that the ITU has no leverage legally at all over Diego Garcia.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, which I know he has made before. I repeat the point I made earlier: we are simply not getting from the Government an adequate rebuttal of these points, and we need to have that. If the Government have a good answer to what he and my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) have said, Second Reading of the Bill is the moment for the Government to deliver that explanation. We are all still waiting.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend, and perhaps I should refine my argument. It is not just that the Government are not answering the questions; it is that when they do answer the questions, they undermine their own argument. It is worse than we thought. We are not getting clarity from the Government about what would be the legal judgment that they themselves have relied on as almost the entire basis for their actions, and this really matters. The Government owe us a proper explanation.

I am prepared to concede—I hope the Minister will accept that I am a fair-minded person—that there may be a persuasive argument that the Government could make about which court and which circumstances would deliver the kind of judgment that makes this action inevitable and necessary, but I have waited a long time to hear it, and I am still waiting. I hope that when the Minister stands to sum up the debate he will give us that answer, because the House of Commons deserves to hear it.

[Mr Francois]

This is fundamental to the whole argument. We have pressed the Government for months to tell us what the legal threat to the islands was. In his opening speech the Minister said that it was UNCLOS. That was the justification they have given us. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we have a general opt-out and two specific opt-outs under article 298(1)(b) of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, which includes “disputes concerning military activities”? We have an opt-out from UNCLOS. The Government’s whole case is spurious—£35 billion worth of spurious.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

It is certainly very expensive. I know lawyers who charge big fees, but none of them would come close to that.

My right hon. Friend makes his point, and again, the Minister will have another opportunity when he speaks. It is not good enough, I am afraid, for hints and oblique references to be made. We are owed a clear explanation. This is a fundamental decision on defence and security, and in financial terms as my right hon. Friend has just said, and we deserve to know. If the Minister tells the House that describing all that in detail is the sort of confidential and sensitive information that the whole House cannot hear, I have good news for him: that is what the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament is for. I have the honour to be a member of that Committee, and it is perhaps regrettable that the Government did not choose to explain themselves and make their case to us before they brought the Bill to the House, but they did not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

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

Nearly a fifth of a million people have now signed the parliamentary petition to protect Northern Ireland veterans from prosecution, in opposition to Labour’s proposals for two-tier justice. Surely Ministers must understand that facilitating lawfare against our Army veterans, none of whom received letters of comfort after leaving their service, shows that Labour just does not have their back?

[Al Carns]

I highlight to the right hon. Gentleman that 200 families—200 mothers, fathers, brothers or sisters—of those that served had their inquest inquiries, insight and understanding closed off when the legacy Act came into place. They were serving members of the security forces and their families deserve truth. However, we must ensure that we also provide protection for veterans as we move forward, so that they are not subject to lawfare, as the right hon. Gentleman mentions, and that the process does not become the punishment for veterans as we move forward.

[Mr Francois]

Labour’s currently stalled remedial order would specifically make it easier for Gerry Adams and his friends to sue the British taxpayer while throwing our Army veterans, many of them recruited from red wall seats, to the wolves. After everything the Government put their Back Benchers through in recent months, are No. 10 and Ministers really intending to press ahead with this madness and do Gerry Adams a favour, at the expense of the soldiers who opposed him? Are they pressing ahead with the remedial order—yes or no?

[Al Carns]

The right hon. Gentleman is missing the point. He is trying to divide the House, veterans and the armed forces community, and it has got to stop. The reality is that we will produce legislation that will allow families to get to the truth. He should put himself in the shoes of the families who have lost loved ones, and then put himself in the shoes of veterans—I am a Northern Ireland veteran—and accept that if the protections are in place to ensure that the process does not become the punishment, we have a good solution.

The Battle of Britain

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

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

It is a fact that partly because of the great efforts of Lord Beaverbrook overseeing aircraft production, we never ran out of aircraft in the battle—but we very nearly ran out of pilots. So does my right hon. Friend agree with me that part of Dowding’s genius was generating enough pilots and then taking sufficient care of them so that we won?

[David Mundell]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. Dowding was someone who valued the trained individual and who really stood up for his men.

From a number of excellent contributions we have heard Churchill’s assessment of the battle of Britain, in which he paid tribute to the courage of the RAF fighter pilots whose defence of our skies delivered both victory and the survival of our country. However, it is perhaps the more unvarnished estimation of an opposing protagonist that pays the most compelling tribute to Dowding. Following the battle of Britain, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt commanded German forces in the west and had been involved in planning the invasion of Britain which was ultimately cancelled after the battle of Britain. During interrogation by the allies, the Field Marshal was asked at what point during the course of the war he had seen the tide turning against Germany—was it Stalingrad, Leningrad or El Alamein?

“Oh no,”

replied von Rundstedt,

“it was the Battle of Britain.”

That was the first time he realised that the Nazis were not invincible.

That shattering of progress towards what was seemingly an inevitable Nazi victory was down to the courage of the young pilots who fought and died in the skies over Britain in 1940, and their memory must always be honoured; but the vital contribution made by the son of a schoolmaster from Moffat should also be remembered. The quiet determination of Hugh Dowding, which gave those pilots the tools, the system and the strategy to succeed, was central to winning the battle of Britain and ensuring the survival of a nation and the freedom and liberty we enjoy today.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Good afternoon, Sir Desmond. It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship as we debate these momentous events in the run-up to Battle of Britain Day, which commemorates the 85th anniversary of the culmination of the battle on 15 September 1940. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) on securing this very important and timely debate, which he introduced so very admirably. Lest we forget.

On a personal note, I regard it as a genuine privilege, as the son of a world war two veteran—albeit one who fought in the Royal Navy—to be able to sum up for His Majesty’s Opposition this afternoon. I would like to begin by declaring two personal interests, first as an amateur military historian and a battle of Britain buff in particular. Southend airport, which abuts my constituency, was RAF Rochford in 1940, one of Fighter Command’s vital forward airfields. Secondly, several years ago I worked with a former constituent and local historian called Steve Newman on a project to help restore and refurbish our official war memorial at Wickford. Steve is now involved in another ambitious project, this time to restore a world war two Hurricane, serial Z5134. With a dedicated band of helpers, he is attempting to rebuild this historic aircraft almost from the wheels up. I was privileged to view the fruits of their labour during the summer recess. Realistically, it will take them several years to achieve their ambition. I would like to place on record my admiration for what they are attempting, and to wish them every possible success.

Turning to the battle itself, there is no doubt that it was an example of heroism on multiple levels, beginning with the pilots, from some of the well-known aces, such as Peter Townsend, Bob Stanford Tuck, Douglas Bader and Sailor Malan, through to those who only flew in combat once and never returned. Those young men, some of whom had barely 10 hours on type, must have known before they took off that the chances of their returning alive were slim. Nevertheless, they took off anyway. In all, almost 3,000 allied pilots fought with Fighter Command in the officially defined period of the battle of Britain, which runs from 10 July to 31 October 1940.

However, it is important to note that the defence in the battle was by no means solely a British affair—far from it. As well as the RAF squadrons, those from other nations also played a crucial role, perhaps most famously the Polish 303 Squadron, based at RAF Northolt, which shot down more enemy aircraft—126—than any other squadron. It was supplemented by other Polish squadrons, plus the Czechs and Canadians, and indeed the three Eagle squadrons of American pilots who volunteered to fight with the RAF more than a year before Pearl Harbour.

History also owes a great debt to those who kept them flying, not least the ground crew of Fighter Command, but also the Royal Observer Corps, the General Post Office technicians who assisted with communications and those working in the factories to produce the iconic Spitfires and Hurricanes on which the defence so crucially depended. Although Churchill rightly paid tribute to “the few”, in fact there were many who contributed to that critical victory in 1940, the vast majority of whom never flew in combat.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I just wanted to make the small point that I was fortunate enough to sit next to Jock Colville, who was assistant private secretary to Churchill throughout the war. They were visiting Uxbridge on 15 September, when a huge armada gathered. Churchill was watching as, one by one, the lights went up, until everything was up. He said to the air officer commanding, “What are you going to do now? Where are your reserves?” The officer said, “We have no reserves, Prime Minister.” Churchill asked, “What will you do?” The officer said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to pray.” Jock Colville told me that, with that, Churchill stayed silent for three hours, something he never did, but that when he got into the car, he turned to him and said, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

[Mr Francois]

The whole House is grateful to my right hon. Friend for that very telling intervention. While I have the opportunity, I pay tribute to his marvellous speech and, more than that, to the wonderful service of his father, of whom he can be immensely proud.

Also fundamental were the RAF commanders, principally Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, who famously commanded 11 Group, which bore the brunt of the battle. Park, a New Zealander, displayed tactical brilliance in the husbanding of his squadrons, while also fighting a highly aggressive and effective defence.

Overall, however, perhaps the greatest single contribution to victory was that of the leader of Fighter Command throughout the battle, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. As well as being a pilot, Dowding was keenly interested in scientific development, which he pursued zealously when promoted to the Air Council in 1930, with responsibility for supply and research. That critical appointment was to have profound consequences for the subsequent conduct of the battle a decade later, as several right hon. Members have alluded to.

Dowding had three great attributes that materially contributed to the RAF’s victory. First, he possessed tremendous foresight. Like Churchill, he realised very early on that Nazi Germany and its nascent air force would one day provide a potentially fatal threat to Britain’s security, and he began to plan accordingly.

Secondly, Dowding’s genius—I use the word deliberately —was that he conceptualised years in advance the battle that the RAF would have to fight. He then used his new appointment enthusiastically to pull together multiple strands of scientific development, crucially including Watson-Watt’s experiments with radar, to create a highly resilient defensive system.

In May 1937, Dowding presciently delivered a lecture to the air staff regarding the air defence of Great Britain, in which the scenario he outlined was one of a war with a European dictator—the inference was obvious —attempting to starve Britain into submission by the aggressive use of submarines, but not before the United Kingdom had been subjected to an all-out assault designed to destroy the RAF and cripple the nation’s ability to make war, by remorseless attack from the air.

As head of the newly created Fighter Command from July 1936, Dowding went on to create a command and control network alerted by radar, all feeding into Fighter Command headquarters at RAF Bentley Priory, and supported by an organisation of group and sector headquarters designed to co-ordinate timely fighter interception of incoming German aircraft. That was all interconnected by a system of telephone and, later, teleprinter communications. The historian and operational analyst Stephen Bungay, in his brilliant book, “The Most Dangerous Enemy”, describes that system as “the world’s first intranet”, albeit an analogue version, half a century before Tim Berners-Lee. Critically, the Dowding system, as it became known, allowed the RAF to make best use of its resources in combating an enemy that frequently outnumbered it three, or even four, to one.

Thirdly, Dowding possessed tremendous moral courage in dealing with superiors, up to and including Churchill. The epic 1969 movie “The Battle of Britain”, with its all-star cast, opens with the Dowding letter of 16 May 1940, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) referred to. In it, Dowding famously argued the need to conserve Britain’s fighter strength during the fall of France. As he trenchantly put it,

“if the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.”

In Dowding, Britain possessed a commander with an absolutely single-minded determination to prepare meticulously for, to fight and then to win the battle, for which his pilots, whom he referred to affectionately as “my boys”, held him in particular reverence. His truly was the controlling mind that orchestrated the ultimately successful defence of these islands.

Like many commanders before him, Dowding was a maverick, but he was not an extrovert. He was socially awkward, which led to his nickname “Stuffy”. He never suffered fools gladly, and his manner could be abrupt, even when dealing with superiors, which ultimately led to his downfall. Nevertheless, he was a man utterly dedicated to his task, and one to whom history owes an immense debt. Arguably, had Dowding never been born we might even have lost the battle, as we would undoubtedly have been far less well prepared to fight it.

[David Mundell]

My right hon. Friend will be pleased to know that this Saturday, at his birthplace in Moffat, a bust of the then Lord Dowding will be unveiled alongside a replica Spitfire, and that his former home has been turned into sheltered housing accommodation for RAF personnel, known as Dowding House.

[Mr Francois]

I am sure that I speak for the whole House in saying that that is entirely appropriate.

James Holland, in his excellent book “The Battle of Britain: Five Months that changed History”, highlights the fact that the Luftwaffe made multiple mistakes in the campaign, but nevertheless concludes:

“This should not detract from the achievement of the RAF in the summer of 1940. Had it not had such a superb defensive system and had it not had such inspired and brilliant leaders, the Luftwaffe would still have prevailed, no matter how valiant or skillful the pilots.”

To conclude myself, the importance of winning the battle of Britain cannot be overstated. Had the RAF lost and had Hitler successfully invaded these islands, the whole history of the world thereafter would have been brutally different. Put another way, the debate today would not be taking place and there would be no Parliament or House of Commons for it to take place in. The Royal Air Force, as a service, can rightly be proud of the immense contribution it made in the battle of Britain to the defence of democracy, not just in the United Kingdom, but across the free world. The pilots whom Churchill famously christened “the few” have a special place in the annals of history, but so do the very few who so brilliantly commanded them to victory. We honour all of them today.

Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

The home front was an unrelenting struggle and the European theatre was the most mechanised slaughter ever witnessed on the continent, but the brutal fighting of the Japanese was incomparable. Young men would have heard the tales of ferocious fighting on the ground, kamikaze attacks from the air, barbaric treatment of allied prisoners of war upon victory in battle, and mass suicides forced on Japanese civilians upon defeat in battle.

Those harrowing tales did not faze the good old men of east London or Essex, or, for that matter, the millions of brave British, Indian and Commonwealth soldiers who volunteered. Over the course of British involvement, loyal subjects of the Crown left their families, friends and native soil to sail to the far east to defend their empire. Many of those brave men were from England, including many from Essex. I remember especially the South West Essex Burma Star Association, which met at the Romford United Services club. I was honoured to be given honorary membership of the club by those old and bold veterans, who I was proud to meet and invite to Parliament in my early years as an MP. Their memory, and that of those who served in the far east, will never be forgotten.

For over 90,000 servicemen, it was only ever destined to be a one-way journey. Hand in hand with our American allies from across the pond, those gallant men fought to ensure the end of one of the most brutal and oppressive imperial powers, which could rain terror upon its neighbours no longer, and to ensure that freedom and democracy prevailed. Determined to fight to the bitter end, the imperial Japanese army fully intended to force an allied invasion of the Japanese homeland, which would have led to untold casualty on both sides. That was averted.

Often referred to as the forgotten Army, the soldiers of the Pacific theatre were the very greatest of the greatest generation. Their loyal service and valiant fighting brought victory home and secured us a peace that has lasted decades.

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

Their inspirational commander, General Bill Slim, was one of the greatest generals of world war two. His book, “Defeat into Victory”, which is about how he did it, is one of the greatest books ever written about that war. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I certainly do. General Slim is one of the greatest British heroes, and we salute his honour today as well.

The loyal service and valiant fighting of those servicemen brought victory home and secured us a peace that has lasted decades. Victory in the second world war enabled a thriving Commonwealth of Nations, global economic growth, the spread of democracy and the guarantees of the freedoms that we so treasure in Britain today. Those achievements are what our servicemen fought for, and we owe it to their memory to celebrate, preserve and advance them at every opportunity, as they did for King, country and Commonwealth.