Defence Personnel Data Breach

Debate between Richard Foord and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments about attribution. MPs and the electoral register have been hacked, and he therefore encourages me to jump to the conclusion at the Dispatch Box that the malign actor is China in this case as well. I am simply unable to do that at this stage. He would expect me to follow due process, but I rather support his view that if attribution is required, it should happen in a timely and speedy manner. I undertake from the Dispatch Box to ensure that that happens in this case, and that we do not have many months or years pass by without it being mentioned.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

The malign actor did not need to access the armed forces payment network to find out the salary of a British private soldier. A quick search of Google—or indeed Baidu—reveals that the salary of a British soldier on completion of initial training is less than £24,000 a year, which is less than the average UK salary of £35,000 a year. Russia is currently paying its soldiers a starting salary of more than 2.5 million roubles for fighting in Ukraine. Will the data breach by the Conservative Government’s contractor shame the UK Government into paying some of our lowest-paid servicepeople a decent salary?

[Grant Shapps]

That was creative, if nothing else. The fact that we paid a nearly 10% pay increase—9.7% last year—to many ranks of our armed forces, and that the Conservative party has committed to spending 2.5% of GDP, which is a pledge I have not heard repeated by the Opposition, rather suggests that we are prepared to do something about pay and retention.

Defence

Debate between Richard Foord and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am pleased to reassure my right hon. Friend from this Front Bench that no such delay would be countenanced. Just in the last few weeks we have issued the defence nuclear enterprise Command Paper—[Interruption.] I thought the Opposition Front Bench knew that there was a coalition Government, but perhaps they missed it. Perhaps they also missed the point that my right hon. Friend was making.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, and I can offer him the assurance that the Liberal Democrats embrace the continuous at-sea deterrent with four submarines. What is more, the strategic environment in which we were operating in 2010 was very different from that which we see today: the Liberal Democrats made the right call then, and we have made the right call now.

[Grant Shapps]

You heard it here first, Madam Deputy Speaker. I warmly welcome that commitment, which was not available under the then coalition Government. It is an important moment, and I welcome that commitment from the hon. Gentleman, as I welcome it from Labour.

I gently remind the House that 11 Opposition Front Benchers have voted against the deterrent in their time here, including three members of the current shadow Cabinet, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, the shadow Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary, and the shadow Deputy Prime Minister. The House is right to ask, and the country will want to know, whether that commitment is as firm as we now hear it is from the Liberal Democrats. It will also want to know, even if the commitment is said to be firm, whether Labour is prepared to fund it. Again, it comes back to the 2.5%.

Defence Spending

Debate between Richard Foord and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his comments. He is right to point out the need to be prepared to use the abilities that we have. Ours is one of the only countries with both the global reach and the desire and preparedness to use those abilities, which is why we have ended up defending ships in the Red sea from the Houthis. I can report that a specific incident along those lines has taken place today, with our armed forces in action, and we can be very proud of everything they do for us.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s statement about increased defence spending, although it relates to a time six years hence rather than being specific about funding in the intervening years. Eighteen of the 32 members of NATO are still not spending even 2% of GDP on defence, including France, Spain and Italy. Encouraging them to spend more is not so much about fairness as about persuading sceptics in the United States that North America should remain engaged in Europe. Leverage at the NATO summit in July will come too late. What additional commitments did the Secretary of State and other Ministers obtain from our allies before announcing the 2030 pledge?

[Grant Shapps]

First, I assure the hon. Gentleman that it starts this year—the half a billion pounds is in this year’s budget. We have opted to give that money directly to Ukraine, in addition to the money that we are already gifting it, bringing the total to £3 billion.

Secondly, let me gently say that I do not think I have ever heard Liberal Democrats argue for more defence spending, but I strongly welcome the hon. Gentleman to the cause. I agree with him entirely that 2%—which we ourselves set back in 2014—is no longer the baseline that we should be working to, but I gently point out to him that the reason it has taken some time to replace Trident, and in particular the submarines, is that there was a short period under the coalition when we could not get our Liberal Democrat partners to agree to get on with the job.

Ukraine

Debate between Richard Foord and Grant Shapps

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend was in Poland yesterday. The Poles have been right on the frontline next to Ukraine on this. They have been tremendous in their support for Ukraine and in investing in their own defence sector. He is right to highlight British military assistance, which comes in many different forms, much of which we cannot discuss, but it has certainly assisted in Poland and elsewhere in the region. He will be pleased to hear that we also contributed to Poland’s own defence: before its election, we provided two Typhoons to prevent escalation and exacerbation by Putin. We also provide other air defence mechanisms to Poland. I would be happy to provide him with a further briefing.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I very much thank the Government for the statement and offer our wholehearted support for it. This week, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev asked the rhetorical question, “Where to stop?” Medvedev, who is now deputy head of Russia’s security council, answered, “I don’t know.” He continued:

“Will it be Kiev? Yes, probably it should be Kiev.”

He went on to make an outlandish claim that there is a threat to the Russian Federation from Kyiv, and he made outrageous threats, including to the UK. Will the Defence Secretary first condemn the ambiguity of Medvedev’s rhetoric on Russia’s ambitions? Secondly, will he rebut the wild claim that the Russian Federation is somehow threatened? Thirdly, will he ask his counterparts in Delhi and Beijing to urge Medvedev to halt his nuclear sabre rattling?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to point out those irresponsible comments, which very much follow in the footsteps of what Putin goes around saying. It is completely irresponsible in the modern era to have world leaders going about threatening others. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for an autocratic state or any state walking into a demographic neighbour and claiming it as its own. To go further than that and to start threatening other states on a trumped-up charge that NATO somehow wishes to do the same in reverse is, as the whole House will know, complete fiction. NATO has no desire to do anything but defend the existing borders. That is why NATO is no threat whatsoever to Moscow.

Middle East: UK Military Deployments

Debate between Richard Foord and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I will go for the last of my right hon. Friend’s many good questions. This Government are committed to 2.5%, as conditions allow. I know that he will be making his own representations to the Chancellor. I have previously talked about my own belief that we need to reach not just that 2.5% but 3% and higher.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It was reassuring last week, in answer to my question, to hear the Minister for Armed Forces, the right hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) telling us that UK surveillance flights would not involve the use of intelligence for target acquisition. I also welcome the Secretary of State talking today about how information that would be helpful to hostage recovery will be passed to the so-called appropriate authorities. We have now heard two questions about the International Criminal Court. Will the UK pass any evidence that it gathers of any breaches of international humanitarian law by combatants in Gaza to the ICC?

[Grant Shapps]

As the hon. Gentleman says, that question has been asked, and I have answered it a couple of times. The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance—ISR—flights are to look for British hostages and indeed other hostages. That is the information that will be gathered from those flights. Of course, if we saw anything else, we would most certainly alert our partners, but the purpose is to find our hostages and bring them home.

Newport Wafer Fab

Debate between Richard Foord and Grant Shapps

Monday 21st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is calling for the Government to run the semiconductor factory. If he is, on the other hand, asking for a plan, he will need to be patient and to wait for the Nexperia process to complete. I very much hope that he and I will be able to stand here in due course and agree that the process has ended in a good place.

I just want to say to the House—because I think this has been slightly missed—that I do not take these decisions easily. Nearly 100 cases have been looked at under the National Security and Investment Act 2021. There have been only 10 final orders, of which this is one. Two acquisitions have been blocked. Only one has been unwound—in other words, there has been a retrospective decision—and that is this one. That is how carefully we take these decisions. I do have confidence that what happens next will be in the best interests of the people who work in south Wales and of semiconducting in this country.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I understand that BEIS is expecting up to 1,830 voluntary notifications per year. In the first three months of the implementation of the Act, there were perhaps 222. Is the Secretary of State learning lessons from the implementation of the Act to ensure that the net is fine enough to block acquisitions that are of national security concern but not so tight as to squeeze the brakes on inward investment?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: this is a new Act, so we are seeing how it works. As I mentioned a moment ago, final orders are extremely rare. An awful lot of the notifications—particularly the voluntary notifications—are looked at and then passed through very efficiently and very quickly, and I look at them most days of the week in my role. That is not causing any undue bureaucracy; we are looking at the notifications very quickly. The case before us is exceptional, inasmuch as it is retrospective, with the Act having come in only in January. In the end, we have to take a decision, and this House decided that it wanted to look after national security and investment in a sound and sensible way. The Act is performing very well in that regard, and those who criticise have perhaps not looked at—or are perhaps unable to be familiar with—the reasons why we are acting in just a small number of cases.