Mr Mark Francois
MP for Rayleigh and Wickford · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Secondly, what actions is he as Defence Secretary, no doubt in consultation with the Chief of the General Staff, taking to push back against these pernicious in-year funding cuts imposed by the Treasury?”
“Taking him at his word, I must press him on some extremely worrying reports—first published in The Times on 3 September, and amplified in the Defence Eye journal on Tuesday—that British Army training is being seriously curtailed in order to provide in-year efficiency savings— “cuts”, in pub English— at the Treasury’s behest.”
“I am sure that I speak for the whole House in paying tribute to the Ukrainians for their fierce and determined resistance. They are fighting for the values of freedom and democracy, which this House has represented for centuries, so when we say, “Slava Ukraini!”, we mean it.”
“On behalf of the shadow Defence team, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new Defence Secretary—Labour’s third in three months—to his place and to thank him for advance sight of this important statement.”
“Tragically, a number of innocent civilians were murdered in Kyiv last night. On supporting Ukraine and brave President Zelensky, there has been absolute solidarity between ourselves and the Labour party.”
“On housing numbers, there is no Reform MP present this afternoon, but Reform-led Rochford district council has just published its regulation 19 local plan.”
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“That has all been a positive start and, within reason, we will attempt to continue in the same manner. We have no objection to clause 1 standing part of the Bill.”
“I apologise, Mr Efford. As you say, get it right! This was not a contentious Bill on Second Reading. As we said during that debate, we think our role is primarily to act as a critical friend to the Bill. That does not mean we will not disagree on anything at all, but it does mean that, now we are in Committee, we will attempt to approach the Bill in a constructive manner. I hope we can do a lot of that in a collegial way. I want to place on record our thanks and, I am sure, those of all right hon. and hon. Members, to the Clerks and yourself, Mr Efford, for organising some extremely effective evidence sessions—we have already taken a lot of evidence on the Bill—and in particular for organising an extremely effective visit to Portsmouth to look, among other things, at the operation of the service justice system and defence housing.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that the words that we have used in the amendment are taken verbatim from the Minister’s letter of 9 March 2026? We asked him to provide a definition of due regard; he duly wrote to the Committee very promptly, and we have quoted the first sentence verbatim. These are not random words; this is the Minister’s definition. All we are seeking to do is place it in the Bill.”
“I do not think the Minister ever served in local government—he was serving his country in uniform, so I mean no slight by that comment—but I did for four years, albeit in the last century. I remember that primary legislation had more effect than guidance on councils, not least because even then we were drowning in such guidance—there is even more of it to drown in now. Would he accept that having something in primary legislation is more likely to get a councillor to do something about it than if it is included in reams of guidance, which they tend to drown in anyway on a weekly basis?”
“I do not want to labour the point, but in reality, a lot often comes down to the calibre of the armed forces champion in a particular council; I am sure that the hon. Member for North Devon was an excellent one. If such a champion were in a debate in full council—on how to amend housing policy to advantage veterans, say—it would be far more effective for them to be able to point to a section in an Act of Parliament than to paragraph 212B(III) of some Government circular. An argument is far more effective in a council chamber if a person can wave an Act of Parliament; I have seen people do it. Does the Minister not accept that if we are trying to empower armed forces champions to deliver at ground level, having a definition in the Bill would be very helpful?”
“My hon. Friend is making an extremely good speech. As he and the Committee know, there is a major reform of NHS England going on. At the ground level, it means that there will be far fewer integrated care boards. In Essex, we are going from three to one, and that approach is mirrored across the country. Is not my hon. Friend’s amendment therefore very timely, because—this should appeal to the Minister—we are trying to slim down NHS bureaucracy and give ICBs more power within the system? Would my hon. Friend’s proposal not tie in extremely well with the reorganisation of integrated care boards, which hold much of the budget within the NHS?”
“In a number of cases, they have been through what I admit is a bureaucratic assault course, sometimes lasting two years or longer, to establish an EHCP for their child or children. Having been through that gruelling experience, which can sometimes even involve attending an appeal hearing in front of a judge, they have often been confronted with the further challenge—even having won such a valuable document, which provides important additional support for their child—that they still cannot find a special needs place. Their child therefore has to be accommodated somehow in mainstream education, even if their condition is such that mainstream education is simply not appropriate in their case.”
“I therefore rather hope they might have some sympathy with amendment 11, the essence of which is to allow serving families with a child who has been awarded an education, health and care plan, or its equivalent in the other nations of the United Kingdom, to transfer that support without penalty if they are required to move between bases, for operational or other reasons, from one area of the country to another. In the modern parlance, I have been on a journey in relation to this issue, so let me explain briefly to the Committee why I feel so strongly about it. Over the past few years, multiple parents have come to my constituency advice surgeries in connection with this issue.”
“Although my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East is leading for the Opposition on clause 2, I nevertheless want to make a particular point in relation to special educational needs and to adoption and fostering. I want to emphasise some issues related to educational aspects of the armed forces covenant. I shall therefore speak to amendment 11, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friends, which relates to the continuity of special educational needs plans, and to amendment 12, tabled by the same Members, which relates to fostering and adoption. I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members on the Committee will be familiar from their constituency casework with the challenges presented by the special educational needs issue.”
“Let me just reply to the first intervention, and then I will be happy to take another. It is definitely true that there is a backlog in granting EHCPs in Essex, for a number of contractual reasons. To be fair to the county council, it now has a new contract and has invested heavily in catching up, but let me get back to the service personnel aspect.”
“As the Library briefing notes on this subject point out: “Future funding implications will be managed within the overall government DEL envelope, such that the government would not expect local authorities to need to fund future special educational needs costs from general funds, once the Statutory Override ends at the end of 2027-28.” In February this year—last month—the Government further announced that they would be writing off 90% of councils’ historic SEND-related deficits, at least up to the year 2025-26. All of that is very costly in terms of general taxation, and I have yet to see a comprehensive estimate of exactly how it will be paid for, but the Committee might feel that, in these very particular and emotive cases, the money is none the less well spent.”
“Now I am about to give this Labour Government some credit. The question of what would happen when the statutory override ran out is obviously still pertinent. In June 2025, they announced that the statutory override would stay in place until the end of the financial year 2027-28—so they extended it. Moreover, in autumn 2025, the Treasury announced that the Government would absorb the cost of the statutory override through central budgets—in other words, via general taxation—once the override expires in 2028.”
“In essence, it meant that although local authorities are required by law to set a balanced budget each year—would that central Government had to live by such discipline!—the one exception whereby they are allowed to run a deficit deliberately is the case of costs arising from SEN education. As we have local elections approaching, it is fair to say—without being partisan or going into the cases of individual councils—that rising SEN costs have placed a number of local authorities that are also local education authorities, such as county councils or metropolitan or London boroughs, under considerable financial strain in recent years. As a result, under the Conservative Government, the statutory override that was introduced in March 2020 and was initially meant to run until March 2023 was extended to the end of March 2026.”
“One of the challenges of dealing with SEN children—this point relates directly to amendment 11—is that providing the additional support they require is often relatively resource-intensive. Local education authorities are therefore often reluctant to speedily grant EHCPs because of the financial pressure that it adds to their budgets, even though 99% of those cases tend to be settled in favour of the parents and the child concerned anyway, sometimes after a gruelling and time-consuming appeal process. Because of the funding pressures placed on local authorities by the growing demand for SEN support and for EHCPs in particular, several years ago the then Conservative Government introduced what was known as the statutory override for local authority budgets.”
“The definition of special educational needs, which is included in the SEND code of practice for England, is brief and very clear: “A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her.” At present, that provision, whether it is in a mainstream educational setting or a dedicated SEN school, is often supported in the most challenging cases by an EHCP. The White Paper estimates that around 5.3% of children in England, or just over one in 20, currently qualify for an EHCP. Although I have not seen specific statistics relating to the military community, it seems logical that the proportion is unlikely to be lower, so at least one in 20 service children, and perhaps even more, qualify for an EHCP.”
“Member for Truro and Falmouth raised the new White Paper. In February 2026, the Government published a long-awaited White Paper on this subject, “Every child achieving and thriving”. There are a number of positive suggestions in that document, and I should like to touch on them, as they potentially affect armed forces personnel. According to the latest estimates, by which I mean the gov.uk statistics concerning SEN and EHCP provision in England for the academic year 2024-25, there are 482,640 children with an education, health and care plan in England. Obviously, the number increases when Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are included in the total; they have different names for the document, but they are essentially quite similar.”
“The school will be called Wolsey Park, although light-heartedly I thought “Francois academy” had a certain ring to it. Others, unfortunately, disagreed. It should provide high-quality education for those very special children. As a result of that process, I have been on an educational journey that has taught me quite a lot about the complexities and challenges of the whole area, which of course also applies to service personnel who have a child, or in some cases children, with special educational needs. I know that this can sometimes be an emotive subject, not least for parents, but I hope I can convince the Committee that what I am attempting to do is not any kind of partisan initiative, but will hopefully be to the benefit of all service personnel and their families in this category. The hon.”
“It therefore seemed to me, after some years of experience, that the only way to cut the Gordian knot was to increase the supply of special needs education. With all the SEN schools in south Essex already heavily oversubscribed, that meant creating a new special needs school from scratch. I spent three years trying to do exactly that. I am delighted to tell the Committee that Wolsey Park school, the first ever SEN school in the Rochford district, is now under construction and will hopefully open in the spring of next year for 150 children with severe or profound learning difficulties—the most challenging SEN cases—in Rayleigh. There will also be an annexe with a further 100 places on the former Chetwood primary school site in South Woodham Ferrers.”
“I appreciate the hon. Lady’s point. Having looked at the White Paper in a fair bit of detail, I have tried to incorporate how the system will change into what I am going to say. There is still a fundamental problem, however, which I hope I can explain to her satisfaction. I have come to understand at least a bit about the complexities of the situation, including the important fact that some 99% of appeals to SEN tribunals for an EHCP to be granted are eventually approved anyway. That is a phenomenally high percentage. It struck me that the system was expending a tremendous amount of resource in trying to exercise the judgment of Solomon as to whether child A was marginally more entitled to a scarce SEN school place than child B. That can apply to the children of service personnel as well.”
“Depending on the Committee’s reaction, I would like to bring back a refined amendment for discussion in Committee of the whole House or on Report. I am signalling in advance that I might withdraw the amendment today and tweak it to bring in those other levels of support.”
“The third and highest tier is specialist support, where support is provided through an EHCP, whether in a mainstream or specialist setting. It may also be provided through a specialist base at this level. Once reforms are completed, EHCPs will be provided only at this level of support. In other words, they will be more difficult to get. According to the White Paper, these layers will be guided by national inclusion standards to be developed in the coming years, which will set out what the layers should look like in practice. Again, as so often, we await further Government guidance. I have deliberately gone into this level of detail because, at the moment, the amendment is drafted only to include EHCPs. To be clear, it is my intention today to deal with this effectively as a probing amendment to promote debate.”
“Amendment 11 relates specifically to the portability of EHCPs, but it is important to understand that in the February 2026 White Paper, the Government delineated three tiers of SEN support, which I will briefly summarise. The first or lower tier is targeted support. That is defined as providing targeted support in the child’s education setting, which is set out in an individual support plan—an ISP, as opposed to an EHCP. That could include small group interventions to develop language skills or pre-teaching key vocabulary to help access the curriculum. The second tier is targeted plus, through which support from the setting will have input from education and health professionals, and may include access to a support base. That will involve time-limited support in an alternative provision or specialist setting.”
“I accept the hon. Lady’s point, but in effect the EHCP relates to the child, and the parents have to fight the system to get it. I am very happy to take her advice on board if I bring the amendment back on Report. Nevertheless—this is why I have placed an emphasis on budgets—the cost of SEN still places a significant in-year pressure on local authorities that are trying to set realistic budgets. Of course, there is the related issue that many Committee members will be familiar with—the cost of home-to-school transport for SEN children, some of whom are driven from home to school, in some cases over quite long distances, often effectively in taxis provided by the local authority.”
“Without taking the Committee for granted in any way, I strongly suspect that Members from all parties would find that situation highly undesirable.”
“As the Minister pointed out in his helpful letter to the Committee of 9 March, the Department for Education has produced—here is that word again—“guidelines” that should help facilitate the passporting, in effect, of EHCPs from one military garrison or equivalent airbase or naval base to another in a different LEA area, so there is already a process in place to do that. The problem, however, is that those guidelines are facilitative rather than mandatory. In other words, if the receiving LEA—in Yorkshire, in our example—was already under serious financial pressure and already had delays in its system for granting EHCPs, it is possible that, despite the armed forces covenant, the receiving LEA might yet be unreasonable and still force the service family to go back to square one and start all over again.”
“Having been a Member of Parliament for 25 years in June, I have learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I say that in the nicest possible way, so I will take the hint, and having gone to the trouble of writing the speech, I will definitely submit it. To continue, if a service family were based at Tidworth and, perhaps after some considerable time, had secured an EHCP from Wiltshire as the local education authority, but were then posted to Catterick, they would potentially have to go through the process all over again in Yorkshire. It could be another two years of agony to get back to where they already were before they moved.”
“The spirit is simple: one of the key principles of the armed forces covenant is that service personnel should suffer no disadvantage relative to their civilian counterparts by virtue of their service, and I believe that that should apply equally in the field of special needs education as elsewhere. Having presented my case, and so as not to try the Committee’s patience, I genuinely look forward to hearing other members of the Committee, especially the Minister when he sums up, and their views of amendment 11. I shall not discuss amendment 12 now, but will let someone else have a go. Perhaps, Mr Efford, you will call me to speak briefly to that amendment later. Other than that, I rest my case.”
“I hope Committee members appreciate that for children with certain SEN conditions, moving educational settings can be a disturbing experience. That is why I put that provision into the amendment. I hope the Committee will forgive me for having gone into considerable detail about all this, but special educational needs is perforce a rather complicated subject. Nevertheless, I hope that the Committee can understand what I and my hon. Friends seek to achieve here, and I hope that we might somehow be able to co-opt the Committee on a cross-party basis to bring it through.”
“In essence, amendment 11 seeks to make provision for the Secretary of State to produce guidelines within six months such that the receiving authority must accept that transfer as legitimate and seek to passport across whatever benefits were provided for in the EHCP, or in the national equivalent in the devolved Administrations. On a point of detail, as an EHCP usually includes a named school for that child to go to, whether mainstream or specialist, the service family should also be given a reasonable period of time in order to help negotiate and select a named school in the receiving area, ideally before their posting comes into effect, so that the child could, as it were, know their fate and begin to establish links in the new school.”
“They would rather leave the service of the Crown and keep the bird in the hand—for want of a better phrase—staying with the EHCP that they had, than move to a new location, roll the dice and start all over again. That is the fundamental difference. An absolute principle of the covenant—as, to be fair, the hon. Member for South Ribble rightly elucidated—is that service personnel and their families should suffer no disadvantage as a result of their military service. This is a very specific example of where they do, and we called the report “Stick or Twist?” because, in this case, that is the dilemma that they would face. I have done my best, I hope, to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, so I will try to move towards a conclusion without trying your patience, Mr Efford.”
“The hon. Member is making my point for me. In the civilian context they might not be ordered to move, but in a military context their whole unit might move, so they do not have a choice. If they are going to follow the drum—follow the flag—they have to go from Tidworth to Catterick. If, therefore, the LEA covering Catterick were difficult about it, they would have to start the journey all over again. When I was doing the “Stick or Twist?” report, I spoke to a number of service personnel, so we had anecdotal evidence, although I am afraid not a league table. We certainly spoke to people who were contemplating leaving the military because they were in exactly that situation and simply could not face the challenge of having to move and start all over again.”
“Also, they would have to commit to staying in the new local authority area for a minimum of two to three years after they had adopted—a potential total of more than five years. That is clearly not feasible for a military family, used to two-year posting cycles. Our amendment 12 would therefore simply give military families the same rights as civilian families, who do not have to move wherever the nation needs them. It is very similar in essence to the point about EHCPs, but representations have been made to me by that family and others, so I undertook to draft a parallel amendment that specifically covers fostering and adoption. I hope the Committee can understand the spirit of what I am trying to achieve. With that, I rest my case.”
“I did not want to push my luck, but briefly, amendment 12 is similar in spirit and relates to portability and adoption. In this instance, I want to raise a specific case of two serving officers. They asked not to be identified, but perhaps the Minister will take my word that it is a genuine case; if he wants me to provide the details privately afterwards, I am happy to do so. This married couple, both serving majors based at Shrivenham, have been looking to adopt. They are both due to be posted to PJHQ—permanent joint headquarters —in Northwood at the conclusion of their course, in under six months. They reached out to their future local authority to start the adoption process, but they were told that they could not start the process unless they had been living in that local authority area for at least a year.”
“I am not quite convinced by the Minister’s argument. I understand what he is saying, but if Corporal Tommy Atkins, his wife and their special needs child in Wiltshire are posted to Edinburgh castle, Fort George, Leuchars or wherever in Scotland, that is not their fault. The amendment would help to reduce bureaucracy by requiring the receiving LEA to take the EHCP. The fact that it was created in England does not mean that it should not be valid in Scotland. The currency we use is valid in both nations, so I am not quite convinced by the Minister’s argument—and either way, it does not help the service personnel or the child much, does it?”
“No, Mr Efford, and I was just going to say why not. I tipped my hand earlier and said that I probably would not press it. I will accept the Minister’s kind offer of a meeting to discuss the issues in amendments 11 and 12. I hope I have managed to convince the Committee that I have done my homework, if nothing else. I will not press either amendment.”
“I am loath to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because he is making an extremely powerful speech. I pay tribute to his service. When I was the Veterans Minister a decade ago, I looked at the issue. One thing that we looked at closely was the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, which is that some veterans leave in very good mental shape—they have an exit medical and they are fine—but a few years later there can be a trigger event, such as the sudden death of a parent, and suddenly all the suppressed anxieties and difficulties seen in combat can come out very quickly. That person can deteriorate extremely fast. Is the hon. Gentleman’s proposed appointment partly intended to address that problem?”
“To reinforce what the Minister is saying, Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory, who for many years was the controller of SSAFA, always used to make the point that while clearly some people suffer as a result of their military career, as the Minister admits, the vast bulk emerge in good shape, remain in good shape and benefit immensely from their time in service. I put on record what Lieutenant General Gregory, the head of SSAFA until recently, said, if only to back up absolutely everything the Minister is saying.”
“The Minister has made a strong argument. I place on the record my admiration for the three veterans commissioners for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all of whom are excellent at what they do. I seem to recall—I do not have the Hansard here—that when we were debating the Armed Forces Commissioner Act 2025, I asked the Minister when we would get an English veterans commissioner, and he was pretty clear that we would get one. The Minister today has intimated that we will probably still get one, so he is being consistent, but can he give us some idea of the timing?”
“That vital intergovernmental relationship has effectively broken down, and the Prime Minister is simply too weak to bang heads together and force the plan to be published.”
“Then we come to the delay to the defence investment plan, which is simply unconscionable with not one war under way, but two. When the Government published the strategic defence review last year, they delayed most of the decisions on equipment capabilities to a subsequent defence investment plan, which we were promised would be published in the autumn. We were then faithfully promised it would be published by Christmas, and here we are in late March, all promises broken, and there is still no DIP. Ministers have been claiming for months that they have been working flat-out on this plan. What would have happened if they had not been trying? The reality is that we still do not have this document, because the Ministry of Defence is totally and utterly at war with His Majesty’s Treasury.”
“The same obsession with human rights from a Prime Minister who once described himself as a human rights lawyer first and a politician second—he was not kidding there, was he?—has also led to the utterly despicable position of the Government, in their Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, seeking to pursue our veterans through the courts via a process of lawfare and two-tier justice. That is while alleged terrorists, who those veterans were sent to the Province to fight, effectively walk free with letters of comfort in their pockets. Not only is that morally wrong on a whole range of levels, but it has a debilitating effect on recruitment and retention, especially within our own special forces community. That is an area where, even to this day—as I am sure the Minister for the Armed Forces would agree—our nation remains world-class.”
“We can throw in the Pelindaba treaty on nuclear non-proliferation, which Mauritius has signed and will prevent basing of nuclear weapons on the islands anyway, and, crucially, the 1966 Anglo-American treaty, which means that the United States has a formal written veto over Labour’s deal with Mauritius. The Americans are now almost certain to exercise that veto after we denied them the initial use of the runway, which our Ministers allegedly sought to protect in the first place. Ministers must surely know that the whole benighted deal is as dead as a dodo, and still they cannot bring themselves to admit it. They are totally and utterly in denial over Chagos.”
“Even the Government’s then telecommunications Minister, the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant) confirmed that in a written answer to me a year ago on 12 February 2025. Thirdly, the Government’s last trench, as cited on Second Reading of their Diego Garcia Bill, was the desperate argument that we could somehow lose a case under the UN convention on the law of the sea at the international tribunal for the law of the sea. However, article 298(b) of the UNCLOS treaty, to which we are a co-signatory, states clearly that we have an opt-out in the event of any disputes concerning “disputes concerning military activities, including military activities by government vessels and aircraft engaged in non-commercial service”. Quod erat demonstrandum.”
“First, when we signed up to the International Court of Justice, we specifically included an opt-out for any cases involving current or former Commonwealth countries. Any judgment by the ICJ—even a mandatory one, and we should remember that this one is only advisory—would still not be legally binding on the UK, because of that crystal clear opt-out. Secondly, the Government attempted to argue that via the International Telecommunications Union, which is a UN agency like the ICJ, we could somehow lose control of our military spectrum. Again, that is absolute nonsense, because article 48 of the ITU treaty, to which we are a co-signatory, states clearly: “Member states retain their entire freedom with regard to military radio installations.” Again, that legal threat simply does not exist.”
“The matter cropped up yet again at the Liaison Committee yesterday, when the Prime Minister was clearly floundering about the ability of his Government to respond to emerging threats and about why the defence investment plan—the DIP—has still not been published. Nowhere is the complete lack of strategic thinking from this Government more abundantly clear than in their barmy proposal to spend £35 billion of British taxpayers’ money to lease back the vital strategic outpost of Diego Garcia, which belongs to us in the first place. There is no credible legal threat to the sovereignty of Diego Garcia, and certainly none that would justify the expenditure of that much of taxpayers’ money. Instead, that money should be spent directly on our own defence. Why do I say that the threat is not credible?”
“That has terrible echoes of the so-called 10-year rule of the 1920s, and we all know what happened after that. The all-party, Labour-led House of Commons Defence Committee, with its excellent Chair the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), recently accused the Government of proceeding “at a glacial pace” in improving Britain’s war preparedness. As my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) reminded us, on 10 March, after a classified briefing, the Committee issued a joint statement and urged hitting 3% on defence spending in this Parliament. That is already Conservative party policy.”
“Tonight’s debate is all the more pressing given the Government’s fundamental failure to display the requisite sense of urgency that is now clearly required. As an example, the Government’s much-vaunted strategic defence review, published last July, states on page 43: “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.” That is nine years from now. Our Chief of the General Staff is on record as saying that he believes we might have to fight Russia by 2027 and the First Sea Lord estimates only a couple of years after that, yet it is the official policy of His Majesty’s Government that we will be prepared to fight a peer enemy almost a decade from now.”
“When I spoke from this Dispatch Box barely a month ago, I had literally just returned, hot foot, from Ukraine. Those who were here that evening might recall that I conveyed to the House a personal warning from the Speaker of the Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament: “No one knows the Russians better than us. If we fall, you and your friends are next.” —[ Official Report , 25 February 2026; Vol. 781, c. 423.] Not only is that war in Ukraine sadly ongoing—and has been for 12 years, not four years—we now face a very challenging situation because of the two concurrent conflicts in the middle east and Ukraine. Yet again, as we debate defence in this House, the plastic patriots of Reform are absolutely nowhere to be seen.”
“They have been absolutely knocking themselves out to get that one away. I apologise to the House that I have not had the opportunity to read it yet, but I hope that it contains one very firm recommendation: “If you are going to maintain effective diplomatic relations with your strongest ally, the United States, whatever you do, don’t send to Washington an ambassador who had to resign from the Cabinet not once but twice for effectively being a crook and who has now had to be fired third time around.””
“Do Labour Members not realise that they can also see this in Moscow, in Beijing and, indeed, in Tehran? If Labour Members believe, as I always have, that the role of the armed forces is to save life by preventing war and by persuading any potential aggressor that they could not succeed were they to attack us or our allies, how in God’s name are we supposed to deter the likes of Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping if we are unable to publish the forward equipment plan for our own armed forces that is now nearly a year overdue? On what planet do Labour MPs think that this is an act of credible and effective deterrence? To be fair to the Government, they have published something today. Just a few hours ago, they published the defence diplomacy strategy. They have been working flat out on it for months.”