Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,779 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
The Highbridge bus passenger group in my constituency has raised the issues of Sunday services either not existing or starting so late that people cannot get to work, bus services being put on in the summer during the tourist season but not being available in the winter, and poor connections for rural communities. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, without additional funding, this bus Bill will not solve those problems?
As we have this knockabout, what troubles me is that the House has a very important job to do. We are talking about the expansion of nuclear weapons—we assume, because we have not actually read the review, even though journalists, and members of the public through the newspapers, have been given briefings on this—and we wanted to analyse the review so that we could ask sensible questions. We will be in here for this urgent question, for the next urgent question and for the statement. When does the right hon. Lady expect the House to get a chance to digest this 130-page report before we ask questions following the statement? Everybody else in the country seems to have been able to do so.
The review has identified a gap in our capability to have tactical nuclear weapons in place, and that gap will have been noted elsewhere, among our adversaries. Will the Minister assure the House that the gap that has now been identified in British military power is being filled by other NATO allies until we are able to fill it ourselves?
I welcome the defence review—it sets a direction and there is much in it—but I do not agree with paragraph 20 on page 68: “Defence should only run training and education itself when it cannot be obtained externally at suitable quality and cost.” I think that ties in with paragraph 4 on page 105: “As it reconsiders its training estate needs, the Navy should ensure there is ‘capacity by design’”. I worry that that would mean the closing of the Dartmouth academy. Let me explain why I have linked those two statements. I am sure the Secretary of State has visited the United States naval officer training academy in Annapolis. The model there brings a real fellowship to people who want to stay in the armed forces because of all the things offered through the degrees and so on. I will perhaps expand on those comments when we have a further debate, but will the Secretary of State give a reassurance that great institutions and buildings such as Dartmouth will not be closed under this review?
I think the word the Leader of the House was looking for was “sorry”. There is much in this place which, as we know, is complicated and arcane, but the ministerial code is crystal clear on this point. The job of the Leader of the House is to represent this place and Back Benchers of all parties around the Cabinet table to make sure that this place hears things of such vital importance first. As important as public transport is, may I suggest that the defence of the realm is a little more important than the Government’s buses Bill, which will have no Divisions this evening? Will the Leader of the House please tell us why she thinks No. 10 is getting this so wrong and what she is doing to try to put it right?
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Given the seriousness of the issues—the defence of the realm is the first duty of Government, as we know—is there any merit in you, sir, considering suspending the House to allow those who are to be called to speak on behalf of their respective parties at least the courtesy that has clearly been extended to industry leaders and journalists? I believe that there is a precedent for that.
I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Can I push the Secretary of State on the answer that he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) about HMS Collingwood? My constituents will look for reassurance that it will have a long-term place in the defence estate. I also ask the Secretary of State about recommendation 40, which says: “The Royal Navy should explore alternative approaches to augmenting the Royal Fleet Auxiliary to deliver a balanced, cost-effective fleet that maximises the UK’s warfighting capabilities.” The RFA is already stretched; I have been on visits to the RFA where it has told me that it is stretched with the operational requirements placed on it. It sounds to me like this is a loss of operational independence. Will the Secretary of State commit to an expansion of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary consisting of ships managed purely by the Royal Navy under the defence estate?
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse, and pleased to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. Today we consider the Government’s plan to go on subsidising Drax. Drax is of course not mentioned in the draft regulations, and Ministers had hoped to sneak through this contract for difference without much scrutiny, but we have a responsibility to examine what is actually a very significant change to our country’s energy system. The draft regulations will push ahead with the Government’s four-year extension of the subsidy scheme for Drax, from 2027 to 2031. Such a major move is being made without proper debate or awareness of all the facts. Ministers and Drax itself have kept vital information hidden from scrutiny, covering up the true costs and business practices of the company. Concern has been expressed about Drax in both Houses of Parliament in recent months. The Public Accounts Committee says that Ofgem allows Drax to “mark its own homework” when it comes to subsidy claims. The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has criticised the Government for not sharing key documents about the true nature and cost of their dealings with Drax. Just a couple of months ago, the company was taken to court by a whistleblower who claimed that Drax had made attempts to “deliberately conceal” the unsustainable sources of its wood and “had likely broken its legal obligations owed to its government funders”. Thanks to the investigations by BBC “Panorama” and others, we know Drax’s behaviour has not been honest. Drax executives have been caught misleading the media, covering up reports and manipulating evidence. Ofgem fined Drax £25 million for inaccurately reporting data about its sources of wood. We have seen evidence that Drax sourced wood from primary forests in British Columbia and elsewhere. There is more than enough cause for many to doubt the ethical integrity of Drax and whether it should receive more public money. Before presenting the draft regulations to the House, Ministers should have done their due diligence and published this evidence, so I ask the Minister these questions. When will we see the legal documents associated with the recent court case? When will we see the 2022 KPMG report on Drax’s accounts, which the Prime Minister said on the Floor of the House he would look at? When will we see the Ofgem audit? When will we see the NESO modelling justifying the extension of the subsidy scheme?
Forgive me, Mrs Hobhouse, although the main recipient of the subsidy that we are talking about is Drax itself.
The Government Whip could stand and refer to the names of the companies in receipt of the subsidies, if she so wishes.
And, as I say, the main recipient of the public subsidy will be Drax. When will we see the NESO modelling justifying the extension of this subsidy scheme? When will the Government publish details of their new sustainability criteria and means of enforcement to ensure that biomass is properly sourced? The Minister should also answer why the Department only sought the advice of the Subsidy Advice Unit on its plans last Friday, knowing that we would be voting on the draft regulations today. The SAU is now running a two-week consultation and will not publish its report until 10 July. There should not be a vote on extending the subsidy until Parliament and the public have been able to examine thoroughly the SAU’s findings. These are big questions that should have been answered before the draft regulations were debated. Beyond those concerns, we must also ask ourselves whether subsidising companies like Drax is good energy policy. The evidence shows that it is clearly not. The company that I have been discussing is an expensive white elephant for which we have been paying ever since the Energy Secretary first held his post back in 2009. Since the ramp-up that he authorised, the company has cut down 300 million trees, six times more than in the entire New Forest. The company has received £6.5 billion of public subsidy. In the nonsensical world of net zero, it has been classed as clean energy, but it is far from being a source of clean energy. It is a plant for burning wood imported from forests across the world. As new forests are planted to offset the emissions from chopping down the trees, turning them into pellets and burning them, we are supposed to believe that it is clean. The truth is that the plant we are discussing produces four times the carbon dioxide emitted from our last coal plant, which itself produced twice as many emissions as gas. The imported wood has come from rare, at-risk and irreplaceable forests and arrives here on diesel-powered ships.
I certainly will, but we are talking about legislation permitting the subsidy of biomass. It is not cheap to do so; we pay £500 million for the privilege, and the draft regulations will make it even more costly for taxpayers. Every megawatt-hour produced will now cost £160—more than double the cost of gas power—up from £138 before. Burning these trees is raising the cost of wood globally while reducing biodiversity in key areas and eroding natural carbon capture. It gets worse. The sixth carbon budget demands the removal of 23 million tonnes of emissions to avoid even more painful behaviour changes from the general public. This company is being used as an expensive “get out of jail” card, with more public money potentially coming down the line for carbon capture. It was for those reasons that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) withdrew Government support for schemes such as this last year, which led the chief executive officer of the company that we have been discussing to call her “reckless and irresponsible”. Cutting down and burning trees in the name of saving the planet is not just reckless and irresponsible, but complete madness. If Members here today believe that this is environmentalism and a solution to climate change, I have a bridge to sell them. The Climate Change Act 2008 has created a complex web of targets, quotas and regulations, as well as policies set by a monomaniacal and unaccountable quango tying the hands of elected Governments and twisting policy out of shape. It is producing an energy system that is less secure and more expensive, while doing nothing to prevent rising carbon emissions worldwide. That is why we will vote against the draft regulations. I urge colleagues from all parties to join us and show that they are truly committed to a secure and rational energy system, and not throw more money at the Energy Secretary and his very costly mistakes.
If the Minister is interested in the security of supply, why will the Government not allow new licences for oil and gas in the North sea?
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Order. Questions are very long, and the answers are getting longer as well. We need to get many colleagues in, so can we please keep it short?
Order. I call the Secretary of State.
Order. The statement has been going on for well over an hour and we will have to conclude in the next 20 minutes, so questions will have to be short, as will the answers.
One of the things that feels so pernicious about scrapping the national “Get around for £2” bus fare cap is that, while certain parts of the country that were given long-term settlements under the last Government—sometimes of up to five years—have been able to maintain the cap, large parts of the country have not been able to do so. Does that not go to show that the last Government were prepared to work with people from all political parties, but this feels particularly pernicious because it is really targeted at areas that have not traditionally been Labour-supporting?
Recommendation 26 sensibly calls for the expansion of in-school cadet forces. Will the Defence Secretary work with the Department for Education to reverse its penny-pinching cuts, and reinstate school staff instructor grants to help extend cadet forces into more state schools?
Six of Britain’s most senior police officers have warned that the Government’s actions are making it harder to keep our streets safe. From the damaging jobs tax to releasing criminals early, Labour is pushing forces to the brink. Does the Home Secretary agree with Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley that he will be forced to cut 1,700 police officers, PCSOs and staff this year?
We did not get to whether Mark Rowley was right or wrong, and I notice that the Home Secretary forgot to mention the hundreds of millions being gobbled up by Labour’s jobs tax, or the fact that police numbers reached record levels under the last Government. That aside, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has published its anti-racism commitment, saying that racial equality does not mean treating everyone the same or being colour blind, and calling for arrest rates to be artificially engineered to be the same across racial groups. Does the Home Secretary agree that the police should respond to people’s actions regardless of race? If so, why did the policing Minister endorse this barmy document?
Order. May I clarify whether this is a live case?
I remind Members that they must bob if they want to catch my eye.
Order. I remind the hon. Lady that if she refers to another Member, she should have given that Member advance warning.
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. When I worked on defence reviews at the Ministry of Defence, they all had up and down arrows. From what I have read of this defence review in the brief time we have had with it, there seem to be a lot of up arrows; I could really find only one down arrow, which was about not extending the Dreadnoughts’ out-of-service date beyond 2050. Does the Secretary of State want to roll the pitch a bit and indicate where capabilities might be de-emphasised, or indeed lost?
On 28 April, the Minister was clear with this House that the framework for local grooming gang inquiries and Baroness Casey’s audit would both be published in May. It is now June. Presumably there is a new timeline for publishing them, so will the Minister share it with us, please?
I congratulate the Minister on his robust stance on the UK nuclear deterrent, which I welcome. From a Whip’s perspective, I am interested to know how he plans to bring his parliamentary party on side when so many have voted against the nuclear deterrent and Trident.
T2. On Saturday, 1,200 illegal migrants poured into the United Kingdom by small boat. Many gave spurious reasons to stay here, so when will the Government repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 for immigration cases and take back control of our borders?
I very much welcome the aspirations of this strategic defence review and welcome the statement on page 7 that, “We will develop a new Defence Investment Plan”. However, as the Secretary of State knows from all the Budgets and fiscal events he has sat through, he cannot give the House a categorical assurance over future spending commitments, so will he make it clear to the House what decisions he is prepared to make with respect to the existing commitments such that he can secure that additional funding at subsequent spending reviews and Budgets? I hope that when he comes clean completely to this House, he will make clear that there will be considerable ongoing investment in the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, which does an enormous amount to secure understanding of future technologies in the defence arena.
Most military operations require an element of surprise, and the Government certainly achieved that by delivering the news of the return of tactical nuclear weapons through the medium of The Sunday Times. That marmalade-dropping moment aside, what impact will the apparent purchase of F-35 Lightning fighters from America have on the global combat air programme that we are putting together with Italy and Japan—or should I wait for the “You read it here last” strategic defence review?
When my hon. Friend talks about the increased risk smaller local authorities would face through franchising, he could be talking about my local authority, Isle of Wight council. Does he see anything in the Bill that is appealing to small unitary authorities, or is this really just a Bill for bigger metropolitan areas and large towns?
(Urgent question): To ask the Leader of the House if she will make a statement on Government announcements outside the House of Commons.
Is that really the best that the Leader of the House can do—an “I speak your weight” autocue recitation of points that she has made in her three previous attempts to deal with occasions when the House has been embarrassed and disregarded over the last three weeks alone? It was a hopeless miscue of a response that bordered on a contempt of Parliament itself—yet another attempt to change the subject, blame others and distract attention from the latest fiasco. Evidently the defence of the realm is not important enough to merit making its way up the list of priorities in the Government’s media handouts. Lord Robertson himself, as you have said, Mr Speaker—and I am amazed that you had to intervene on the Leader of the House during her own remarks—would be ashamed and embarrassed to think that this was being done in his name. Just three weeks ago, the Leader of the House had to be dragged to the House over the Government’s briefing on the immigration White Paper outside the House. That came just days after they had done the same in respect of prisoner recall, the UK-US trade deal and, of course, the Chagos islands. That followed instances involving tuition fees, planning reforms and even the fiscal rules, on which you, Mr Speaker, had to reprove and chastise the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now we have seen the unhappy sight of the Secretary of State for Defence, no less, extensively briefing the media on the decisions to deploy airborne nuclear weapons and build the next generation of submarines, before coming to the House. Perhaps, as I have said, they were not important enough to merit a mention beforehand. Journalists have been able to read the strategic defence review since 10.30 am, while the Opposition were prevented from seeing the document until five minutes ago, precisely in order to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. All this is manifestly in breach of the ministerial code, the Nolan principles and, of course, Labour’s own manifesto, demonstrating the Government’s arrogance and complacency and their disdain for the House and for democratic accountability, and this from—the clue is in the title—the Leader of the House, whose job is to protect and safeguard the House and its Members. Unfortunately, her obvious floundering just now made the point far better than I can. When did the Leader of the House know about these announcements, and what steps did she take to prevent the media briefings and ensure that the announcements were made to the House of Commons first? Will she now apologise for yet another high-handed Government decision for which she alone is fully responsible, in this instance, to the House?
The Leader of the House has just told us that the document was “trailed” to journalists, but at 10.41 this morning The Daily Telegraph published a long article in which its authors clearly set out that they had read the entire document. At the same time, the shadow Secretary of State for Defence was refused an advance copy of it, even under Privy Counsellor rules. Why do the Government appear to trust journalists with national security, but not the shadow Secretary of State?
This has been a really enjoyable debate. One of the great benefits of winding up is that we are forced to sit and listen to absolutely everything. Most speeches I enjoyed, but there were one or two that I did not. It is up to hon. Members to work out whether I am talking about them. The contributions to this debate have been enlightening, because they have exposed some clear differences of economic and political philosophy among the parties. The Liberal Democrats, one after another, argued for improved services, particularly rural services, but were less clear about how to fund them. On the Labour Benches, there was huge optimism and enthusiasm under the perhaps mistaken belief that the Bill, in itself, will improve passenger services for their constituents. The truth is that when we look at the terms of the Bill, it is clear that the focus of its reforms is not primarily on improving bus services for passengers—quite the contrary. In the other place, Labour whipped its peers to vote against what is now clause 1, which makes the improvement of the performance, accessibility and quality of bus passenger services in Great Britain the purpose of the Bill. I send birthday wishes to the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) and make a plea on her behalf for her Whips not to be too harsh on her for her support of clause 1. Perhaps she was unaware that it was opposed by her own party in the other place. Why do the Government not want to put performance improvement at the heart of the Bill? Because that is not the Bill’s primary intention. Labour’s true focus was set out in its background briefing to the King’s Speech. It is about “accelerating the bus franchising process…building on the success of…public bus services still in operation.” No mention there of passengers, performance, improvements or cost control; it is the structure of the bus providers that has excited the Government. They intend to increase the number of municipal bus companies, presumably because they think that civil servants are better equipped to run efficient bus companies than private sector operators. I can see that, in some examples, that is possible. I spoke to the managing director of the Warrington bus company last week and I was impressed by the performance figures, although they are very unusual. However, the Government’s faith does not translate into confidence that the new municipal bus companies could win a competitive tender, as the Bill, perhaps inadvertently, allows local authorities to do away with competition. Extraordinarily, as currently drafted, it would allow any local authority to first create a new municipal bus company and then grant itself a franchise, without any competitive process. If that is deliberate, it really would be the triumph of socialist political ideology: that the state is somehow better. Franchising is an alternative solution, potentially allowing greater co-ordination of transport provision, but it comes at a cost. It takes commercial risk away from the bus operators and puts it in the hands of local authorities. It requires dynamic contract, design and management skills. It is necessarily complex and, if done badly, risks the removal of the innovative power of the private sector, replacing it with state direction. Let me say again what my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) made abundantly clear at the opening of this debate: we do not oppose bus franchising in principle. We support it, in fact, when it delivers value for money and, above all, when it improves services for passengers. But what we have seen from the Government today is a refusal to engage with the very real risks embedded in the Bill. The existing 2017 legislation has been referred to more than once during the debate. It recognises that mayoral combined authorities have the scale and resources needed to manage the development of franchise model. However, even here, political ineptitude and mayoral hubris can make a mess of things. Andy Burnham’s Bee Network has been touted as the socialist example to follow—[Interruption.] I hear it from the Government Front Bench right now, but let us have a look at what has actually happened in Manchester. Buses that cost the private sector £180,000 cost Andy Burnham £220,000. Bus depots that cost the private sector less than £4 million cost Andy Burnham more than £12 million—in fact, nearly £13 million. Private sector bus companies train sufficient staff for their needs while Andy’s team, having failed to secure enough trained drivers, is in the absurd position of having to pay more than 400 agency staff to drive their buses at inflated hourly rates and with accommodation costs on top. The cost to the taxpayer is estimated at £17.4 million a year and rising. Who is focusing on cost reductions in Manchester? Well, it is not the bus companies—it is not their job to reduce costs any more. In fact, the bigger the overall contract cost, the more profit they make. Require them to give above-inflation pay rises to unionised staff, as Andy Burnham has done? No problem. It goes on the bill, and they get a profit percentage on top. Require them to donate to charity, as Andy Burnham has done? No problem. Just add it to the bill, and get a profit percentage on top. Profits go up as the size of the contract increases. While Labour claims to have increased value for money because of the much-touted reduced profit percentage, the taxpayer is quietly fleeced. This is the doublespeak of Labour’s “value for money”. What is the real cost of Labour’s return to “On the Buses”? Had Andy Burnham stuck to his own business plan, the Bee Network should have been profitable after the transition period, but because of his self-aggrandising hubris and statist ineptitude, the loss for this year alone is forecast to be £226 million and it is likely to rise further in the years ahead—that is £1 billion in under four years. And that is in a mayoral combined authority, although admittedly a Labour one. Has this worked to increase traveller numbers? Between 2022 and 2024, Greater Manchester has experienced a 34.34% increase in ridership, according to Government figures, but let’s look at my county of Norfolk, which has a Conservative county council: its enhanced partnership has increased ridership over the same period by 43%. Let’s look at Essex—again, a Conservative-run council with an enhanced partnership, which has increased ridership by 52.3%. In the wider context, Greater Manchester has in fact underperformed. Why does the Bill remove the crucial safeguards that ensured franchising was rolled out by authorities with at least a notional capacity to deliver? Why has Labour walked away from giving the Secretary of State the power to intervene if the worst happens and services fail? Why does the Bill not require a competitive tender process when local authorities decide to run their own bus companies? Labour appears content to let any council, regardless of size, experience, expertise or cash reserves, take on these huge financial and organisational risks. That is not empowering local government; that is setting it up to fail. And that is before we talk about money. These franchising powers are meaningless without the money to implement them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington made clear, just £243 million of the £1 billion promised by Labour is destined for actual bus services. That does not even satisfy Andy Burnham’s bus habit for a year. What about the rest of the country? Without billions—literally billions—of pounds to back up this Bill, it is just posturing. So where is the money? The answer is that there isn’t any. The Government have scrapped the Conservatives’ £2 bus fare, which was genuine financial support focused 100% on passengers, and now it is rumoured that even the £3 bus fare is due for the chop. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that. The Government tell us they have a plan for passengers, but it seems that their plan for passengers is to make them pay more. The Bill needs to have the improvement of passenger services at its heart. It needs to encourage the innovation and efficiency of the private sector. It needs to consider vulnerable SEND children and their educational needs. It needs to recognise the huge financial risks of franchising and municipal bus ownership, and to provide appropriate oversight and support. Most importantly, it needs a Government who are prepared to think again in Committee and be open to improvements to the Bill.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice on the following, as I seek to set the record straight. At the weekend I became aware of an email sent to a group of journalists from the Ministry of Defence, which stated: “We will have a reading room open for you from 1030 to Horse Guards” on Monday. “You will have the opportunity to read through the full embargoed SDR publication”. After seeing that, I emailed the Secretary of State’s office on Sunday afternoon and asked whether, given that journalists would see the publication at 10.30, we could be sent a copy at 9 am. They refused. They told us we would get a copy of the statement—that is, the oral statement to the House—in the usual way. I then repeatedly asked the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is present in the Chamber, if we could get a copy of the SDR. He refused. I have now been told something else, which is that representatives of industry were allowed to see the SDR at 10.30. This is a multibillion-pound industry that is highly market-sensitive. Mr Speaker, can I ask your advice on this point? As I understand it, the Vote Office has multiple physical hard copies of the strategic defence review, which I have not read at all, my colleagues have not read and no other parliamentary colleagues have read. It was given to me only as I came into the Chamber, so obviously I have not been able to read it. Journalists have had five hours. It is unacceptable. Can I ask if the Vote Office could, exceptionally, be asked to release it now?
I am grateful to the Chair of the Defence Committee for securing this important urgent question. Following comments in the press last month from Sir Simon Case, former head of the civil service, that the UK should consider air-launched nuclear capabilities, I wrote in the Express on 25 May that our nuclear deterrent needed to be made even more resilient, including the continuous at-sea deterrent, but also “potentially, by diversifying our methods for delivering nuclear strike.” I believe that it would be right to diversify our methods of delivering nuclear strike, because we have to recognise the threat posed by Russia in particular, and it has the ability to operate nuclear weapons at tactical and theatre levels. To deter effectively, we must be able do the same. We support in principle moves to widen our nuclear capabilities, on the assumption that we do so working closely with our NATO allies. However, I gently suggest to the Government that they may need our support to carry that decision. I remind the Minister that eight of his Front-Bench colleagues voted against the renewal of our nuclear deterrent in 2016, including the Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), and others. If the Minister was hoping that he could rely on the Liberal Democrats, let me say that not only did all but one of their MPs vote against Trident renewal in 2016, but as a condition of supporting the coalition Government, they shamefully demanded that we delayed the renewal of our nuclear submarines, leaving us to rely on older boats for far longer. That led to longer maintenance periods, and above all, directly contributed to the punishingly long tours of duty for our CASD naval crews. Having had the privilege of serving as the Minister responsible for nuclear, and having chaired the Defence Nuclear Board, I understand why the Minister needs to choose his words carefully, but can he at least recognise that 204 days for a patrol is far too long, and that in addition to any plan to diversify the deterrent launch method, we must ensure that our strategic CASD enterprise has an effective and productive industrial base, delivering faster maintenance times? Finally, will he confirm what the estimated cost will be of delivering an air-launched option, and say by when he would expect that to be in service?
Before I turn to the substance, in responding to my point of order, the Secretary of State said that when he was in opposition, “We were not offered a briefing”, and “We had no advance copy of the defence review.”—[Interruption.]
The Secretary of State said that this occurred when I was a Defence Minister. Actually, in March 2023, before I became a Minister, he was invited to a reading room on the morning of publication. On the Defence Command Paper refresh in July 2023, when I was Minister, he said he did not get a copy. I can confirm, and I am happy to substantiate this, that a hard copy was dropped off at his office at 9.30 am that morning. I asked for a copy of the SDR repeatedly on Sunday and earlier this morning, and we were not given one. I have not even read the document, and I am the shadow Secretary of State. I can add that some of the biggest defence companies in this land were given copies at 8 am this morning. They have had hours to read it; I have not read it at all. This is meant to be a democracy and this meant to be a Parliament. How can we hold the Government to account? While the Government may have tried to hide the document from us for as long as possible today, they cannot hide what has happened in plain sight, which is a total unravelling of their strategic defence review because, quite simply, they do not have a plan to fund it. An SDR without the funding is an empty wish list. The ships and submarines it talks of are a fantasy fleet. The reviewers were clear in The Telegraph today that the commitment to 3% “established” the affordability of the plan. On Thursday, the Defence Secretary said in an interview with The Times that reaching 3% was a “certainty”, but by the weekend he had completely backtracked to 3% being just an “ambition”. Today, the Prime Minister was unable to give a date by which 3% would be reached. Why? Because the Treasury has not approved a plan to pay for it. The Secretary of State and I have both been Treasury Ministers and Defence Ministers, and he knows as well as I do how this works. For the Treasury to approve a plan, it will have to feature billions of pounds of cuts to existing MOD programmes, so this SDR has dodged the big decisions on existing capabilities. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the so-called defence investment plan to be published in the autumn will set out the cuts needed for the Treasury to agree a plan to get to 3%? We should have had those details in the SDR today. Can the Secretary of State also confirm that the total budget for new measures announced in this SDR over the next five years is less than £10 billion? That is less than we will be spending to lease back our own base on Diego Garcia. Is it not the hard truth that the Government are unable to guarantee the money our armed forces need, but the one plan they can guarantee is to give billions to Mauritius for land we currently own freehold? And can he finally tell us what percentage of the payment for Chagos will be met by the MOD? He has never told us before. Let me suggest an alternative path to the Secretary of State: first, guaranteeing to hit 3% and doing so in this Parliament, not the next; secondly, getting a grip on our welfare budget, rather than competing with Reform to expand it; thirdly, saving billions by scrapping their crazy Chagos plan. That is a plan to back our armed forces and make our country stronger from the party that actually last spent 3%, in 1996. The terrible shame of this SDR unravelling is that this was an extraordinary—[Interruption.] It was a Labour Government who came in, in 1997; I do not know what Labour Members are laughing about. The terrible shame of this SDR unravelling is that this was an extraordinary opportunity to overhaul our armed forces in a world of growing threats. Only yesterday, we saw the Ukrainians once again demonstrating, with their audacious attack on Russian nuclear bombers, how profoundly war has changed. And yet it is true that some of the best long-range one-way attack drones used in Ukraine have not been built by Ukraine, but by UK defence SMEs. We are incredibly well placed to be a leading nation in the development of uncrewed forces, but how many military drones have the Government actually purchased for our own military since the general election? In a written answer to me, the answer was not 3,000 or 300, but three. They have purchased three reconnaissance drones since the election and not a single one-way attack drone. That is the reality. For the past year, the Treasury has used the SDR to effectively put MOD procurement on hold. That is absolutely shameful when we need to rearm at pace and at scale. At least the Secretary of State for Defence knows how the rest of the country feels: totally let down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If there is one capability that matters more than any other, it is people. We agree on the critical importance of recruitment and retention, which is why I did so much of the work to buy back the defence estate so we could rebuild it and rebuild the substandard defence accommodation. But the Army is down by 1,000 since the election. If the Government really want to address recruitment and retention, would it not be total madness to scrap the legislation protecting our Northern Ireland veterans from a new era of ambulance-chasing lawfare? Surely nothing could be more damaging for morale, recruitment and retention than to once again pursue our veterans for the crime of serving this country and keeping us safe from terrorism. To conclude, the Secretary of State says he wants to send a strong message to Moscow, but the messages he is sending are profoundly weak: surrendering our fishing grounds for an EU defence pact that does not offer a penny in return; surrendering the Chagos islands, to the delight of China and Iran; surrendering our Army veterans to the lawyers; and to cap it all and after so much hype, producing a damp squib SDR that is overdue, underfunded and totally underwhelming. Our armed forces deserve a lot better than this.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to add to what I said in my earlier point of order and to seek your guidance. I reiterate how incredibly disappointing it is, as the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, on the day of the SDR, not to be able to read it before having to stand up and respond to the Government. I said earlier that we knew of one major defence company that received a copy of the document at 8 am this morning. I have been told of another major prime—one of the largest—that received a copy at 8 am this morning. That means that at the time that I was messaging the Minister for the Armed Forces and begging him to let us have a copy, and he was saying that we could not have one, they were reading the SDR over breakfast. Madam Deputy Speaker, you heard Mr Speaker refer to the phrase “skin in the game”; he was very concerned about a document being given early in the morning to big defence companies that have skin in the game. Can you advise us on what more we can do to probe this point and hold the Government to account on commercial sensitivity?