Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Lewin Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

What I can tell the hon. Member is that we take the safety of UK personnel immensely seriously, and I pay tribute to their service for our country. That is why we have already increased deployments to ensure that there is added radar and air protection in Cyprus, for example. We will always continue to take safety seriously and ensure that operational matters are dealt with in the normal way.

[Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)]

T7. At the Munich security conference, the Prime Minister rightly said that we must do more to work with our allies to build our collective European security. Given that moral imperative, is there an ambition for the UK and the EU to reopen negotiations on UK access to the EU SAFE—security action for Europe—defence mechanism?

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)]

My hon. Friend asks an important question. We are absolutely committed to strengthening our defence co-operation with the EU and European partners, but with NATO of course as the bedrock. We negotiated in good faith on SAFE, but the terms were not in the UK’s national interest, but we will continue to engage constructively across a range of areas of co-operation.