Afghanistan

Debate between Baggy Shanker and John Healey

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is very fast off the mark, and I am glad that he has already issued his invitation to his Committee. He is asking for figures as Chair of the PAC. The cost of what has been spent and committed in order to get in transit to Britain the 900 principals eligible under ARR, plus their immediate family members, is around £400 million. For the remaining members of the ARR and their immediate families who have been issued invitations, we expect something similar again. But because of the policy decisions that we have been able to announce and the changes that we have been able to make to the programmes we inherited—he may want to probe this with his Committee—it means that the taxpayer should be paying £1.2 billion less over the next few years, and that around 9,500 fewer Afghans will come to this country.

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Government’s decision to support the lifting of the super-injunction today and bring this awful matter properly into the public domain. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is right and proper that this issue is now fully scrutinised by Parliament?

[John Healey]

I do, indeed. One important feature for me in being able to make this statement and to set out the details before the House this afternoon has been that we are now restoring the proper parliamentary accountability of Ministers to this House for the decisions that we take, the schemes that we run and the spending that we commit on behalf of the taxpayer. I look forward to Members in this Chamber—and, I hope, in the appropriate Committees—undertaking their proper constitutional role in a way they have not been able to do over the past two years without being constrained.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baggy Shanker and John Healey

Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

19. What steps he is taking to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises are able to participate in defence procurement contracts.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey)]

The House will note that this afternoon we are without the Minister for Veterans and People, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns). He is halfway up Everest with a group of soldiers, raising funds for armed forces charities and raising the profile of veterans, and I am sure that the whole House wishes him well. Most of us also think, “Rather him than me.”

This Government have confirmed the biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war, which will boost national security and make defence the engine for growth in every part of the United Kingdom. For too long, small businesses have felt left out of defence, but no more. We are setting new targets to ensure that smaller firms benefit from that increase in defence spending. We are setting up a new support centre to guide small businesses on access to defence and, for the first time, we are making British-based businesses a priority for British taxpayers’ defence investment.

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[Baggy Shanker]

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of hosting a roundtable and listening to businesses in Derby—small and medium-sized businesses in engineering and manufacturing, including the vital defence sector. With nearly 70% of Government defence spending directed towards businesses outside of London and the south-east, we know how every pound spent with UK defence businesses has the power to create jobs and employment for local people. Will the Secretary of State therefore outline how the Department will ensure that as many SMEs as possible are aware of Government procurement opportunities, so that they can deliver jobs in areas such as Derby?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The access of SMEs to defence is very often through primes and subcontracting, rather than directly with the Ministry of Defence itself. It is the certainty of long-term relationships and long-term contracts for the primes that allow them to pass those benefits on to smaller firms. That is why it is significant that when my hon. Friend joined me at the Derby Rolls-Royce factory when I announced the eight-year £9 billion Unity contract for Rolls-Royce, 240 small firms were part of that submarine supply chain.