Ukraine

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I fear there will be more parliamentary questions based on that question coming at me very soon. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the integrated digital targeting web as a key part of our deterrence activity. The SDR was clear that we are moving to a situation, in a digitised battlefield, where any target must be able to be in the same decision-making process as any sensor to detect it, and any effector to prosecute it. We are piecing that together.

The early steps in the digital targeting web have been taken, with money being spent to develop the concept further. That will be reinforced in the defence investment plan. By using that technology, we hope to increase the lethality of our forces by having a greater flexibility in how we target and detect adversaries—that makes our Army, Air Force and Navy much stronger—and integrating space and cyber facilities in that combined effort. That is a good part of the SDR, and we are making progress on it.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for coming to the House today on this last day of Parliament before Christmas, which keeps Ukraine at the top of the political agenda, which is where it must be. I want to endorse thoroughly every word uttered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) in his response to the Minister’s statement, as well as the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat). I make no apology for pressuring the Government to spend more on defence, and I know that secretly, in his heart, the Minister agrees with me. Will he think about coming back to the House early in the new year with a debate and a motion on a three-line Whip, so that we can thoroughly debate these matters with a much fuller House than we have this afternoon? That will enable us to lead the conversation that he so ably talks about.

[Luke Pollard]

I have no doubt in my mind that the hon. Gentleman, and indeed many of my hon. Friends sitting behind me, will also be making the case for defence. Both the Minister for the Armed Forces and myself, as well as the Defence Secretary and the Minister for Veterans and People, value the focus put on defence by cross-party debates. There will be opportunities in the new year to look at the defence investment plan and at how we deploy the increased defence spending that we have been allocated. In doing so, we must be mindful of how we implement the strategic defence review, which is the key strategic document that we are seeking to implement as a Government; it sets out how we will increase lethality of our forces and how we will renew our forces, retiring old gear and bringing on new technologies in order to do so. More debates on defence in this House are very welcome indeed.