Infected Blood Inquiry Update
Debate between Jeremy Quin and Drew Hendry(1 year ago)
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Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
The gut-wrenching truth of the matter is that people are decaying and dying while this Government dither and delay. The people concerned in this scandal will have heard nothing new today from the Minister. For their benefit, so that they know he is fighting for them, can he confirm that the recommendations to widen the scope of the payment should be agreed? Will he fight for those compensation payments to be made this year to the people affected?
Jeremy Quin
It would be wrong to characterise the circumstance today as one of no progress. The fact that Sir Brian Langstaff has produced this report is a huge step forward. It is fantastic that he has come forward with a second interim report specifically on compensation. I speak on behalf of the Government and, on their behalf, I accepted the moral case for compensation back in December. We now need to go through what Sir Brian has written, which has been the culmination of many years of work, take decisions on that and come back to the House.
Defence and Security Industrial Strategy
Debate between Jeremy Quin and Drew Hendry(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Jeremy Quin
As my right hon. Friend will know, the supply chains in defence are vast, but it is an analysis that we are undertaking. We are doing it project by project, making certain that the most crucial are investigated first, but we are doing an analysis of our supply chains, and that is being elevated to the Defence Board, to make certain that we have greater oversight of what goes into our crucial defence kit and equipment.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP) [V]
The Government are procuring 80 additional warheads for Trident to stockpile in Scotland, each more than eight times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Minister must know that by increasing these weapons of mass destruction, his Government are pushing at a new nuclear arms race and ending 30 years of gradual nuclear disarmament. Is that what global Britain is all about?
Jeremy Quin
Global Britain is about many things, and one of those is helping to defend ourselves, our values, our freedoms and our allies. Part of that, as this Parliament has agreed, should be maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent that is credible and minimal. Of all the declared nuclear states, we have only one delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons, and we maintain a minimum credible deterrent. In order to do that, we have had to raise the ceiling of the total number of warheads we are prepared to have.