North Atlantic Submarine Activity

Jonathan Davies Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I join the Minister in thanking our armed forces personnel who identified this threat and allowed us to take the action he has described. I note that real-terms defence spending fell by 22% in the eight years or so prior to 2017. It is this Government that are turning that around with fresh investment and more co-operation with the sector. We know that our undersea infrastructure is vulnerable to a great many threats and, as we face threats on a number of different fronts, we must not lose sight of that. We have a job, however, to explain to the British public why we need this investment. Can I encourage him, when or if we face a similar threat in the future, to make sure that the public understand that? It is a choice that might mean that we do not have the opportunity to spend in other areas of public life.

[Al Carns]

We have a job to ensure that we communicate with and educate the population on the whole variety of threats, whether it is the threat posed by Russia in Ukraine or the threat emanating from the High North that comes into the Atlantic. A lot of people say that we do not have a frontline with the Russians. The reality is that we do; it sits in the north Atlantic. But those are not the only threats. There are also threats in the influence space and, of course, in cyber-space, which we must compete with while also responding to contingency operations in the middle east, as hon. Members have seen us do over the last seven weeks.