Defence Investment Plan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the new colours awarded to the Royal Marines. My colleague the Minister for the Armed Forces was there with the King for that ceremony, which reflects the continuing relevance and importance of the Royal Marines, which will be shown clearly in the defence investment plan.

The hon. Gentleman asks me about a specific capability proposed by the previous Government that may be included in the defence investment plan. I hope he will understand that I will not be able to go into that line item description today. However, on the broader point about ensuring the air defence of our naval assets, we have seen from Ukraine that there are new capabilities that can provide elements of that. We have also seen from the UK response to the Iranian drone threat to our sovereign base areas and our friends in the Republic of Cyprus how we can create a truly layered air defence, which is an important lesson we have learned from Ukraine. We have applied that not just to our sovereign base areas, but to our naval assets and our friends in the middle east.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I offer some advice to Defence Ministers in their bare-knuckle fight with the Treasury for adequate defence funding? They really should move away from this glib spin doctor’s line about defence expenditure rising faster now than at any time since the end of the cold war. The situation we are in now is as dangerous as any that took place not at the end of the cold war, when defence expenditure was declining, but at its height, when Conservative Governments—with, I think, Opposition approval—regularly spent between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence. Please, Minister, do not parrot a line that goes way below what we need in the circumstances that we face today.

[Luke Pollard]

I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, with whom I have spent many hours discussing defence spending. I am certainly very aware of the danger we now face—it is one of the reasons why the Government have decided to declassify a number of the threats facing the United Kingdom. When the Defence Secretary declassified the activities of the Russian spy ship Yantar over our undersea cables, for example, it was both to explain the threats that we are now facing as a nation and to send a clear signal to Putin that we see what he is doing. Deterrence takes a number of forms; there are certainly our capabilities, but the ability to call out and, in doing so, to restrict the ability of Russia to threaten the UK and our allies is also important. I understand what he says, however, and take it seriously.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

The new Valour programme will make it easier for veterans to access the care and support they deserve. Crucially, it will also improve how their voices are heard. We opened the first 14 Valour centres in March this year, and round 2 is open for applications for further centres. In addition to Valour, we also have wider services support, such as Op Courage for mental health, Op Restore for physical health, Op Fortitude for those at risk of homelessness and Op Ascend for employment support. Veterans can access all those programmes, and I welcome any feedback.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I fear I know the answer to this question in advance, but I shall ask it anyway. Would one way of reconnecting society with the armed forces at Armed Forces Day not be to revisit the testimony given to the then Defence Committee in March 2017 by four eminent professors of law? It showed how it is possible to protect veterans from being hauled before the courts for using lethal force against terrorists in the act of committing terrorism. That testimony deserves revisiting. Will the Government re-examine it and reinstate the immunity and the investigative processes that enable that protection to be done?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman is well aware of how strongly I believe it is important that those who have been victims have a right to have investigations, including into the murders of British service personnel. I take his point, and I am sure that people are well aware of the point that he makes.

Defence Readiness

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I do not need to add a great deal to that, because my right hon. Friend served in Operation Banner and speaks with great authority. He has always been passionate on this issue, and he hits the nail on the head. As so many veterans have said to me, it is the process of the lawfare itself that is so punishing. It is so damaging, it is not in the national interest and it will damage the British armed forces.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, the then Defence Committee did two reports into this question, and in the course of those inquiries, we interviewed four eminent professors of law, including one particularly famous left-wing one. We did not ask them what they wanted to happen; we asked them what could legally be done about a statute of limitation. They all agreed, however reluctantly, that it would be legal to have a statute of limitation provided that it was coupled with a truth recovery process that met the requirement for an investigation to occur. Their other key condition was it should be applied to all people involved in the conflict. The Government could pursue the line that those four professors of law took, but they do not want to do so. They are happy to shelter behind court judgments that they could appeal against but will not.

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and he is absolutely correct. Our legacy Act was based on what happened in South Africa. We may not like it, but if we want peace and reconciliation, any changes in the law that favour those who may have been guilty have to apply to both sides. It is simply a statement of fact. As I think I just showed with Loughgall, our Act of Parliament—the legacy Act—did indeed stop an inquest that would have been damaging to the armed forces but which I do not believe would have led to any prosecutions.

Turning to what was not in the King’s Speech, the strategic defence review promised that:

“A new Defence Readiness Bill should provide the Government with powers in reserve to mobilise Reserves and industry should crisis escalate into conflict.”

With war on two fronts, surely such legislation should be the absolute top priority of this Government, but alas, there is no defence readiness Bill in the King’s Speech. Why not? The defence readiness Bill is not ready. What else is not ready? The defence investment plan is not ready, of course. We know that the Government are working flat out—[Hon. Members: “At pace!”]—and at pace, but the Secretary of State promised from the Dispatch Box almost a year ago that the defence investment plan would be published last autumn. It is now 10 months late, so when the Minister responds, can he tell us exactly when we are going to get the defence investment plan?

Most importantly, we are bound to ask why we still have no defence investment plan. The DIP is meant to set out the detailed procurement decisions intended to implement Labour’s strategic defence review, so what do the authors of Labour’s SDR, appointed by the Prime Minister, think about the failure to publish the DIP and the impact of that on delivering the SDR? Each of the three key authors—Dr Fiona Hill, General Sir Richard Barrons and Lord Robertson—has absolutely slammed the Government for their failure to deliver. Lord Robertson, a former Labour Defence Secretary and former Secretary-General of NATO, stated:

“We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”

We agree 100%. The fact is, the current Prime Minister bottled it on welfare reform, U-turning repeatedly despite a majority of more than 160, and failing to make even modest changes to working-age benefits while removing the two-child benefit cap.

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[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) has such a sunny personality that I always feel cheered up after listening to her contributions, even when she is the bearer of somewhat disappointing news about the economy. I was also impressed by the speech of the former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who is just about to escape from the Chamber. However, it did leave me wondering what my headline would be if I were a parliamentary sketch writer. I think it would be, “Why on earth did he resign?” It sounded much more like a manifesto in a leadership campaign than a trigger for calling one, but there we are—we all have our own motives.

The right hon. Gentleman made a point that is of great relevance to this debate, which I promise I had already written down before I heard him make it: the comparison between the terrible experience of the pandemic and the terrible experience of a country involved in a full-scale war. There were, of course, casualties during the pandemic, and there was the determination to learn from it. The outcome is that we are a lot better prepared for the future, should another deadly virus attack us. As a result of the lessons learned during the pandemic, we will be in a much better position to develop effective vaccines far more quickly.

However, I am afraid the real parallel is not a very happy one. It is a fact that if someone had said before we knew we were going to have the pandemic, “You need to invest a considerable sum of money in developing a system that enables you to develop vaccines quickly in response to the emergence of a new deadly virus,” we probably would not have done it. That is where the parallel lies with wartime situations, because for many years, defence-minded Members on both sides of the House have been urging successive Governments to spend a lot more on defence.

If those warnings go unheeded and this country ends up in a full-scale armed conflict with a peer adversary, we will not be talking about spending 3% or 4% of GDP on defence; we will have to spend 30% or 40% of GDP on defence. We do not wish to get to that situation, because it would lead to not only economic loss—think of the human cost. If, by investing in defence in peacetime, we can deter a potential enemy from starting a war, we not only save the treasure; we save the blood that is otherwise shed so copiously.

As we know, Russia is spending something of the order of between a third and a half of its gross domestic product on military power. In the past, the Defence Committee has looked at the question of what this country has spent historically. In a report entitled “Shifting the goalposts?”, and a second report entitled “Shifting the goalposts: an update”, the figures show that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) was completely correct. He said that in the mid-1980s, when he was serving, we were spending something of the order of 5% of GDP on defence. In fact, the figure given in 1983-84 was 4.4%, and in 1984-85 the figure was 4.5%. In reality, however, that was because we had higher criteria than the other NATO powers for what counted as defence expenditure, and we adopted their lower standards later. Looking back, we can see that the figures were actually 5.3% in 1983-84 and 5.5% in 1984-85. Those are very big figures.

People talk about the way in which the peace dividend was taken, but as the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), pointed out, 1996-97—the year in which Tony Blair took over from the Conservative Government—was already at least half a dozen years after the end of the cold war, if we understand that to have taken place in 1991 rather than in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall. At that time, we were still spending 3%.

That was the figure then, so as the current Chair of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), rightly said in an admirably objective speech, given that Russia is preparing for conflict now, we are responding too slowly and “time is short”, given the urgency of the situation. When we talk about achieving figures of 3% in a few years’ time and 5% in a few more years’ time, I would ask the House: does the killer in the Kremlin intend to give us that time? If we want to deter him from taking a step that would be to the detriment of the world, we need to invest now and, as in the case of the pandemic, find the money now. If a war broke out tomorrow, we would find the money at once, so let us find it today and diminish the chance of that terrible conflict happening the day after.

Defence

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Commons Chamber

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

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin).

[James Cartlidge]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, who ran rings around the Prime Minister yesterday so expertly. He is absolutely right. The Red Book details to the penny how much this Government will spend on their U-turn to abolish the two-child benefit cap by 2031. There is no line on what will be spent on defence in those years, so how on earth is the MOD meant to change? The key is that the Government are not going to go to 3% in this Parliament. I am going to conclude by setting out five steps, but before I do that, I will give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis).

[Sir Julian Lewis]

It is very kind of my hon. Friend to give way on the point of making his peroration. He mentioned the tension between the MOD and its Ministers, and the Treasury. We could sympathise with the MOD Ministers if they did not keep adopting a line that is self-defeating. They keep coming out with this propaganda line that they have increased defence spending by a greater amount than at any time since the end of the cold war, and each time, I boringly point out to them—and I am going to do it again today—that they should not be comparing what we are spending now, in a much deteriorated situation, with the peace dividend years that followed the cold war; they should compare it with what we used to spend on defence during the cold war, which was regularly between 4.5% and 5%. If that seems a lot, just remember that when a country is involved in a full-scale war, we are talking not about 4% but about 40%.

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend is never boring in his interventions; on the contrary, he is one of the most knowledgeable people on defence in this House.

I will conclude with five steps that could be taken right now to galvanise our war readiness—positive suggestions from the Conservative Benches. First, we should rearm immediately. As I wrote in my letter to the Defence Secretary last week, instead of waiting on the defence investment plan, he should use the reserve funding agreed for the middle east operations to place orders for urgent operational requirements, in particular advanced short-range air-to-air missiles for our fighter planes, and Aster air defence missiles for our Type 45s. Secondly, we should deliver drone tech at scale and pace across the armed forces, as we set out in our sovereign defence fund last December. Thirdly, to fund that we would set a path to 3% this Parliament, not the next, including turning the National Wealth Fund into a defence and resilience bank, ringfencing £11 billion for defence, repurposing £6 billion of research and development funding for drone tech, and restoring the two-child benefit cap to fund a bigger Army.

Fourthly, to save more money for defence, and following Iran’s missile strike on Diego Garcia, we would stand up for that critical sovereign territory by scrapping Labour’s crazy Chagos plan. Finally, to boost immediately the morale of our veterans and all who serve our country, we would defend those who defended us by scrapping Labour’s plans to put our former soldiers back in the dock, simply for the crime of serving their country. It is not enough for Ministers simply to say, month after month, that they are working “flat out” to deliver the defence investment plan. In the national interest this country needs to rearm rapidly. That means the Prime Minister ditching the dither and delay, summoning the courage to reverse the spiralling welfare bill, and finally committing to 3% on defence this Parliament.

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[Al Carns]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. We need three levels of understanding before ever putting someone in harm’s way: a legal mandate, a plan and think-through to the finish.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Will the Minister give way?

[Al Carns]

I am going to make a bit of ground, and then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman in due course.

Morale is built on leadership, clarity and trust, and the facts matter. Recruitment is up by 13%, and outflow is down by 8%. For the first time in over a decade, more people are joining the armed forces than leaving—that is the reality. Let us be clear about our responsibility to our veterans: there is no equivalence between those who served to protect life and those who sought to destroy it. This Government are putting in place proper protections for veterans following the legal uncertainty that was left behind, and we are backing that with action.

Actions talks. Op Valour is putting £50 million into our veterans programme—more than ever before. Op Ascend is helping veterans into meaningful employment, with funding to tackle veterans’ homelessness and to deliver real improvements in housing and pay. We have delivered the largest pay rise in two decades, including a 35% increase for new recruits. We have bought back 36,000 military homes and are investing £9 billion to improve them. We have funded 30 hours of free childcare for under-threes across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, saving forces families up to £6,000 a year. That is the difference that practical support makes, and it is why we are seeing a change in morale. If the Conservatives want a debate about who is delivering for our service personnel, I am more than happy to stand on our record and to compare theirs with ours.

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[James MacCleary]

I thank my hon. Friend for his valuable contribution, and I support the point he makes. All the cuts he mentions were damaging. Probably the most damaging thing of all was how the Conservatives failed our serving troops, in particular with their accommodation and the deal they gave our veterans over some time.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Can I share a little secret with the House? For slightly longer than the duration of the second world war, I was a shadow Defence Minister, but in 2010, I found myself back on the Back Benches because the Liberal Defence spokesman was appointed Minister for the Armed Forces. I was told that the reason for this was that the powers that be knew that I would never have gone along with the cuts that were made in October 2010 by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. I think the hon. Gentlemen’s amnesia is therefore somewhat selective.

[James MacCleary]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention; that was very informative.

We saw our surface fleet reduced to its smallest size since the English civil war while the Conservatives were at the helm, and a crisis of recruitment, retention and morale across the armed forces ushered in by their incompetence. We should not be surprised by the disastrous impact that years of Conservative mismanagement have had on our military. What is the Conservatives’ answer now? After hollowing out our armed forces in government, their motion shows that they have learned nothing. They want struggling families to foot the bill. It is the same old Tory formula: break the country first, then ask the most vulnerable to pay for the repairs. What is needed now is a serious plan to reverse their damage

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

I listened to the Minister’s remarks with great care. Many of the things that he says, he says with great sincerity, but some of the things he says, I do not believe that he quite so fervently believes. I ask him, being the hon. and gallant Gentleman that he is, to consider whether criticising those who criticise Government policy on the basis of the question “How dare you criticise the Government at such a serious time?” reflects the same kind of attack made by supporters of Neville Chamberlain against Winston Churchill and his supporters even as late as 1940. As they went through the Division Lobbies in May that year, they taunted those coming through voting against the Adjournment of the House: “Quislings”, they said.

To implicitly brand my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as some kind of warmonger who is out of control—that is what the Government are basically saying—reflects exactly the gibe thrown at Winston Churchill: that he loved war so much, he was not objective. Yet he was the one who appreciated the dire emergency of the situation being faced, even as the British Expeditionary Force was losing in France and the Norway campaign was proving such a disaster.

I appreciate that it is perhaps obligatory for the Minister to say these things about the two-child benefit cap for the satisfaction of many of his Back Benchers, but we are now spending so much on welfare and so little on defence. Maybe the two problems have something to do with each other. If we could just spend the same on in-work or out-of-work benefits for people of working age as we were spending before covid, we could save £50 billion a year, but that does not seem to matter to the Government at all.

The Minister talked, I am sure with great sincerity, about how important it is to have a system that works “for them”—I think I am quoting his very words; he said that we need a social system in this country that works for the poorest people in our society. Well, the system over which the Government are presiding is failing. We now have a rising and terrifying number of young people who are not in education, employment, or training—the so-called NEETs. Even those operating on the frontline of food banks—I visited a food bank recently—understand that if we keep indexing benefits with inflation, but do not index tax allowances, that means that people pay more tax at lower rates of pay, and if we increase benefits, such as by removing the two-child benefit cap, and do not uprate the tapers to protect the better-off who are receiving universal credit, we create a disincentive to work.

When I first visited food banks, which I think was under Tony Blair’s Government—they were not originated under the Conservatives—there used to be a tiny number of people who were permanent beneficiaries of food banks; the vast majority were in a state of transition, and that persisted until quite recently. At the food bank I visited at the weekend, 80% of beneficiaries are now permanent clients, because they say there is no point in them trying to take work, as it does not pay. The system is not working for them, because we are spending too much on welfare and we have not cut taxes enough.

The next question is: are we at peace or at war? Much of the discussion in the Liaison Committee was about that. I cannot find a Minister who denies that we are at war, and I am afraid that makes the question of whether we choose to get involved rather redundant. We are involved, and we cannot help being involved. Our sovereign territory is involved, because it is being attacked. Indeed, we have been involved in a war in defence of the west, NATO and Ukraine probably since as far back as the original invasion of Georgia and Abkhazia, because the nature of Putin’s regime had become apparent by then. They are quite explicit: Lavrov has said that Russia is at war with NATO, so that war is already here.

What kind of war is it? Well, it reflects all kinds of conflicts, including hybrid conflict, which has often been discussed and is of such a varied nature, and what one might call cognitive conflict, which is the capacity and determination of Russia and China, and probably Iran, not just to interfere in our democratic processes, but to corrupt the truth. This is aimed at reshaping the societal, economic and informational environment, at undermining people’s faith in democracy and democratic values, and at destroying the faith of our voters in our democratic system.

The question now is: what are we doing to fight back? Well, what are we doing? I know that in bits of Government, many small parts of the Government are at war. There are some wonderful people in the Ministry of Defence who are sweating the night hours to do things that are of crucial importance.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am concerned about one problem that may arise. We have now got to a stage where the Government have given permission for the Americans to strike back against, for example, missile batteries launching at targets that might include our own bases. I am not clear what would happen—and I hope it never has to come to this—if our bases were successfully attacked and damaged. Are the Government still saying that only the Americans should retaliate against those batteries, or should the RAF have a role as well? I am not anxious to escalate, but I do not see where the logic lies in America being able to retaliate, when our own armed forces cannot, following an attack that has successfully damaged one of our own bases.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The fact is that the whole of the deterrent stance of all the NATO nations is very substantially—I will not say hopelessly—dependent on the good will that the United States shows towards us. That was the basis on which the SDR was written. George Robertson—the noble Lord Robertson of Port Ellen—has said in public that one of the constraints of writing the defence review was to assume that the United States was our closest ally and could be relied upon. Whether that will be true in the future, we do not know. Some things that have happened have very much shaken our faith in that, but the idea that the Government should choose this moment—this very moment, when we are begging for American support in Ukraine to hold back the tide of possible Russian aggression across the whole European front—to further alienate President Trump from NATO seems to me like a bit of a tactical error.

Going back to the second world war, when Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, complained to Winston Churchill that the United Kingdom did not seem to have an independent foreign policy, Churchill said, “No, we don’t. We’ve got to do what the Americans want us to do in order to get them to come into the war.” I am afraid that we are not in a great position of strength to dictate to the Americans, and pontificating about their moral judgments or their interpretation of international law seems to me totally counterproductive for the security of the United Kingdom and our European allies. To answer my right hon. Friend’s question, we need a deterrent stance.

But what is the Government’s response? Well, we are waiting for a plan, but that plan is a long time coming. Drones have transformed the last few months, but the Government have not kept up with the change. We are still waiting for a plan, and it is not enough.

Middle East

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Having been a Defence Minister and having served for some time on the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend is more knowledgeable than perhaps anyone else in the House about defence matters. I appreciate his recognition of the way that, since the election, we have stepped up the scale of investment in autonomous systems, counter-drone systems and integrated missile and air defence systems, all of which were badly lacking under the previous Government. He will have followed an important speech that the Prime Minister gave three or four weeks ago at Munich, in which he recognised, as this House does, that demands on defence are rising; that this is an era of hard power, strong alliances and sure diplomacy; and that we need to spend more, faster, on defence.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I remind Defence Ministers yet again that they should be comparing increases in defence expenditure not with the post-cold war years, but with what we used to spend on defence during the cold war years, which was between 4.5% and 5% of GDP? Can the Secretary of State look the House straight in the eye, as it were, and say that, given the very close relationship between China and the Mauritians, which includes a 25-year treaty of co-operation, it would be a sounder situation if Mauritius had sovereignty over Diego Garcia and we were only lessees to them?

[John Healey]

I respect the right hon. Gentleman, and the straight answer to his question is yes, I can. The deal that we have in place, which is awaiting ratification, would give us operational sovereignty over Diego Garcia for at least 99 years. This base is central and essential to our and the US’ security and military around the world. The deal now on the table, which we have negotiated with the Mauritians, gives us greater protections in the waters around the island and a greater veto over developments on the other islands. It is so much better than the deal the previous Government left when they left office, reached after 11 rounds of negotiation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Al Carns]

We continue to lead, both in the coalition of the willing and in the Ukraine defence contact group, which the Secretary of State attended recently, raising billions of pounds-worth of equipment support in weapons, air defence systems and everything through to female body armour. Ukraine absolutely remains a focus. This is not just about UK security; it is about European security, and that will not change.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I build on the excellent supplementary question asked by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) about Ukraine and counter-drone warfare? Thanks to the support given by this Government and the previous Government to Ukraine, it has become a world leader in inventing and deploying cheap responses to cheap drones. As a result, there is now an opportunity for it to assist our allies that are under threat from drone attacks in the middle east and in particular in the Persian gulf. Will the Government do everything they can to facilitate that, and thus show that Ukraine does indeed have some cards to play?

[Al Carns]

The Secretary of State has been in discussions with the National Security Agency and with key individuals in Ukraine. I am a firm believer that the Ukrainians need the west now and that in the future we will need them, given some of the technological advances they have made. It is also worth doubling down on some of the capabilities and initiatives moving forward, ranging from the hybrid Navy to the Army 20-40-40 programme, the Defence uncrewed centre of excellence, the NMITE drone degree to enhance and increase education, industry and the military forces’ move towards uncrewed systems and, finally, the £4 billion on uncrewed systems within the SDR.

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[The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry (Luke Pollard)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his advocacy for shipbuilding. That is precisely why this Government have brought together all Departments with a shipbuilding interest in a cross-Government effort to refresh our shipbuilding process, and why Defence is leading that work by delivering more orders for our shipyards, which includes not only the frigates being built in Rosyth and on the Clyde, but the fleet solid support ship. Work on that has started in Appledore in north Devon as well.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

T3. Successive Governments have refused compensation to the nuclear test veterans, but now the Sunday Mirror’s investigative journalist Susie Boniface has revealed documents showing that, in fact, levels of radiation were known to be much higher than the court was led to believe in a case in 2016. Will Ministers address this matter with the seriousness it deserves, while veterans are still suffering and the widows of veterans still lack any recognition or compensation?

[The Minister for Veterans and People (Louise Sandher-Jones)]

The Government have reset the relationship with our nuclear test veterans and the organisations that support them, and we appreciate the vital contribution that they made to keeping this country safe. We remain absolutely committed to listening to their concerns and working collaboratively to address them.

Middle East: Defence

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. When I had the honour of spending part of Thursday with our personnel on our base in Akrotiri, it was not just the teams and the pilots flying the fast jets who were working flat out—the F-35 team I spoke to had deployed at five days’ notice to Cyprus. The whole of the military personnel on that base were doing so, including those looking after and ensuring the relocation of non-essential personnel and families to hotels in the Paphos area. Nothing could be further from the truth and nothing could be more insulting than the suggestion that they are simply “hanging around” in the middle east. I really would like to hear—we did not hear it from the shadow Defence Secretary—any Conservative Member contest what their leader said and apologise on her behalf. Let us have the sort of support that recognises that our armed forces are in the region to protect British personnel, British bases and British interests. We are proud that they are doing that job.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am not particularly keen on the tone of these exchanges, so may I make a positive suggestion to the Secretary of State? We have heard that Ukraine has offered to assist the United States with its specialised version of anti-Iranian drone technology. These weapons for bringing down Iranian drones are much cheaper than the drones themselves, whereas the weapons that we and the Americans generally use are much more expensive. Given the difficult relationship between Zelensky and Trump, does the Secretary of State agree that there is a role here for Britain, with its high standing in Ukraine, to see if we can make a start by acquiring from Ukraine some of these weapons, which we can use in the defence of our own bases and which may then pave the way for a deal between Trump and Zelensky for the wider benefit of the whole theatre?

[John Healey]

We are taking this one step at a time, but I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion and the tone in which he offers his thoughts. Like me, he will welcome President Zelenksy’s declaration that Ukraine stands ready and is offering its experience and expertise to the Gulf states facing many of the same Shahed Iranian drones. We are playing our part. The defence special adviser for the middle east is currently making a series of visits to nine Gulf countries with a team that includes British experts in the Ukrainian fight against Putin’s invasion and the technologies Ukraine has been using to defeat many of Putin’s developments and drones. The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry is also talking to British firms about the contribution they could make to supplying the reinforced defences that our middle eastern partners so badly need.

Ministry of Defence: Palantir Contracts

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend asks valid questions. I say to him clearly that this Government will stand by and honour the agreement on the publication of information that was struck last week during the debate on the Humble Address. If there are documents from the Ministry of Defence that need to be published, we will continue to support the cross-Government effort to do so. On employees, when anyone who has worked in defence moves over to a defence contractor, be it Palantir or any other, we make it clear that they have certain obligations, and there are certain requirements. Palantir employs an awful lot of UK veterans; it has made employing veterans a point of principle. It is a good principle, and that should be done by all defence companies, in my view, but I take his point and I agree with it.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Minister know whether or not minutes were taken at the key Washington meeting in February last year? If they were not taken, why not? Why was Lord Mandelson, a political appointee, not required to sever any links with his former activities and business that could have given rise to a conflict of interest in his role as ambassador?

[Luke Pollard]

Peter Mandelson has let us all down in this House. The question about the minutes is being looked at by Downing Street, and it will be for Downing Street officials to publish more in due course.

Armed Forces Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 26th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right. The short answer is that there is record funding to support the mental health and wellbeing of veterans; there are record levels of support for veterans’ groups, with a new wave of Valour centres shortly to be announced by the Minister for Veterans and People; and there is, of course, a commitment to ensure that no veteran loses out on their right to social housing because of the local connection test, which was in place until this Government removed it after the election.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I take the Secretary of State back to the earlier exchange about Northern Ireland veterans? I have some good news and some bad news for him. The good news is that I strongly suspect that, at the end of all the raked-up trials held against Northern Ireland veterans, none will be convicted. The bad news is that that is not the purpose of doing all this; the purpose is to put them through a nightmarish ordeal that allows republican terrorists to rewrite history. He should not be quite so satisfied with the state of the Government’s legislation regarding Northern Ireland veterans. It is a disgrace, and it is tearing up something that was working and that could have worked, according to four professors of law who gave testimony to a previous Defence Committee.

[John Healey]

I know about the right hon. Gentleman’s good news and bad news. We will return to that discussion when we return to Committee stage of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. When we do so, we will have in place strengthened protections for veterans, and that will be a result of the detailed discussions that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces, military leaders, the Prime Minister and I have had in recent weeks with representatives of the forces and special forces, and with former military chiefs, who have a point of view on this—

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

I will make some progress .

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Will my hon. Friend allow me?

[James Cartlidge]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

It is all well and good to say that defence spending has increased since it was realised that the peace dividend is inappropriate for a post-Ukraine invasion situation, but the fact is that during the 1980s, when we were in the grip of the cold war, we were not talking about spending 5% in 10 years’ time or 3.5% in four years’ time; we were spending between 4.5% and 5% of GDP every single year.

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend is right. The last time anyone in this country spent 5% on defence was in 1985, when President Gorbachev entered the Kremlin; spending has pretty much been down since then, under every Government. That is the point I was making.

On the current targets, Labour’s vague “promise” is to go to 3% in the next Parliament. We believe the task is far more urgent, and would go to 3% by the end of this Parliament. As a reminder of the importance of 3%—this is critical—when Labour published the SDR last June, its independent authors stated on the same day that the promise of 3%

“established the affordability of our recommendations”.

As such, with no certainty over when Labour will get to 3%, is this not why the defence investment plan—which was promised for last autumn—still has not been delivered? In his wind-up speech, can the Minister for the Armed Forces tell us whether the DIP will be published before the spring? I think that is the meteorological spring, by the way.

There is much to welcome in this Bill, but it will not succeed if defence does not have the resources needed to deliver the SDR. We look forward to debating the Bill in detail and doing whatever is possible to make it workable, but for their part, the Government need to do their bit by finally delivering the step change in defence spending that our armed forces need if they are to do the job we ask of them.

New Medium Helicopter Contract

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I met the chief executive of Yeovil College briefly at the Great South West conference last year, and I understand its involvement and partnership with the private sector in that locality, including Leonardo, but not only that. I want to provide certainty for businesses, which is why I also want to ensure that the defence investment plan is got right. For far too long industry has had promises of funding when the equipment programme has been unfunded, and there has not been money to support those jobs or that certainty. We inherited a programme in which huge amounts were unfunded, so our objective is to ensure that all our defence programmes are sustainable. We must ensure that we are clearing up the mess. Industry must have full certainty that when something is in the programme, it will be funded, rather than the previous situation when industry saw the press releases and soundbites but not the cash. We are addressing that with the new defence investment plan.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Minister knows that I have a high regard for his commitment and integrity, and that I have pressed successive Governments for more defence investment, so leaving aside the party politics, will he confirm whether or not the Government accept what the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) has estimated, which is that, if this contract is not concluded successfully by March, then it will be too late to secure the future of Yeovil as a helicopter centre of excellence?