Defence Spending and Readiness

Debate between Mark Francois and Louise Sandher-Jones

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

We have a plea for defence spending to hit 3% by 2030 from a party whose manifesto committed to spending just 2.5% by that date, and calls for a fully funded defence investment plan fit for the modern battlefield from a former Government whose fantasy equipment plan was overcommitted, underfitted and unsuited. They left 47 out of 49 major defence programmes delayed or over budget.

It is a motion that claims to understand the delicate legacy issues in Northern Ireland, from a party whose own plan was struck down as unlawful—it protected nobody. We have had many debates on the issue that the Government are reflecting on. I have set out my position many times, and in partnership with colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, we will progress the Bill in due course. As I have said before, I am mindful of the responsibility to get it right.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way on that matter?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

No, I am going to finish. Armed Forces Week is a moment to give thanks. But the best thanks a Government can give our servicemen and women is not warm words from these Benches, but our full backing. There are more officer-cadets, lieutenants, and Captain Joneses serving today—we are a big family. I say to them that the Conservative Government failed me; this Labour Government will deliver for them.

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Mark Francois and Louise Sandher-Jones

Report stage
Monday 22nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

We are committed to publishing the DIP before the Ankara summit in July.

Amendment 11 concerns the Defence Housing Service’s budget and the defence investment plan. I hope that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) will understand that I will not comment on any figures in the DIP—it will be published soon enough. Our defence housing strategy will deliver a decade of renewal for defence family housing. Previously, military housing was subject to insufficient, stop-start funding. That did not deliver value for money for the taxpayer, or the improvements that our service families deserve. The Defence Housing Service’s budget will be clearly set out, and it will account for its spending to Parliament via an annual report. As the Select Committee heard during the evidence sessions, there is nothing in the defence investment plan process that stops the Department getting work under way. The Defence Housing Service will be up and running from April 2027, and the work of renewing the estate can continue.

[Mr Francois]

We were told multiple times—loads of times—over five months that the Government would invest £9.2 billion over 10 years to achieve the objectives of the Defence Housing Service, so I ask the Minister again: will she give a commitment to the House that that figure has not been reduced? If she cannot do that, people will believe that it has been reduced.

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

I will not comment, piece by piece, on what might be in the defence investment plan. We are getting on with the job of making improvements for service families now, and we are preparing for the launch of the new Defence Housing Service.

Amendment 11 states that the Defence Housing Service must operate within a budget set out in the DIP. That risks constraining the Defence Housing Service in a scenario where investment is set out in the plan, but has to rise thereafter. Any additional spending then risks being in breach of this requirement, unless and until a new defence investment plan is published. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that that would constrain the service’s ability to respond swiftly and appropriately to changing requirements.

New clause 11 would require any future Secretary of State to consider whether to make a derogation under article 15 of the ECHR, which provides that

“in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation…a State may take measures derogating from its obligations under the Convention only to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation”,

provided that such measures are

“not…inconsistent with the State’s other obligations under international law”.

When the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill was being considered, concerns were raised that its clause 12 risked damaging the UK’s reputation for upholding the rule of law. It was also seen as unnecessary, because the Government can already derogate under article 15 of the ECHR, so the provision did not add any additional legal power and was largely symbolic. It was the last Government who agreed to its removal from that Bill, and I have not heard a convincing case for its inclusion in this Bill.

I will address new clauses 3 and 5 together, as they both deal with how we care for our veterans. I thank hon. Members for tabling them. I appreciate their concerns about our armed forces veterans, and I acknowledge the sentiments behind the new clauses. We have published our new 10-year veterans strategy, which sets out a new narrative around the remarkable men and women who have served in our armed forces. It applies UK-wide, is cross-Government and cross-sector in scope, and will provide significant opportunity for both data collection and data sharing, and we do not wish to distract from the progression of this work.

Defence

Debate between Mark Francois and Louise Sandher-Jones

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Commons Chamber

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

Our debate today reflects—or should reflect—the seriousness of the global security situation we now face. In eastern Europe, in the Mediterranean and around the world, our service personnel are working so hard, sacrificing so much and facing risk on our behalf. We have lived through—and I served through—a Government that refused to acknowledge the changing world, refused to take it seriously and refused to take the steps necessary to raise funding and invest. The architects of that neglect are sat in front of me. Sleeping on stag is a serious offence in the British military. In the Conservative party it was defence policy.

I shall now turn to the contributions made by hon. Members. I would like to remind those who have voiced their concerns about British bases that the threat of the growing situation in eastern Europe was clear in 2014—it could be argued that the signs were there in 2008—yet the Conservative Government, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, chose to close down our bases in Germany and withdraw our armoured infantry brigade. We can now see what a mistake that decision was.

My hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) made a passionate defence of the importance of fighting inequality. Like him, I see in my inbox the challenges that people face in my constituency, in his constituency and in the constituencies of Members across the House. We have seen what happens when instability around the world does not stay in eastern Europe or the Med, but affects us right here. It affects the energy bills we pay and the cost of goods. I am well aware of the challenges and the duty we have to face those challenges, but I say to him that sometimes war comes to you, and our armed forces are the ones who stand between us and those threats. It is vital that we give them the kit and equipment they need to face those threats and defend us.

Turning to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), that is the first time that I have heard the Leader of the Opposition and Winston Churchill compared. We will see over the coming weeks, months and years who is correct, but I expect that that comparison will age like milk.

We had an obviously fantastic speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher)— I declare an interest, although I do not comment on operational matters—on the importance of looking at the defence economy in the round. He said that it is not armies that win wars but nations. I agree that it is young people who we send to fight wars, and we need to ensure that as a state we have invested in those young people—in the very children who will grow up to face the world that we are creating for them.

The hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) raised the important need to grow our reserves. We are taking measures to do that and, indeed, we are reinvigorating the strategic reserve, of which I am a member, to ensure that it is ready to meet the challenges ahead.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham) spoke about the importance of getting the DIP right. That is a crucial fact that we must all bear in mind—we must get the DIP right because jobs and capabilities depend on it.

The right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) was absolutely right that we must support our SMEs. That is why we have launched the Defence Office for Small Business Growth to boost opportunities for SMEs and why we have committed to spend £2.5 billion with them by May 2028.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling), who always speaks up for those in his constituency who serve in our armed forces, rightly raised the importance of ensuring that we are able to recruit young people into our armed forces as quickly as possible. We are treating this as a priority and doing various things, such as improving the medical process and bringing in novel ways to enter the armed forces, such as through cyber direct entry.

The hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan) spoke movingly about the child benefit cap, and I will return to that point in a while. He rightly noted the important role that Scotland plays in the defence of the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) spoke about the importance of space. It is important to mention the wonderful work being done by UK Space Command. As someone who used to work in a company that used a lot of satellite data, I understand the importance of it and welcome the extra £1.5 billion that we are spending on defence space technologies.

The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) spoke eloquently, and I know that he is passionate about this matter. He is absolutely right when he says, “The moral is to the physical as three is to one.” The hon. and gallant Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) also spoke passionately, and I take his points on board. I have absolutely listened to every one of his points, but for me, what he said reiterates the importance of getting the DIP right. A lot is at stake, and we must get it right. I say to the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) that his law has given terrorists immunity. It is unlawful, and I am glad that we are changing it.

As the House knows very well, the Government are fixing the mess that we inherited, which included an equipment plan that was overcommitted, underfunded and unsuited to the threats and conflicts that we now face. The Conservatives slashed defence spending by £12 billion in their first five years. The shadow Defence Secretary was the very Minister for Defence Procurement who left 47 out of 49 major programmes not on time or on budget.

I am reading those stats, but I lived through them, and this is deeply personal to me. I was serving when the previous Government were in office, and I could see the damage that they were doing all around me. While the threats to this country grew and grew, the Conservative Government refused to acknowledge that the world had changed. Labour is now fixing their mess, delivering for defence and for Britain. We have awarded more than 1,200 major contracts since the election—86% of them to British businesses—including the £650 million upgrade to our Typhoon fleet, securing 1,500 jobs.

[Mr Francois]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

No, I need to make time.

Our £1 billion contract for new medium helicopters has helped to secure the future of the Leonardo plant in Yeovil, sustaining more than 3,000 jobs. We have spent millions more on drone procurement and development, including, earlier this month, an order for 20 uncrewed surface vessels, which will be built by Kraken in Hampshire and take us a step closer to our vision of a hybrid Navy.

That is not a frozen procurement pipeline; it is a Government delivering for British security and the British economy. It is possible only because we are investing £270 billion in defence over this Parliament. We are delivering the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war, and we are growing our defence industrial base by backing UK-based businesses and UK workers. That vote of confidence is matched by record foreign direct investment totalling £3.2 billion since the election and the most successful year on record for British defence exports, bringing a defence dividend to every part of the country.

The Opposition have got one thing right today: we do live in an increasingly dangerous world, and we see every day the skill, professionalism and expertise of our personnel in defending our people, allies and interests in the middle east. It is all the more staggering, then, that the Conservatives cut frigates and destroyers by 25%, cut minehunters, and—in the words of their former Defence Secretary—left our armed forces “hollowed out and underfunded”. That is their record, and today we have heard no acknowledgment of it, so it falls to this Labour Government to take action to put that right.

Last June, as part of the SDR, we announced up to £1 billion extra, above Conservative plans, for air and missile defence. We have been leading NATO’s initiative on delivering integrated air and missile operational networked defences—DIAMOND—and this year alone we have boosted spending on counter-drone systems by five times, and spending on ground-based air defence has increased by 50%. In an era of growing threat, we are delivering for defence, and we will not repeat the Conservatives’ mistakes.

I was surprised to hear the Conservatives speak about morale, which plunged to record lows on their watch, when they slashed real-terms pay and saw record numbers of housing complaints. This Government have delivered the largest pay increase in two decades. We are investing record amounts in statutory services, including £9 billion in forces housing, and renewing and repairing nine in 10 forces homes. The Conservatives left serving personnel in damp and mould-infested homes. I am so pleased that we have funded 30 hours of free childcare for the under-threes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We have taken more action in 20 months that the Conservatives managed in 14 years.

Let me address two points, if I may. As soldiers, we talk about how we fight, but it is also incredibly important to talk about why we fight. When I stood to become involved in politics, one of the things that I was most looking forward to—I knew that it would not be possible right away, but I hoped that it would be possible during this Parliament—was the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap.

That vote—being able to walk through the Lobby to scrap the cap—has been one of my proudest moments, because we cannot balance the books on the poorest children in this country. In closing, with the highest—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Louise Sandher-Jones

Monday 2nd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

We had hoped to see the Minister for the Armed Forces today, but we accept that he is on manoeuvres.

More seriously, we learned last week that the Prime Minister’s interest in British Army veterans once even stretched to working with disgraced lawyer Phil Shiner to help prosecute them. What is the Minister’s reply to the subsequent comment from General Sir Peter Wall, the former head of the British Army, who said of those actions:

“If that’s the Prime Minister’s moral stance, then one has to ask questions about how compatible that is with his job of making decisions about putting soldiers in harm’s way in the national interest for the defence of the realm”?

What is the answer to the former Chief of the General Staff?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

I know that the hon. Member—

[Mr Francois]

Right hon.

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

Apologies. The right hon. Member played a pivotal role in the previous Government’s disastrous record on looking after the armed forces, overseeing the horrendous decline in accommodation and real-terms cuts to military pay, and hollowing out and underfunding our armed forces, so I know he is not a details man. I gently remind him that the Prime Minister did not work with that individual or with any organisation, and his role was limited to working with the Law Society on points of law. The Prime Minister actually has a record of representing people who were wrongfully accused or killed on operations.

[Mr Francois]

Let us try this for detail. Why should any British soldier, past or present, or those who commanded them, owe loyalty to a Labour Government who contain an Attorney General who once willingly represented Gerry Adams, or to a Prime Minister who once wrote a legal treatise on how best to prosecute them under the European convention on human rights? Why, before he was elected to Parliament, did our Prime Minister agree to take formal legal instructions from Phil Shiner, a man hated throughout the British Army for his years of false claims against veterans, for which he was convicted as a fraudster and struck off? What kind of politicians support our soldiers by helping to sue them?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Louise Sandher-Jones

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Regarding Northern Ireland veterans who served on Operation Banner, the Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill has now been powerfully described by eight retired four-star generals and an air chief marshal as:

“A direct threat to national security.”

Can the Minister confirm that not all the Government’s six protections for veterans are even in the Bill, and that, moreover, at least half of them also apply to alleged paramilitaries?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

As the right hon. Member well knows, we have been clear about which protections will be in the Bill. I remind him that it was legislation introduced when he was in government that gave blanket immunity to terrorists, and he very proudly supported it.

[Mr Francois]

That is not true. We had hoped to hear from the wannabe future Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), but as we have not—[Interruption.] He is not denying it. If what the Minister claims is true, how does she explain the recent comment by General Sir Peter Wall, the former head of the British Army, who said that the protections are

“a meaningless insult and only become relevant once re-investigation is under way”?

Respectfully, who knows more about defending our veterans: a brand new Minister or a former chief of the general staff who actually commanded them?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

We will implement those new protections, and we have been in close dialogue with many different representatives. To turn the question back on to the shadow Minister, his legislation utterly failed and gave blanket immunity to terrorists. I will not hear lectures from the Conservatives, who could not provide a solution in 14 years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Francois and Louise Sandher-Jones

Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

As General Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, said at the weekend,

“if potential recruits to our Armed Forces do not believe that their government will stand by them when performing their duties in a lawful manner, why risk joining at all?”

He was speaking about Labour’s new Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which could see Northern Ireland veterans, without whom there would never have been a Good Friday agreement in the first place, in the dock again by next year. The Minister called opponents of this “naive”. What is her response to the former head of the British Army and the brave soldiers he led—were they all naive, too?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

Seeing as the right hon. Gentleman is attacking me for something I did not say, I can only assume that he cannot attack me—

[Mr Francois]

It’s in Hansard!

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

He is very welcome to check Hansard, where he will see that I was very specifically referring to people spreading misinformation. He will be able to see it there in black and white in Hansard.

[Mr Francois]

It is in Hansard.

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

It is in Hansard, absolutely—I urge the right hon. Gentleman to reread it to see the full quote.

This Government are committed to protecting those who serve. Our first and foremost priority is to protect and ensure the welfare of those who have served, just as we have done for many people who have served in our armed forces across multiple conflicts. I can only say again that the commitment of this Government to our veterans is total.

[Mr Francois]

The former Labour Security Minister Lord West said recently that we “shouldn’t be doing” this. Lord Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour, said:

“We must reverse it as soon as possible.”

The hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) said that

“to continue this against one side makes no sense.”

With a Labour rebellion clearly brewing, and given that many Northern Ireland veterans were initially recruited from red wall seats, why are Labour Ministers insisting on driving their Back Benchers into the Division Lobby just to do Sinn Féin and their old comrades in the IRA a favour?

[Louise Sandher-Jones]

I urge the right hon. Gentleman to remember the really serious issues that are at stake here. The priorities of this Government, as we have shown repeatedly, are to do right by the families of more than 200 British service personnel who were murdered in Northern Ireland and to ensure that we have protections and appropriate measures in place to defend our veterans; we have five protections in law and a sixth that we have control over ourselves. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman again that the Government’s commitment to veterans is total.

Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution

Debate between Mark Francois and Louise Sandher-Jones

Monday 14th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Louise Jones]

I will make some progress and then come back to the right hon. Gentleman. It was a law that was forced through to try to curry favour in a desperate attempt to save the dying Administration of Boris Johnson. Among all the complicated arguments around how best to properly deal with the impact of the troubles, there is one huge, incontrovertible fact, which was ignored in the previous speech, and which no amount of clever talk or posturing can obscure: the legacy Act, as it stands, gives immunity to terrorists. That is abhorrent.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

You sent them letters of comfort.

[Louise Jones]

To address that point, the head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said that the letters that the right hon. Gentleman refers to grant no immunity. The only thing that grants immunity to former members of the IRA is the Northern Ireland legacy Act as it stands. That is a simple fact. If we want to protect veterans—I know that everybody in this room wants to—we must remember those who were murdered in cold blood by terrorists. Those terrorists now sleep soundly in their beds, free from the threat of prosecution—the threat of justice—precisely because of the Northern Ireland legacy Act. They were given that by a British Government. A British Government have given terrorists who have murdered British personnel complete immunity.

There was an article in The Guardian today about the family of Tony Harrison, a British para who was murdered in east Belfast. He was shot while at home with his fiancée. He was not on military operations—there was no firefight. He was shot in the back in his own home. He was just 21 years old. Under the Northern Ireland legacy Act as it stands, there is no route for his murderers to be held to account. No wonder his family have now launched a legal challenge to the Act, because they refuse to have Tony be denied justice. We must never forget, but always remember, the 200 personnel whose families are being denied justice because of this Act and how it stands. That is fundamental to why the legacy Act must be repealed and replaced.