International Agreements Committee
23 June 2026
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International Agreements Committee House of Lords
00:06 - 02:05
Speaker 1
Good afternoon and welcome to the International Agreements Committee in the House of Lords. I formally welcome to the meeting of our select committee Justyna Gotkowska. Sorry, Gotkowska, my apologies. Everyone pronounces my surname incorrectly, so I know a black mark because I didn't get yours right first time round. Justyna is Deputy Director of the Centre for Eastern Studies and is working virtually with us.
In person, we have Ed Arnold, Senior Advisor Defence at the D Group, and Kevin Craven, Chief Executive Officer of ADS Group. This is our first evidence session for our scrutiny of the UK-Poland Security and Defence Partnership. There will be one more next week, but this is our first contribution to the work. The agreement was published by the government on the government website on the 27th of May this year, and today it was formally laid before Parliament. I'm going to ask the opening question, which is always very broad, but I'm then going to turn to my colleagues who will ask more focused questions.
And my colleagues, of course, may also wish to ask supplementaries. My question is in fact to Justyna and Ed. Other questions will be either for all three or mentioned individually. But Justyna and Ed, what do you consider to be the main security and defence challenges and indeed threats faced by both the UK and Poland currently, and to what extent does the treaty address those challenges and threats? May I start with Justyna on this occasion?
02:05 - 03:16
Speaker 3
Yes. First of all, thank you very much for the invitation. I'm honoured to be able to speak before you on the treaty between the UK and Poland on security and defence partnership. With regard to your question on security and defence challenges and threats faced by Poland and the UK, speaking from a Polish perspective, but I'm sure that also applies to a large extent to the UK, Poland is faced with a huge challenge coming from Russia that is in practice right now narrowed down to hybrid activities that Russia has been conducting against us since basically 2022 and earlier, with the intensification of these challenges in the past years. It has started in the preparation of the full-scale invasion on Ukraine already in autumn 2021.
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