Industry and Regulators Committee — hearing of 14 July 2026: transcript & video

00:05 - 01:06

Speaker 2

Well, good morning and welcome to this session of the Industry and Regulation Committee. We're, as you probably know, looking at, have a particular inquiry about the relationship between government and the defence industry. The broad, the meeting is being broadcast live on Parliament TV. There will be a transcript taken and you'll have a chance to check that in case we've misinterpreted any of the words that you've used. But if I can formally start by, by welcoming both Lord Robertson of this parish, if I can say that, and General Sir Richard Barrons, who together of course with Fiona Hill produced the Strategic Defence Review, which I think has, and what you've both been doing since, has started the national dialogue that I think you wanted to take place.

But maybe you could both just introduce yourselves and then we'll start with the questions. I'm Diane Hayter and I'll introduce our colleagues as they put questions to you.

01:06 - 03:19

Speaker 3

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I am Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. I was once upon a time Secretary of State for Defence, then I was Secretary General of, of NATO, and I was asked by the incoming Prime Minister and now outgoing Prime Minister to be the lead reviewer of the three people who would do the external review of UK defence. So we produced our report last June, June the second last year, and we were told at that point that our job was over. And I think it's worth, it's worth emphasizing that point, that at that stage we were told that we were done, we were finished, and that we had no further role to play inside the Ministry of Defence. And therefore there is a certain limitation on what we can tell you.

Since then we've had one major session at the Ministry of Defence with the officials in charge of implementing the defence review, who went over in some detail the 62 recommendations that we made, all of which were accepted by the government at that point. But that's the only point at which we have received any feedback on what we, what we said at the time. Subsequent to that, however, the other committee of this House, the International Relations and Defence Committee, which I chair, has had the Chief of the Defence Staff in order to ascertain from him his view about the implementation of the recommendations. And we've also had the National Armaments Director, Rupert Pearce, along with his senior staff in order to give us a full briefing about how they see the implementation of the recommendations that we met. And it may be that your committee would want to see the transcript of that particular interrogation.

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