International Relations and Defence Committee
15 July 2026
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International Relations and Defence Committee Actual start House of Lords
21:28 - 23:46
Speaker 1
Thank you. Can I say order, order and start this proceeding and welcome Richard Gowan, Olivia O'Sullivan and Sir Matthew Rycroft for being available to the committee. This is the seventh evidence session of our inquiry which seeks to explore the multilateral system and how the United Kingdom might play a better part in that.
I have to say to the witnesses that we are being streamed live on Parliament TV and there are apparently people out there watching these proceedings, as I have found out to my cost. You will at the end receive a transcript and if there are any small alterations, technical alterations that you want to make, then they will be received. I'll ask members of the committee to declare any relevant interest before they ask any questions at all. And I declare that I was the lead reviewer for the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, which may well be relevant to the discussion that we're having here as well. So, we're very grateful to you for taking the time to come along.
We've got a dead stop because we're being briefed at secret level by the Ministry of Defence about the situation in the Middle East. But if there are any questions that are not asked by members of the committee, maybe you might look at them and see whether there's something that you might like to say to each of them since you've been supplied with the questions in advance. So, can I start off from the chair by basically asking you, Sir Matthew, if you could give an idea of how the British government treats multilateral institutions? Are they given sufficient priority to your mind? What is your experience?
What has that experience been in the jobs that you have done about multilateral institutions as a whole and in some in particular?
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